Consider the intersection between housing market forces and finding a place to live: decades-long cycles play out alongside human-scale stories, each with their own role to play in shaping a city.

That intersection is where the Institute for Housing Studies (IHS) does its work.

Housed in DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business, IHS digs into the data to unearth the hidden trends shaping Chicago’s housing market. The institute partners with community groups and policymakers, providing data-driven tools that help make affordable housing accessible to the populations that need it most.

All of this gives IHS a unique vantage point into the stories hidden within Chicago’s housing landscape. Read on for some takeaways about the past, present, and future of affordable housing in Chicago from IHS Executive Director Geoff Smith.

The mystery of the disappearing two– and four-flats

When many people hear affordable housing, said Smith, they picture federally and locally subsidized programs.

For most low-income renters and homeowners, that’s not the case.

Instead, most affordable housing is so-called “naturally occurring.” That is, it’s affordable because it’s older, or located in a neighborhood with fewer resources and amenities.

Naturally occurring affordable housing is a broad category, defined as much by what it’s not (subsidized or regulated) as what it is.

Within that category, it turns out, the specifics matter.

A community group in Albany Park reached out to IHS with a phenomenon they’d noticed: two– and four-flat buildings in the neighborhood were disappearing.

Subsequent work revealed that such buildings were disappearing citywide — and that their decline correlated directly with the loss of affordable housing writ large.

The loss of two– and four-flats looked different in different parts of the city. In neighborhoods where land values were going up, new buyers were opting to tear them down in favor of single-family housing.

In neighborhoods with a history of systemic disinvestment, meanwhile, population loss meant that many two– and four-flats were falling into disrepair. And, when these buildings were demolished, they weren’t being rebuilt.

Particularly in these parts of the city, the loss of two– and four-flats didn’t just signify a reduction in the amount of affordable housing on offer. It signified the loss of a specific type of affordable housing, one with specific advantages.

“[These buildings offer] an opportunity to defray the costs by renting out the other units,” Smith said. “They offer the opportunity for multigenerational housing.”

“As you lose that kind of housing, you erode the housing options,” Smith continued. “You lose the opportunity to create new homeowners.”

Reimagining housing ownership, one data point at a time

If the landscape of affordable housing is varied and particular, then affordable housing interventions are too.

“There’s not one silver bullet strategy,” explained Smith. Scaling back restrictions on new development can help, he said, but that’s only true in neighborhoods where land and property values have been high enough, and for long enough, to justify the risk of investing in new construction.

One approach could involve working with landlords who want to sell their properties – particularly long-time landlords who own aging housing stock, which makes up a significant proportion of housing in Chicago.

“What kind of programs or incentives might you need to convince owners to keep the property without selling?” said Smith. “Are there ownership models that might exist where the owner could sell their property to a mission-oriented entity that would keep it relatively affordable?”

One such option, Smith said, is a community land trust. Such trusts hold the land that housing is located on, bringing ownership of housing itself within closer reach. Across the city, the IHS partners with groups that are experimenting with this model. Just last year, Smith served on a statewide task force that studied community land trusts, laying the foundation for implementation on a wider scale.

In an uncertain future, a vital role for applied research

On a local level, community land trusts are one example of a promising tool to preserve and expand access to affordable housing.

Implementing such programs, however, is slow going. And, on a national level, the future of affordable housing writ large is profoundly uncertain.

Federal programs have historically played a major role in expanding access to housing. What might happen if they’re scaled back?

“The one thing I can say is that, in times of volatility and uncertainty, having in-depth information on the market is more important than ever,” said Smith. “It increases the need to be targeted and strategic in how you deploy limited resources.”

“That’s a big role we play with our data,” he added. “So I’m hopeful that our work will continue to be relevant and useful, whichever direction the next few years take us.”