Housing crisis drives families into overcrowded living conditions - Longstanding problem in Chicago exacerbated by foreclosures, posing safety and oth

Housing crisis drives families into overcrowded living conditions - Longstanding problem in Chicago exacerbated by foreclosures, posing safety and other concerns
By Antonio Olivo
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
March 28, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/ct-met-overcrowded-housing-0328-20100327,0,5362202,full.story


Like many Chicago-area residents who've lost their homes to foreclosure, Alondra Navarette had nowhere to turn when forced to leave her spacious house earlier this year.

The struggling maid could no longer afford her ballooning mortgage payments when house-cleaning jobs dried up. So she moved into the already cramped basement apartment occupied by her daughter and a roommate on Chicago's Northwest Side.

Similar choices by thousands who have lost their homes are renewing concerns about overcrowded housing in the Chicago region, housing advocates and government officials say.

With a record 23,200 foreclosures reported in Chicago last year, in addition to tens of thousands more in the suburbs, families have been avoiding homelessness by crowding in with relatives or friends in a move that affects everything from school classroom sizes and test scores to street parking and public safety.

Nationally, rising foreclosures at the start of the recession in 2008 prompted 2.6 million more people than the year before to double up with relatives, for a total of 49 million "multigenerational households," according to a Pew Research Center study released this month.

More recent numbers won't be available until later this year, but officials say all signs point to a worsening of the problem. In dense urban neighborhoods like Chinatown or Little Village, as well as once-roomy outer suburbs like Waukegan or Addison, housing activists point out homes with three or four families each.

Sitting in a makeshift living room cluttered with boxes and other items beneath low-hanging plumbing pipes, Navarette, 48, showed her desperation by gesturing with her hand as if she were dangling by the neck in a noose.

"I never thought I'd be hanging like this," she said. "We're living on top of each other."

The Chicago area has been grappling with overcrowded homes for decades, the product of a lack of affordable housing and workers moving closer to blue-collar jobs in wealthy suburbs.

The problem gained new attention last month when seven people died in a Cicero fire that engulfed an overcrowded apartment with an illegally converted attic bedroom where five of the victims were found, including a 3-day-old baby. In 2007, a fire inside an illegally converted basement occupied by 10 people on Chicago's Southwest Side killed a 3-year-old boy and a 10-month-old boy.

Though Cook County prosecutors allege the Cicero tragedy was due to an arson planned by the building's owner, the fire nonetheless illustrated the dangers inherent in overcrowding, officials say.

"It's a major concern if there's a fire and the firemen don't know that there's an apartment in the basement, or an apartment in the back, the attic, or that the first floor is separated," said Anthony Bertuca, city attorney for the western suburb of Berwyn.

His town of brick bungalow homes — frequently split into illegal apartments — saw a nearly 300 percent increase in overcrowding to 1,340 such homes during the 1990s, according to U.S. Census data. Though the definition varies, generally a home is considered overcrowded if it has more than 1.5 people per room.

Every month, Berwyn processes between 10 to 15 administrative housing-court cases involving overcrowding, Bertuca said.

But although local government officials are aware the problem may be growing, they argue that there isn't much they can do about it, other than to check for signs of overcrowding and to follow up on neighbors' complaints.

They partly blame the fallout from U.S. housing discrimination lawsuits in the Chicago area during the 1990s. When a fresh wave of new immigrants moved to suburbs such as Cicero, Elgin and Waukegan in those years, officials sought to crack down on overcrowding through aggressive inspections and by limiting the number of residents per dwelling.

The crackdowns prompted complaints from civil rights groups, who argued that such actions unfairly targeted large Latino families.

After the lawsuits were settled, most local governments in the state adopted home occupancy ordinances that, among other living requirements, dictate how much square footage is available to each resident, housing policy groups say.

"But, the problem is, enforcing it is almost impossible," argued Ray Hanania, spokesman for Cicero. Because of privacy laws governing home inspections, "We can't just walk in and catch people living in violation of even those basic dwelling laws."

Cicero officials long suspected overcrowding at the home where the fire killed seven — after neighbors complained that trash bins behind the building regularly overflowed, Hanania said. Neighbors and a sibling of one victim said 10 people lived in the illegal apartment.

During each scheduled town inspection, "Nobody would admit to living in the upstairs apartment," Hanania said. "It would be described by everybody as a carpeted recreation room. We might suspect overcrowding, but proving it is a different thing."

With more job losses and foreclosures expected in the coming months, regional planning groups predict overcrowding will worsen.

"Where are these people going?" said King Harris, a senior executive at the Chicago Metropolis 2020, a regional planning group that for years has warned about the dangers of overcrowding.

Harris blamed the problem on an unwillingness in suburban areas to develop homes affordable to lower-income families. A 2003 state law requiring towns to set aside 10 percent of all new residential development for affordable housing has had no teeth, especially during the housing boom a few years ago, he said.

"As a result, expensive homes were built. People found ways to buy them that really weren't right," Harris said. "Then guess what happened? Now, we have a meltdown."

The problem is also growing in Chicago, which since 2007 has seen nearly 58,000 foreclosures, according to an analysis of Illinois real estate data released this month by National People's Action, a network of community organizations based in Chicago.

In Chinatown, Mei Huan Wu is taunted daily by one of the few decent apartment buildings in the neighborhood affordable to low-income families.

There, she assists seniors inside the 91-unit Chinese American Service League building, which opened in 1997 and has a waiting list of 250 applicants.

When she's done, Wu, 62, walks the bustling streets to her own apartment, a small two-bedroom unit in the rear part of a slumping graystone building that she and her husband share with another family.

Because of the limited space, their bedroom is filled with canned goods and other food. A lack of closets means clothes hanging from every available section in the apartment, which features water-damaged ceilings and a malfunctioning heater held together by fraying duct tape.

"I never imagined America was going to be anything beautiful, but I never imagined it could be something like this," Wu said, through a translator.

Matilde Trujillo dreaded her planned move with her two children this month to the small apartment on Chicago's Northwest Side rented by her brother and his family.

The brick bungalow in Cicero that Trujillo and her husband, Gerardo, bought 10 years ago has gone into foreclosure. The couple began defaulting on their mortgage after their computer repair company failed last year.

Trujillo's husband recently enlisted in the Army in search of economic stability for his family. While he's away at boot camp, she packs for the move and tries to convince their children — Evelyn, 10, and Angel, 12 — that their new shared living arrangement will be temporary.

"We really loved the extra space," Trujillo said.

aolivo@tribune.com