June 22, 2025

Two aldermen want their wards out of Northwest Side anti-gentrification zone

By Dennis Rodkin Crains Chicago Business

June 18, 2025 10:01 AM

Two members of the Chicago City Council want to remove their wards from being subject to an anti-gentrification ordinance that went into effect this spring.

Alds. Felix Cardona Jr., 31st, and Gil Villegas, 36th, plan to introduce an amendment to the Northwest Side Preservation Ordinance at today's council meeting to pull out the portions of their wards it covers. Villegas estimates around 20% of the 6 square miles covered by the ordinance is in the two wards.

The ordinance, passed by the council last summer as an effort to slow displacement of renters in fast-changing parts of Humboldt Park, West Town, Logan Square, Pilsen and Avondale, covers parts of five other wards. (Pilsen is not on the Northwest Side, but a portion of the neighborhood is covered by the ordinance.)

"It's not working," said Cardona, who, like Villegas, voted for the ordinance in 2024. "Sometimes what looked good on paper doesn't actually come to fruition."

Cardona, whose chunk of the ordinance zone is about four blocks by four blocks in Avondale, said he's had complaints from at least four owners of multi-unit properties that the measure adds time and red tape to the process of selling. A built-in schedule for providing existing tenants a pathway to buying the property ahead of other buyers — called the right of first refusal or tenant opportunity to purchase, or TOP — needlessly prolongs sale time, he said.

"You're messing with their retirement," Cardona said. Longtime owners who have ridden the value of the property upward as the neighborhood improved "want to take advantage of that, but you're putting red tape on it."

Villegas said he wants to "make sure that we're not making it harder for that person who wants to capitalize on the largest asset they own, that we're not putting them in a situation that impacts the price they can get."

Both men said they are also concerned about the snags in getting mortgages and title insurance, which Crain's reported in May. While those problems appear to be isolated, Villegas said they suggest to him the city's Law Department didn't thoroughly examine the text and implications of the ordinance when it was introduced last year.

"It did not get enough attention," Villegas said, "not enough I's dotted and T's crossed."

The council passed the ordinance Sept. 17 with a 44-3 vote. It was supposed to take effect Oct. 9, an unusually short interval. The shortness reflected the urgency of the need to preserve affordable rental housing, said its sponsors, including Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, then 35th Ward alderman and now superintendent of the Chicago Park District. He told Crain's at the time that the idea was to keep investors from making a quick round of purchases in the time before the ordinance took effect.

Several of the ordinance's provisions, including increased demolition fees when older housing is being replaced with new, higher-priced homes, went into effect as planned. But the tenant right-to-purchase portion was delayed, first until November and then until March.

In December, Ramirez-Rosa and other sponsors introduced changes to that portion of the ordinance designed to give more weight to property owners. Tenants who wanted to exercise their right to buy the property would have to show proof they could get financing — either a mortgage preapproval letter in the case of a one- to four-unit building, or a lender's letter of intent for a larger building.

This was “to show that the tenants are operating in good faith,” Ramirez-Rosa said at the time. “There was some fear from the (real estate industry) that you might get tenants who say they want to buy but are really just trying to distract the process.”

Another change was to make the TOP program a pilot running through Dec. 31, 2029, with the city studying its impact during that time before moving forward.

Now, less than four months into the pilot, Villegas and Cardona want out.

When he voted for the ordinance last year, "I didn't expect to see these legal issues," Villegas said. "But we've been monitoring it, and we see there are issues impacting the people who own property and (want) to sell. We need to correct the ordinance."

By Dennis Rodkin

Dennis Rodkin is a senior reporter covering residential real estate for Crain’s Chicago Business. He joined Crain’s in 2014 and has been covering real estate in Chicago since 1991.