Longtime residents and advocates look to affordable housing plans and intentional investment to keep the celebrated Black neighborhood Black.
by Nicole Jeanine Johnson and Reema Saleh
Bernard Loyd, the founder of Build Bronzeville, poses for a portrait inside The Forum in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood on Friday, Jan. 19, 2024. (Photo: Trent Sprague/for City Bureau)
It wasn't until Michelle Kennedy left Bronzeville for City Planning graduate school in the 1990s that she learned her Chicago neighborhood’s name.
After observing a classmate's presentation on the “real estate gem,” she asked him to show it to her on a map. Kennedy was shocked to find the heralded Bronzeville included the Prairie Court Apartments where she grew up.
“When I was a little girl, [Bronzeville] was a poor area,” said Kennedy, whose memories of the 1980s reflect a time when 51% of the population lived under the poverty line across the four city Community Areas that contain Bronzeville: Douglas, Grand Boulevard, Kenwood and Oakland.
The ensuing decades brought waves of change cascading through the neighborhood, from the 1990s shift of middle- and upper-income Black professionals moving to Bronzeville, to the teardown of public housing high-rise apartments that, at their peak, were home to around 9,000 low-income families.
Development has brought new-construction homes with price tags far exceeding what the average resident can afford, along with amenities such as a Mariano’s grocery store, a $16.9 million tennis center, the higher-end Bronzeville Winery restaurant, and a forthcoming private social justice school.
“If you are not wealthy and you’re a Black person, you cannot buy in Bronzeville,” Kennedy said. “And if you inherit property in Bronzeville and you’re not wealthy, it’s going to be difficult for you to pay the taxes and to maintain it.”
And while advocates say such resources are needed in a thriving community, many say they worry the people who need them can no longer afford to live in the historic Black neighborhood they’ve long called home.
“If the number of wealthy white people who want to live in Bronzeville exceeds the number of wealthy Black people who want to live there, it will no longer be a Black neighborhood,” Kennedy said. “Plain and simple.”
Waves of change
Pinpointing when exactly gentrification began in Bronzeville — or even what gentrifying itself means — can be difficult.
“The start of gentrification is always disinvestment,” said Roderick Wilson, executive director of the Lugenia Burns Hope Center, a Bronzeville-based community organization advocating for rent control and affordable housing protections. “It may take a while before someone starts to move on it, but you can't have gentrification in a community unless it's been disinvested in, because that's what makes it profitable.”
The prohibition of racial discrimination in housing sales and rentals in the 1960s made it possible for Black Chicagoans from Bronzeville to move to other neighborhoods and the suburbs. Meanwhile, the Dan Ryan Expressway’s path along racial boundaries physically and economically isolated the Black Belt.
The exodus kicked off decades of economic downfall; Bronzeville would lose over 75% of its population by 2010.
The 1990s saw a wave of middle- and upper-income Black professionals moving to Bronzeville, drawn by its past golden age. Soon after, the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation and the unveiling of the city’s new police headquarters at 3510 S. Michigan Ave. signaled a shift in municipal mindset.
“In order to signal for developers to come in, there typically is a large public works project that's built in that community,” Wilson said. “When they moved the police headquarters to Bronzeville, that was the indicator that, ‘We're about to change this community.’”
For Lionel Kimble Jr., an associate professor of history and Africana studies at Chicago State University and Chicago Urban League’s executive director of research and policy, the changing demographics of his neighborhood became noticeable around the 2008 housing market crash and ensuing Great Recession.
“I remember driving down Lake Shore Drive in the mornings, and I would see all of these white people walking and running through Bronzeville, just jogging,” Kimble said. “I knew at that moment that something was changing.”
While gentrification is a loaded term, its core definition is an influx of wealthy residents moving to a lower-income urban area, attracting development and increasingly expensive housing that ultimately pushes out less affluent, longtime residents.
In Bronzeville, construction costs have soared, property tax bills are more than doubling, and median single-family home prices jumped nearly $200,000 between 2018 and 2022, according to a March 2023 Tribune report.
