The Northwest Side Preservation Ordinance, affecting certain Chicago neighborhoods, punishes owners of affordable housing, devalues their property, and makes it harder to invest in neighborhood housing. This is a problem for all of us and we need your help right now.

The Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance has put together a page with more detailed info and the ability to send an opposition email to all city council members ( nboachicago.com/nspo ) Please take a minute to share your disapproval even if you are not directly impacted by this ordinance. The NBOA will be aligning all the property owners to communicate updates to advocacy efforts with additional calls to action so please join their email list

• Applies to SFH, condos, 2-4 units, mixed use and large apartment buildings.

• Allows tenants up to 9 months to purchase the building including 60 days’ notice before listing and up to 90 days after receiving an offer to decide to exercise their right of first refusal.

• Building owners have to turn over detailed information about their operations and finances, and even share their rent rolls, leases, and P&L statements with tenants and the DOH.

• Demolition fees of $60k and more wipes out decades of equity for distressed sellers.

• You can’t vacate units without just cause and you are required to keep tenants for 6 months after closing even if they are MTM or their lease expires, eliminating owner occupied buyers.

• Because of the long timeline, we can no longer execute 1031 exchanges.

• The tenants have the right to sell the contract to a third party for a profit.

This ordinance will drive out small, local owners, replacing them with cash-rich, out-of-town corporate owners. If this pilot program is deemed successful it can spread to the rest of Chicago or even Cook County and beyond. It will depress sales prices, even if there is a buyer willing to go through the hassle of dealing with this ordinance.

Get informed! Brie Schmidt Zdravkovic and Bob Floss have a video discussing the challenges and effects of this ordinance including how it has impacted the DC market since the 1980’s. Check out the video on YouTube @ChicagoBrie

Spread the word by sharing this on social media, with your friends and colleagues, and anyone you know who could be potentially impacted by this. We need to stop this now before it hurts us all.