As cities get greener, the poor feel the pinch
Gentrification comes at a cost: Prohibitive housing prices
By many measures, the effort to convert old elevated railway on Chicago’s Northwest Side into a signature park has been a smashing success.
The 2.7-mile recreation trail, known as The 606, built on an old Chicago & Pacific Railroad line has been praised as a model use of public space since it opened two years ago. It’s regularly packed with bikers, joggers and walkers.
Art installations and eclectic programming — including evening stargazing sessions, Afro-Latin music and dance demonstrations and puppet shows — have helped make the linear park a destination that draws visitors from beyond the four neighborhoods the trail bisects. Volunteers of the park have even picked fruit grown from the Serviceberry shrubs along the trail and turned them over to a popular Italian ice shop to make treats for a fundraiser for the trail.
The 606’s charms notwith- standing, some residents along the western portion of the trail say the recreational space has been both a blessing and curse. It brought much-needed green space in a part of Chicago that lacked it, but it is also driving up property values and rent prices in their once affordable neighborhood.
“I miss my neighborhood, I miss my neighbors, I miss my local stores,” said Alicia Avila, who had rented near the western edge of the trail for 11 years but moved to a cheaper Chicago suburb this month as a result of the rising housing costs that have followed the trail, which takes its name from the Chicago zip code prefix.
“I know gentrification is going to happen, but it should happen in a responsible way so that people who have been here for many years can co-inhabit the same space.”
Call it the greening neighborhood conundrum. The paradox Chicago faces with its new-ish gem to its park system is one playing out in other big cities around the U.S. that are also finding it’s difficult to add marquee park space on derelict tracks and bridges in low-income areas while also keeping housing prices in check for longtime residents.
Now, designers and city officials seeking to create recreational space on abandoned industrial eyesores are increas-
ingly recognizing — though some belatedly — that they have a chicken-and-egg quandary on their hands: How do you add green space in lower-income areas without inevitably setting those populations up to be displaced by more well-heeled neighbors looking to enjoy the amenities?
“This issue calls for cross-sector collaboration,” said Adrian Benepe, director of city park development at The Trust for Public Land, the San Francisco-based non-profit group that worked with Chicago officials on developing The 606. “It’s not enough to say you’re going to build a park and stick your head in the sand and say: ‘ We only care about the park. We don’t care what else might be going on.’ ”
Atlanta’s Mayor Kasim Reed announced plans for a fund in April to help residents living near parts of Atlanta’s Beltline pay their rising tax bills in the area that has seen a rejuvenation during a years-long plan to rebuild an old railway into a multi-use trail.
In Bozeman, Mont., the city of about 41,000 has set aside 5 acres for development of affordable housing adjacent to its forthcoming signature Story Mill Park, Benepe noted. The city broke ground on the project over the weekend.
In Washington, D.C., organizers of the 11th Street Bridge Park, a $45 million proposal that would transform a dormant bridge into recreational space, have drawn up an “equitable development plan” that sets goals for affordable housing and job creation for residents in a low-income neighborhood near the project. The non-profit Local Initiatives Support Corp. has committed to spend $50 million to support groups providing affordable housing, early childhood education, food support and other services in area around the park.
Founders of the High Line in New York City — the much-ballyhooed 1.45-mile trail built on abandoned railway on the lower West Side that was the forerunner to The 606 and similar “rails to trail” projects springing up throughout the USA and beyond — last year launched the High Line Network, a consortium that includes representatives from 19 adaptive reuse park projects across North America to help more easily share lessons learned.
The High Line, which opened in 2009, saw property values spike 103% for real estate within a five-minute walk from the trail from 2003 to 2011, according to New York City government data.
The dazzling park, which has drawn more than 20 million visitors as of July 2014, has been criticized for becoming a tourist magnet rather than a neighborhood amenity. A study last year by Queens College political scientist Alex Reichl also found that fewer than 7% of High Line users were black or Latino — a striking observation considering the trail was built near two public housing complexes with large black and Latino populations.
“I want to make sure other people don’t make the mistakes we did,” Robert Hammond, cofounder of the High Line, told the website City Lab earlier this year.
In Chicago, three city council members last month proposed a pilot ordinance that would require developers to pay as much as a $650,000 fee if they want to demolish and replace habitable housing near parts of the 606 trail that have seen property values increase by 48% since 2013.
The money collected for the proposed Chicago program would go into an affordable housing trust, which would help homeowners pay for property taxes and home repairs. The ordinance appears to face an uphill battle.
“One of the issues that the city government and funders should have foreseen is the accelerated gentrification, the accelerated increases in property values and taxes that we could have programmed for at the time,” said Juan Carlos Linares, executive director of LUCHA, a Chicago affordable housing group that has backed the proposed ordinance.
While real estate values in the neighborhoods around the trail have been rising for years, housing prices have risen sharply along the western segment of the trail that cuts through Humboldt Park and Logan Square neighborhoods — areas that historically have large Latino populations and, until recent years, plenty of reasonably priced housing.
The 606 has had a more modest influence on the already-gentrified neighborhoods on its eastern edge, but real estate prices on the once-affordable western side have skyrocketed by 48.2% since ground was broken on the trail in 2013 and by 9.4% during the first year the trail was open, according to a report in November 2016 from the Institute of Housing Studies at DePaul University.
In the six years before The 606’s opening, 15% to 19% of single-family home sales went to investors and developers. In 2015, the year the trail opened, the figure reached 21%, and in the first quarter of 2016 it was almost 31%, the study found.
“It’s much more difficult to take action retroactively now that the market forces have already started to take force and gain momentum,” said Geoff Smith, lead author of the DePaul study.
Aides to Mayor Rahm Emanuel say his administration has worked to maintain affordable housing along the 606 corridor and help keep longtime residents in the neighborhood.
Last year, the city created a $1 million forgivable loan program for lower-income home-owners on the western edge of The 606 to help them pay for needed exterior repairs as well as electrical, plumbing and heating fixes on their homes. The city has also created 33 affordable housing units near The 606.
“We make sure that new developments, projects and resources, like the 606 trail, take into account the needs of the local community,” Emanuel said in a statement to USA TODAY.