The Housing Initiative Transactional Clinic provides legal representation on complex real estate development projects to build affordable housing in the Chicago metropolitan area. Clients include nonprofit, community-based affordable housing developers and housing cooperatives. Clinic students engage in sophisticated transactional work, including negotiating and drafting hundreds to thousands of pages of legal documents, navigating multi-layered public financing structures, and representing clients at the closing table on real property acquisitions and developments. In addition to its transactional client work, the Clinic engages in policy research and community education aimed at systemic improvements to affordable housing development in Illinois and Chicago. The Clinic is directed by Professor Jeff Leslie.

Pilsen Housing Cooperative (PIHCO)

PIHCO is a long-time client of the Clinic, which helped establish the cooperative as a legal entity in 2017. This academic year, the Clinic represented PIHCO in a significant affordable housing transaction: the acquisition of three multifamily buildings across Pilsen in a single academic year, using a financing structure not previously used in Illinois.

The Clinic's work encompassed the full range of transactional representation: negotiating purchase agreements and modifications, reviewing and commenting on financing and land use restriction agreements, and, significantly, reviewing and negotiating donation tax credit regulatory agreements with both the City of Chicago and the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA). The use of donation tax credits to support the acquisition of cooperative housing was a first for both the City and IHDA. The regulatory agreements the Clinic helped negotiate are likely to serve as important precedents for future transactions using this affordable housing resource.

La Villita Housing Cooperative (LVHC)

LVHC is a housing cooperative focused on affordable housing opportunities in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. With the Clinic’s assistance, LVHC successfully secured 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, which is a designation that housing cooperatives are not normally granted. The Clinic drafted a comprehensive narrative and legal justification for the exemption, using novel arguments to navigate an area of tax law with unfavorable precedents for cooperative housing organizations. LVHC received approval for 501(c)(3) status in April 2026, a milestone that will meaningfully expand the organization's ability to access funding and make affordable housing accessible to low-income residents in Little Village.

Beyond the 501(c)(3) work, the Clinic drafted and revised a full suite of organizational and transactional documents — occupancy agreement, purchase agreement, and bylaws — making extensive revisions in response to rapidly changing circumstances, including new municipal grant funding regulations and shifting membership subsidy opportunities. In the winter and spring quarters, the Clinic represented LVHC at the closing on its first multifamily building acquisition, followed shortly thereafter by the closing on four new membership sales to incoming cooperative residents.

Cabrini Green LAC Community Development Corporation (Cabrini CDC)

The Clinic's work for Cabrini CDC this year included two development projects on Chicago's Near North Side. One involved substantial financing complexity, and the other required legal analysis following an unexpected development setback.

Oak and Larrabee. The Clinic assisted Cabrini CDC in its joint venture with Brinshore Michaels on the Oak and Larrabee site. The project is a seven-story, 78-unit mixed-income rental development with a $58 million capital budget structured across ten distinct layers of financing, including a construction loan, mortgage loans from the Chicago Housing Authority, the City of Chicago and IHDA, grant funds, tax increment financing dollars, and federal low income housing tax credit equity. Clinic students reviewed and negotiated financing documentation across all ten layers, as well as property management documents, land use restriction agreements implementing the project's affordable housing and mixed-income unit mix, and architect and construction contract documentation. The land and financing closing is anticipated to occur later in 2026.

Clybourn and Larrabee. When the original co-developer for a second Cabrini CDC development site at Clybourn and Larrabee unexpectedly withdrew, the Clinic researched and counseled Cabrini CDC on arguments under federal procurement law for substituting a replacement developer rather than restarting the procurement process from scratch. The Chicago Housing Authority ultimately decided on a new procurement process, and the Clinic assisted Cabrini CDC's parent organization, the Cabrini Green Local Advisory Council, in vetting the competing proposals. The Clinic then counseled Cabrini CDC through the negotiation of a new tri-party development contract among the CHA, the replacement developer, and Cabrini CDC. This work continues.

Chicago Torture Justice Memorial

The Clinic represents the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Foundation in the development of a permanent memorial to the survivors of police torture carried out by Jon Burge and officers under his command. Funding for the project comes from a reparations ordinance approved by the City of Chicago City Council as a remedy for one of the most significant police accountability cases in Chicago's history. The Foundation has been working to secure land and fund the construction of the memorial, and the Clinic's transactional work has been in service of that goal.

