According to data obtained from the sheriff’s office, no Cook County zip code has seen more evictions than South Shore, 60649, since the office began tracking these numbers in 2011. Last year the sheriff’s office conducted 382 evictions in the area bounded by Stony Island Avenue, the lakefront, Jackson Park, and 79th Street—eight times more than the average. Between 2014 and 2016 the neighborhood saw about 20 percent more evictions than the second-busiest zip code, 60619, which includes parts of Chatham, Avalon Park, and Greater Grand Crossing.
Until the 1960s, South Shore was a middle-class neighborhood and more than 90 percent white, but by the 1980s the racial balance had completely reversed: South Shore became 96 percent black, though it remained middle-class. In recent years, however, the median family income in the neighborhood has steadily declined.
South Shore’s sometimes half-block long multistory courtyard apartment buildings are typically owned by large companies—for-profit entities pulling in as much as tens of millions of dollars in annual revenues—who deal with thousands of tenants across the city. These companies have dedicated crews to handle property maintenance, online rent payment systems, and attorneys on retainer or on staff to efficiently navigate eviction court. And if South Shore is Chicago’s eviction capital, Pangea Properties is its undisputed mayor.
But some sources believe that the company’s high eviction rate stems from its overall growth and acquisition habits—buying up distressed and foreclosed buildings, clearing them of existing tenants, then renovating them and re-leasing to low-income households who fit their screening criteria.
Willie “J.R.” Fleming, director of the South Shore-based Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, has noticed a similar trend. He thinks Pangea, whose investors, according to the Sun-Times investigation, include Illinois governor Bruce Rauner, is buying buildings in South Shore in anticipation of property values getting a boost from glitzy new projects like the Tiger Woods golf course planned for Jackson Park.