The changes come as a flood of new homes hits the market. And that means, for certain homebuyers, Bronzeville is one of the few neighborhoods that meet their needs, said real estate agent Mallori Lockett.
“Bronzeville, along with Woodlawn, is really the only place on the South Side where there's been a concerted effort for new construction,” Lockett said. “That, in part, is driving people to Bronzeville, because they're able to buy brand-new.”
Mallori Lockett, a real estate agent in Bronzeville, hosts a condo association meeting in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024. (Photo: Trent Sprague/for City Bureau)
As affluent white households — who make more than twice that of Black families — relocate to communities pegged as the next real estate gold rush, the prices for new-construction homes are far beyond what the majority of Bronzeville residents can afford.
“Developments down the street from my home are going for half a million dollars,” Kimble said. “There are houses on King Drive [selling for] three quarters of a million. Who is buying those homes? They're not necessarily being built for us.”
The outlook isn’t much rosier for renters. The four community areas containing Bronzeville have a household median income of $40,692, or approximately $3,400 a month before taxes, according to data from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
Considering Bronzeville's average monthly rent is $1,720, that leaves many spending at least half their income on housing — well beyond what experts deem affordable.
The stock of affordable or public housing has yet to recover from the demolition of Chicago Housing Authority high-rises in the neighborhood. There are approximately 5,500 city-backed affordable apartments in Bronzeville, priced to meet the area median income, with city funds making up the market rate gap for landlords. But that falls short of the loss of public housing that came with the late 1990s and early 2000s demolition of CHA high-rises, six of which were in Bronzeville.
Ald. Pat Dowell, whose 3rd Ward includes Bronzeville and portions of the Near South Side, Fuller Park and Washington Park, thinks the community has “its fair share of subsidized housing.”
“My goal has been to keep some affordability … for people who wanted to live in the Bronzeville community,” Dowell said. “But at the same time, try to bring in new investment, new higher-income people, because you need that to be able to balance the economy.”
Kennedy agrees. “Dowell has the final say on what gets built,” she said. “And she's done a great job at keeping mixed-income housing in Bronzeville, to the extent to which she can.”
Intentional investment
Communities like Bronzeville need economic investment, but it must be done intentionally, said Bernard Loyd, president of Urban Juncture, a Bronzeville community investment initiative focused on revitalizing retail along Bronzeville’s main corridors.
“We don't have a choice; we need investment,” Loyd said. “If we don't invest, it will perpetuate the things that we see throughout Black Chicago, which is that these communities become so difficult to live in that we leave.”
Bernard Loyd, the founder of Build Bronzeville, poses for a portrait inside The Forum in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood on Friday, Jan. 19, 2024. (Photo: Trent Sprague/for City Bureau)
Loyd, who moved to the neighborhood 30 years ago, said Bronzeville’s decline mirrors what happened to Black communities across the city — and in major cities nationwide.
In 1980, Black Chicagoans made up 40% of the city’s population. “And in the 40 years since, we've lost 1% of that population, every year, like clockwork,” he said. “Chicago has suffered tremendously because of this collapse in the Black population.”
Dowell has been a champion for new investment projects since she took office in 2007. Among them: XS Tennis, Home Run Inn Pizza, 43 Green, a 4th Ward Mariano’s, and revitalizing the historic Rosenwald Court Apartments, where legends like Quincy Jones and Gwendolyn Brooks once lived.
The alder cites the Rosenwald Courts development as an example of merging economic diversity and affordability. Rosenwald Courts offers space for local Black businesses including Shawn Michelle’s Old Fashion Ice Cream and the coffee shop Sip & Savor, plus office space for Black professionals. Rent for non-senior residents range from $950 to $1,115 for one- and two-bedroom apartments.
