Image Caption: Eric Butler, Voice President, dons T-Shirt of advocacy partner, ONE Northside, to protest in support of preserving the Leland Hotel and San Miguel Apartments.

2025 will be the year for Voice of the People Chicago’s “Preservation Celebration”, the theme of Sweet Home Uptown 2025 and the direction for programming going forward, including owner networking, services and technical assistance. The priority is to “hold on to what we got” including the many properties developed in the past decades in Uptown and up and down the lakefront.

Read Voice’s Keys to Affordable Housing which are consistent with our mission. They provide essential context for our organizing and engagement activities with community and affordable housing residents, and marketing citywide for new initiatives, like the Dovie Thurman Affordable Housing Trust.

With a new federal administration soon to take control, housing organizations of all stripes will be challenged to demonstrate that planned developments are sensible, cost efficient and market effective (addressing needs where market demand is highest). Owners, managers and their key staff will need to creatively find savings for operations and opportunities for collaborations benefitting affordable housing residents.

Watch this space for more.