Chicago’s ‘Ellis Island’ sees fewer immigrant homeowners

Adriana Sandoval wants to buy a home in Pilsen.

She grew up in the neighborhood after her family moved there from Mexico when she was 5. In 1992, they joined a large number of families in moving to the Southwest Side near Midway airport.

Now 34, she has started looking to move back to Pilsen. “I was really priced out of the market,” she said.

Immigrants are leaving Pilsen for several reasons. Some who own homes leave when assessed values push up property taxes, others when developers offer large sums to buy their property. And some who rent leave when they cannot afford to buy. As it loses foreign-born residents, the neighborhood risks losing the dominant immigrant character it has had for more than a century.

Between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of foreign-born residents in Pilsen went down from 56 to 49 percent. Several community organizations confirmed that the trend has continued in recent years.

Alejandra Ibañez, executive director of the Pilsen Alliance, a group resisting cultural changes in the neighborhood, said she has seen a large exodus of Mexican families from the area. “We’re also losing the history of the neighborhood that has been Bohemian, Czech, German and Italian,” she said. “Immigrants who came through Pilsen from the 1890s [on] came because they had nowhere else to go.”

Ibañez said owning a home in Pilsen is now out of reach for most immigrant families.
Kristen Komara, who educates homebuyers as director of financial services for The Resurrection Project, said, “Incomes haven’t kept up with how prices are rising and so families can’t afford homes here.”

In 1990, the median home value in Pilsen was $45,000 and the median household income was about $20,000. By 2000, the median home value increased to $105,000 while the median household income had only risen to about $30,000.
Housing prices for Pilsen continued to rise after 2000, and by 2006 the average single family home was selling for more than $300,000.

Renters as well as homeowners have been affected by these changes. Even families who own their homes face higher property taxes from increasing assessed values. About 80 percent of residential properties in Pilsen increased in assessed value from 2001 to 2005, data from the City of Chicago collected by the DePaul University geography department shows.

When paying increasing taxes, offers from developers to buy properties become more appealing, Komara said. “The biggest impetus for our families to move is investors knocking on their door.”
As they move from Pilsen, displaced families are finding homes elsewhere in Chicago neighborhoods farther south and west, as well as the suburbs. Fifty-three percent of foreign-born Latinos own homes in the Metropolitan Chicago area, more than the 50 percent of U.S.-born Latinos and 49 percent of non-Latino blacks who do, according to 2003 data compiled by the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies.

However, more Latino homeowners – including the foreign-born – live in the counties surrounding the city or in the suburbs than in the city, the data shows.

The Rev. Tim Howe, principal of St. Procopius School in Pilsen, said about 70 percent of their students come from immigrant families. Only 25 percent live near the school. Many used to live in Pilsen, but moved out toward areas such as near Midway Airport in recent years. “You have a lot of people who report that as good news – because they can buy a house,” he said.

Sandoval wants to find a place in Pilsen where she could someday start a family, remembering the strong community ties she had while growing up there. “It felt like a large extended family,” she said.

A graphic designer for a real estate company, she had access to realtor’s databases and makes more than Pilsen’s median income, but she still found the process of homebuying difficult, especially for single-family homes.

“A lot of them were probably in tear-down condition and were still out of my price range or required too much work that I couldn’t afford to do,” she said. “Then I started to look at condos, but I prefer something that’s more vintage, not as rehabbed or new construction.”

Also, the condominiums were too small and cost too much, she said. The space limitations of condominiums – even for those that are set aside at affordable prices – are a problem for many immigrant families.

“Sometimes you have three generations living in the same house,” Komara said. “They are not going to fit in a condo and not one for $300,000.

But the prices aren’t a problem for everyone. Some of the new migrants to Pilsen find the offers quite affordable.

Marco Logsdon, 42, was living in Kentucky but wanted to own a gallery in a city. He looked in Washington, D.C., but prices were out of his range. Then, he attended the annual Chicago Arts District Open House in East Pilsen in October 2005 and set his sights on moving there.

Starting in the 1960s, the Podmajersky family, who first came to Pilsen from Slovakia in 1914, became developers in the area and set up the Chicago Arts District. They renovated dozens of old industrial buildings along South Halsted Street and created an artists community.

Logsdon said, “The way they had the spaces set up was for an artist to live and work in the space, and that was really what I was looking for.” He pays $1400 a month for a combined living space, studio and storefront.

However, being in East Pilsen feels like a get away from the hustle of the city, while still being nearby. “I get in the car or take the train and in 10 minutes I’m in the city, in the heart of it all,” he said.

Howe of St. Procopius said he hopes the new homes in Pilsen will combine with enough affordable housing to create a community where new and old residents can live together.

“If Chicago could generate mixed income communities, that would be great,” he said. “I don’t know of any like that, that last for longer than a weekend.”

Shannon Long, co-owner of Mode Realty in East Pilsen, said the neighborhood needs new development because of some of the poor construction in the area. “You can get rid of a lot of the housing stock down here just because it’s in such bad condition.”

The new condominiums have created a neighborhood feel that is much more like the trendy spots of Wicker Park and Bucktown, Long said. “There are people coming in from the suburbs who look out from the train and say, ‘It’s really changed,’” he said.

The changes in Pilsen are not just because of new development, but because the manufacturing jobs immigrants have traditionally held are no longer centralized there. They have spread out in the Chicago area, Long said. “Because of modern transportation you don’t really need a port of entry anymore.”

Sandoval said Pilsen’s culture will continue to be shaped by migrants from other countries or other parts of the U.S. “It’s always going to be our gateway to new arrivals in Chicago, whether it’s artists or undocumented immigrants. It’s our Ellis Island.”

Pilsen will also have a special place for her, and she will continue to look for a home to buy there.

“Being an immigrant you feel like you never really have a home anywhere,” Sandoval said. “I feel very Mexican and very American at the same time in Pilsen. That is where I find people that have gone through the same experiences that I have and have the same outlook.”