This year, Clinic students negotiated the construction contract with the general contractor and negotiated grant agreements with the City of Chicago to fund the memorial's construction. The Clinic represented the Foundation at the successful closing on the land acquisition at the end of the 2025–26 academic year. Closing on the construction bridge financing is anticipated to occur later in 2026.

Housing Initiative Policy Team

The Policy Team focuses on promoting affordable housing through systemic changes. This year's projects included:

• Builder's remedy. The Policy Team authored a white paper proposing statutory changes to Illinois's builder's remedy, which is a tool for compelling localities to permit affordable housing development.
• State competitive grants. A separate white paper proposed a state-run program promoting housing development through competitive grants, modeled on aspects of the federal Road to Housing legislation.
• Architectural and design requirements study. In conjunction with the Illinois Housing Council, the Policy Team produced a research report comparing Chicago's architectural and design requirements for affordable housing to those of ten other major metropolitan cities.
• Debt check navigation guide. Recognizing the challenges clients face navigating Chicago's debt check process, a condition of receiving City funding, zoning, or building entitlements, the Policy Team developed a practical guide to assist clients in moving through the process efficiently. The Policy Team also provided recommendations for reforming the process to facilitate housing development more broadly.
• Homestead tax exemptions. The Policy Team drafted a memorandum explaining how different homestead tax exemptions apply and stack for different housing cooperative structures.

Claretian Associates Inc. / Villa Guadalupe Senior Services Corporation

Claretian Associates provides housing and vital services in South Chicago and its surrounding communities. The principal outcome of the Clinic's work for the Claretian family of organizations this year was the closing of a new rental subsidy from the Illinois Housing Development Authority for 58 units of senior housing in South Chicago, on behalf of Villa Guadalupe Senior Services Corporation, Claretian's sister agency.

More broadly, the Clinic assisted Claretian Associates with memorandums of agreement, letters of interest for resident services arrangements, a purchase option agreement, vendor contract management, and due diligence review of materials and operating budgets for potential new property acquisitions.

Shared Ownership Affordable Housing

In this category of work, the Housing Initiative represents clients working to expand homeownership, create wealth-building opportunities, and support shared equity models of homeownership. Clients in this sector include housing cooperatives, community land trusts, and organizations developing new shared ownership structures. The Clinic's work ranges from organizational formation and governance to property acquisition and complex financing.

• The Clinic represented Jumpstart Housing Cooperative in the purchase of its third multifamily building. Clinic students negotiated the purchase agreement, reviewed loan and financing agreements, and assisted in navigating the City of Chicago's Shared Equity Investment Program (SEIP). The closing is expected to take place in the late summer of 2026.
• The Clinic assisted First Community Land Trust of Chicago (FCLTC) in amending its bylaws and ground lease to better align with the organization's long-term affordability goals, including a transition to a self-perpetuating board model. The Clinic conducted a comparative analysis of ground leases used by peer community land trusts across the country, producing a memo identifying significant differences and recommending revisions to FCLTC's templates. The Clinic focused on transfer provisions and occupancy requirements, both of which are central to preserving long-term affordability. The Clinic also researched recent Illinois legislation to better position FCLTC to meet funding eligibility requirements.
• The Clinic assisted several additional cooperative and shared ownership clients with governance and organizational matters during the 2025–26 academic year:
  • HUB Housing Cooperative — Interpreted and amended bylaws to clarify member and non-member roles, update officer and director responsibilities, and finalize the board and membership voting structure.
  • Genesis Cooperative Corporation — Assisted in terminating a prior property management agreement and drafting, negotiating, and executing a new property management agreement.
  • Albion Housing Cooperative — A new client promoting affordable homeownership in northern Chicago. The Clinic assisted with creating its affordability structure, filing its not-for-profit incorporation, and drafting bylaws and an occupancy agreement.
  • Sol House — A Logan Square-area housing cooperative. The Clinic researched the regulatory and compliance implications of a potential transition from cooperative to condominium structure, and provided counsel on a refinancing plan.
  • Neighbors in the Hood (NITH) — Early-stage work to establish a community land trust to provide housing stabilization for residents facing gentrification. The Clinic worked with NITH leadership to establish organizational goals and draft bylaws to initiate formal CLT formation.
  • Center for Shared Ownership (CSO) -- Clinic students researched shared ownership governance structures and identified best practices across a range of cooperative and community ownership models. Students then presented their research at a CSO-sponsored community meeting attended by over a hundred members from local cooperatives and the wider Chicago community — contributing directly to increased awareness of effective shared ownership governance strategies among practitioners and residents.