Chicago Area Housing Website - About the Website

The Greater Chicago
Housing and Community Development Website

Mission:
Provide comprehensive, accurate, up-to-date information on housing in Northeastern Illinois

Overview: The Greater Chicago Housing and Community Development Website is designed to guide and assist researchers and analysts, comunity-based organizations, government leaders, housing and planning professionals, landlords, developers, property managers, grantmaking organizations, financial institutions, homeowners, homebuyers and renters. The website will make available a wealth of data and information about the housing environment in Chicago and other communities throughout the region.

How the website can be used
Project team
Project partners

Background: City of Chicago initiatives
In 1998, the City Council adopted its second five-year affordable housing plan. By its adoption of this plan, the City of Chicago's City Council committed the City to a five-year, $1.3 billion investment in affordable housing. The plan was a product of deliberations by an Advisory Group of diverse stakeholders in the affordable housing industry. They helped to set the five strategic outcomes, against which the success of the five-year plan would be gauged. To achieve the consensus necessary to succeed at this time-constrained mission, several topics were set aside to be tackled by a different approach.

In 1999, the Chicago Department of Housing released the companion document to the five-year plan, which discussed these topics more fully, and suggested a separate process to convene the committed individuals willing to work out solutions.

In 2000, the Chicago Department of Housing launched the Chicago Forum on Housing Solutions to develop collaborative solutions to some of these challenges. (view the CFHS report) The Department invited individuals from the Advisory Group and housing professionals from across the City and region to participate in one of six working groups. The following committee topics were agreed upon by the Department and the Advisory Group:
- Information Infrastructure
- Support Services: Jobs and Housing
- Homebuyer Education
- Capacity Building: Rehabbers, Landlords and Non-profits
- Small Building Preservation
- Community Acceptance Campaign

Along with the rest of the committees, the Information Infrastructure Committee agreed to develop a position paper on the topic which would recommend workable solutions and suggest an action plan The committee�s recommendations included the creation of a regional housing information website, with the website host being a governmental entity with technical and legal capacity as well as regional reach. Based on these criteria, and on its strong governmental relationships throughout the region, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) formally The Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC) was chosen as the website host.

Information gap for housing professionals
While the scope and quality of data collected has greatly increased during this digital age, many important data are not readily available to housing professionals in a usable format. Demolitions, fair market rents, vacant lots, condo conversions, code violations, building permits, zoning changes, Section 8 expirations and many other data are available from various sources (hundreds of sources, since many are under municipal jurisdiction) but are not immediately available to social service providers, program administrators, researchers, planners or developers.
(view list of data fields available on the website)

Typical scenarios, taken from recent calls to the Metropolitan Planning Council:
- A staff person from the Chicago Department of Planning and Development asked for current rental market data to update her community guide.
- The person in charge of community development in the Village of Maywood asked where to get information about predatory lending and how to provide information to residents.
- A journalist writing about new industrial properties wanted to provide information about the home and rental prices in the surrounding areas.

Information gap for policy makers
Those who represent the community interest as legislators and public executives often must base their activities on incomplete information.

Typical scenarios, taken from recent information requests:
- A US Senator wants to assume more of a leadership role on housing issues by articulating housing problems and recommending solutions. He wanted to know where people from different income levels were living and how many people are living in overcrowded, substandard properties. He also requested examples of public/private partnerships already underway to address current needs.
- A Lake County board member requested zoning information so as to identify opportunities to develop multifamily housing.
- A south suburban mayor requested information on how affordable housing affects property values.

Solution: tap the potential of the internet
Perhaps the defining characteristic of the internet is that it allows information to be shared and exchanged across the entire world. This potential has been recognized--and exploited--by housing and community development professionals in many cities across the United States. For example, the Los Angeles and Cleveland neighborhood indicators sites (http://nkla.ucla.edu and www.cleveinfo.net) bring together a wide variety of data sets in a searchable user-friendly format. These sites serve both professional and general audiences. Building on the successes of Cleveland and Los Angeles, the Chicago region can realize even greater benefits by taking the best of the available models and improving on it. Accordingly, the proposed CFHS website will:
- Provide a user-friendly, web-browser based interface which will allow access to multiple housing-related data sets including (but not limited to) demographic, development, parcel, housing stock, rental market, crime statistics, building permits, subsidized and market rate housing.
- Deliver an interactive environment in which users can query and download data, enter feedback and engage in on-line discussions.
- Utilize internet mapping tools that allow users to query and map spatial data directly from the web, without the need for special software on the user�s desktop.
- Provide extensive hyperlinks to additional information, clearly organized so that users can easily navigate to the information they are seeking.

Specific goals: providing better information for better decisions
The specific goals of the website project are:
- Provide a sound informational basis for policy- and decision-makers in housing and community development
- Give prospective homebuyers the tools they need to make informed decisions about neighborhoods, municipalities and specific properties
- Provide information for low- and moderate-income homebuyers about incentive programs, special financing, subsidies and affordably priced properties
- Connect renters with information about tenants� rights, fair housing laws, local housing ordinances, state and federal programs and similar issues
- Deliver web-based housing/neighborhood data to Community Development Corporations (CDCs), developers and local departments of housing and planning
- Provide statistical data and analysis for housing advocates and community leaders

Project development (five-phase plan)
The information infrastructure project is envisioned as a three-year endeavor. Most database and web interface development will take place in the first year, while public outreach and website enhancement will occur in year two. GIS mapping will be offered as of year three.

*Goals*	*Criteria for Success*	*Target Date*
Phase One - basic design
Gather data	Have at least three-fourths of target data sets in hand, with regular update arrangements for each	August 2002
Establish a process for prioritizing data and research needs	Documented process (with support of all partners) for prioritizing data and research needs	September 2002
Establish regular communication links with municipalities, community groups and regional authorities	All relevant groups and municipalities should be aware of the project, understand their potential contributions and benefits to be gained from the project	October 2002
Design the website interface	Design a web interface that accommodates all target user groups--such that all users can get to their desired information within four mouse clicks	November 2002
Launch streamlined version of the website	Register URL and test the site with relevant focus groups, adjusting it as appropriate	December 2002
Phase Two - search engine
Launch database engine (for geography-based queries)	Full array of information will be available for any geographic area (parcel, census block/tract, ward, neighborhood, municipality, SPA)	February 2003
Phase Three - full query
Launch advanced full-query database engine.	Query capability will exceed geography-based queries to include sophisticated full-query support	August 2003
Phase Four - GIS mapping
Interactive web-based GIS mapping	Allow dynamic mapping (with interactive control over display layers) of all database-generated query data sets, as well as static data sets of general interest	April 2004
Phase Five - outreach
Public awareness and outreach	Schedule regular training sessions and advertise the website and training sessions (through community organizations)	August 2004