Chicago’s housing landscape is fragmented, and as many homeowners still continue to recover from the 2008 recession, a new threat to equitable homeownership has arrived in the COVID-19 pandemic. This chartbook provides a collection of data points and commentary describing Chicago’s housing market, past and present, with a focus on affordability, accessibility and racial equity. The chartbook is organized into four sections; Racial and Ethnic Demographics, Precrisis and Postcrisis Housing Market Trends, Recovery Drivers and Postrecession Impact and Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
It is intended to be a tool for Chicago’s housing actors, from mortgage lenders to foundations, providing reference points for building accessibility and racial equity into housing programs, practice, and policy, but actors in other cities could use a similar evidence-based approach to disaggregate all the available data and better understand these disparities to inform policy and practice solutions. This publication was a collaborative effort between Urban and the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University.