43 Green, depicted here under construction in 2022, has 99 apartments, with 50 affordable units. City records at the time showed the affordable rents were expected to be between $870 and $1,080, depending on the size of the unit. (Photo: Abel Uribe/City Bureau)
The development offers a blueprint for further development with an eye on affordability, Dowell said. The city could work with investors to build new affordable homes on hundreds of parcels of city-owned land that could then be sold as affordable housing for around $300,000-$400,000, Dowell said.
In late February, Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed a borrowing plan that would devote up to $390 million to affordable rental homes; and up to $240 million for constructing and preserving affordable single-family homes.
The CHA also recently announced a plan to renovate 40 single-family homes it owns and sell them at affordable prices to income-eligible buyers, complementing its Down Payment Assistance program.
But the results of such programs aren’t necessarily permanent. Federal low-income tax credits that incentivize private developers to build affordable housing require owners to maintain affordable rates for 15 years, after which the housing can return to market-rate prices, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
When Kimble first moved to Bronzeville in 1999, he set out to make it a multigenerational home for his family. Now, as rents and housing prices go up, he fears for the future of Black Chicago.
“I fear for the legacy of Black people who were forced to leave and wanted to live in Bronzeville — and what that means for the legacy of those folks who came before me and my children,” Kimble said. “If I sell my house, I'll never get back over here. That's robbing my children of their legacy.”
Bronzeville as a ‘hotspot’
Through real estate promotion and other interests, the boundaries of Bronzeville — and other neighborhoods like it — have blurred, often folding in smaller communities on the cusp to bring them into the profitable notion of a Black urban renaissance.
In that sense, Bronzeville is not a strict geographic location, but a marketing tool, said Northwestern University sociologist Mary Pattillo.
“Bronzeville pulls on Black folk's desire for a connection to a golden age of Black communities,” Pattillo said. “Calling it all Bronzeville creates that sense of familiarity, which creates value, since the real estate interest is all about higher prices.”
And, in some ways, that growing value does benefit Bronzeville’s longtime residents, said Lockett, whose work as a real estate agent spans much of the South Side and nearby suburbs.
“There are so many residents who are finally seeing the fruits of their homeownership labor,” Lockett said. “They're finally getting the equity that is a given on the North Side, or even Hyde Park, which is right next door. Should they be denied [that equity]? It's complicated.”
Mallori Lockett, a real estate agent in Bronzeville, passes out papers to condo owners Tanika McAfee, left, and Andy Mitchell-Gregory, center, in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024. (Photo: Trent Sprague/for City Bureau)
Despite its massive changes, the vision of Chicago's Black Metropolis still draws people in, said Pattillo, who specializes in urban sociology, race and ethnicity.
“Bronzeville is the idea of a place where Black urban renaissance happens,” Pattillo said. “It doesn't negate all of the unemployment, crime, drug use or bad health. But when you call on Bronzeville, you're trying to lean into the flourishing, to the creativity, to the community building, to the institutions that are working for Black progress.”
For Loyd, the promise of Bronzeville now is the same as it was a century ago — a place within the city “that can help move Black Chicago forward.”
“It's a place where, because of that rich history, because of that rich talent, because of its location, because of the critical mass of all those things coming together, [we] can change the trajectory of our city,” he said.
And he sees his work at Urban Juncture as an opportunity to reinvigorate Black Chicago.
“The promise of Bronzeville is a key opportunity to turn [disinvestment] around and reestablish Black Chicago as a vibrant and vital part of Chicago and in the Midwest,” he said. “And in doing so, to rejuvenate Chicago.”
But the question of who can afford to live in Bronzeville — and what role the city should play in its makeup — remains a complicated one.
And there are clear implications for Black people who wish to stay in Chicago. If current economic trends continue, Kennedy wonders: "What will happen if Chicago doesn't have Black neighborhoods anymore?"
City Bureau engagement reporter Jerrel Floyd contributed to this report.
A version of this article appeared in the March 14, 2024 edition of South Side Weekly. It was produced through our Civic Reporting Fellowship. Support City Bureau’s civic reporting programs by becoming a recurring donor today.
This story is available to republish under a Creative Commons license. Read City Bureau’s guidelines here.