The Housing Initiative Transactional Clinic provides legal representation on complex real estate development projects to build affordable housing. Clients include nonprofit, community-based affordable housing developers and housing cooperatives. The Clinic is directed by Clinical Professor Jeff Leslie. Below are the Clinic's significant accomplishments for 2024-25.

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.

Autonomous Housing Cooperative. This start-up cooperative has a mission to expand opportunities for home ownership in the city of Chicago, especially for individuals that are low- and moderate-income, people of color, undocumented, and elderly, in order to prevent displacement due to gentrification. This academic year, Housing Initiative students assisted in drafting bylaws for the co-op, drafting a fiscal sponsorship arrangement, and advising on Secretary of State filings for the new organization. The co-op has now begun its search for its first building.

Pilsen Housing Cooperative. The Pilsen Housing Cooperative (“PIHCO”) is a long-time client of the clinic, which helped establish the co-op as a legal entity back in 2017. This academic year, the clinic represented PIHCO in applying for 501(c)(3) status, and in the refinancing of PIHCO’s first multifamily building. In addition, the clinic represented PIHCO in negotiating purchase contracts for three new multifamily buildings, with intended financing through State of Illinois Affordable Housing Tax Credits. The closings on the three new buildings are scheduled to take place later in 2025.

HUB Housing Cooperative. HUB Housing Cooperative turned to the Housing Initiative Clinic for help in interpreting and amending its bylaws, in the context of calculating the affordable resale price generated by the sale of a longtime member’s apartment. 

La Villita Housing Cooperative. This housing cooperative is focused on affordable housing opportunities in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. The Housing Initiative drafted revisions to the bylaws, counseled the group on opportunities to become a 501(c)(3), and negotiated the purchase contract for the co-op’s acquisition of its first multifamily building. The closing on the acquisition is scheduled for summer of 2025, utilizing a grant from the City of Chicago Shared Equity Investment Program.

Jumpstart Housing Cooperative. The clinic represented Jumpstart Housing Cooperative in the purchase of its second multifamily building. Clinic students negotiated the purchase agreement and modifications, reviewed and commented on the financing documents, prepared closing deliverables, and attended the closing. The successful acquisition marked the second Jumpstart building that has been acquired with Housing Initiative Clinic assistance. 

Englewood Community Land Trust. The Englewood Community Land Trust has as its mission to stimulate and support the reuse of vacant land in Englewood for urban farming, affordable housing, open spaces, and other community needs. ECLT is affiliated with Grow Greater Englewood and serves as a vehicle for collective opportunity and community control over the land and resources in Greater Englewood.  The Housing Initiative Transactional Clinic was engaged this academic year to draft and negotiate a memorandum of understanding governing future transfers of land into ECLT, primarily from the well-established land banking organization, Neighborspace.  Clinic students met with ECLT leadership and collaborated with them on successive drafts of a MOU that in the future will allow ECLT to take ownership of land and devote it to their urban agriculture and affordable housing goals.

Dovie Thurman Affordable Housing Trust/Voice of the People in Uptown. The clinic was engaged in previous years to assist Voice of the People in Uptown in launching the Dovie Thurman Affordable Housing Trust. The Trust exists to serve as a steward of land to guarantee permanent affordable, rental uses of multifamily properties, for the benefit of the lowest income families in Chicago. This academic year, the clinic was engaged in revising the Trust’s bylaws to facilitate its upcoming transition from a steering committee governance structure to a membership structure with a board comprised of tenant representatives, affordable housing owner representatives, and housing advocate representatives. Meanwhile, with the Housing Initiative’s input and guidance, the Trust is soliciting partnerships with community development financial institutions nationwide to provide capital to acquire properties to place into the Trust’s protective affordable housing covenants structure.

Share Loan Advocacy.  In partnership with Pilsen Housing Cooperative and other advocates, the Housing Initiative achieved major progress in the group’s multi-year effort to make more financial resources available to purchasers buying into limited equity, affordable housing cooperatives.  The Clinic has consulted with and shared documentation resources with a local community development financial institution that has received federal funding to make share loans to co-op purchasers in Chicago for the first time in decades.  In addition, the Clinic has collaborated with staff at the State of Illinois housing finance agency to include co-op purchase loans in the agency’s portfolio of loan products available for Illinois consumers state-wide.  These new financing sources will prove to be a lasting source of support for affordable housing cooperatives in our City and in our State.

Multifamily Rental Developments

In this category of work, the Clinic represents clients engaged in sophisticated, complex development projects to build multifamily rental buildings. These projects usually involve a joint venture between a community partner, represented by the Clinic, and a more experienced for-profit or not-for-profit developer represented by private counsel. The joint venture partners collaborate on the development planning, on the arrangement of financing, and on the closing and construction of the development itself. In these projects, Clinic students review and negotiate thousands of pages of transactional documents, including property acquisition documents, construction and permanent lending documents, partnership and limited liability company operating agreements, design and construction documents, and property management agreements, among many others.

Austin United Alliance. The Housing Initiative Transactional Clinic represented Oak Park Regional Housing Center (“OPRHC”) in its joint venture with Pivotal, a leading for-profit affordable housing developer based in Ohio.  Last academic year, the joint venture, known as Austin United Alliance, successfully closed on a major redevelopment effort and started construction on its 78-unit affordable housing building in west Chicago. This academic year, the Clinic counseled OPRHC in dealing with construction delays and difficulties that ultimately led to the replacement of the general contractor responsible for construction.  With the new general contractor now in place, construction is ongoing.  Meanwhile, the Clinic is representing OPRHC in its efforts to rehabilitate the neighboring property, on which the historic Laramie Bank Building is situated. The Clinic has been negotiating the set of agreements with the City of Chicago, which owns the site, to permit OPRHC to enter into the Bank building, secure it, and make necessary stabilization repairs in preparation for a full rehab. This work is ongoing, and the next phase will consist of representing OPRHC as it negotiates with design professionals, contractors, and financing providers in assembling the development team for the full renovation of the Bank building.

Parkside 5. In December 2024, the Clinic’s client, the Cabrini Green LAC Community Development Corporation, closed with its development partner, Holsten Real Estate Development Corporation, on Parkside Phase 5, a 99-unit mixed-income project in the Near North area.  The project represents the final phase of the Parkside of Old Town development which started (with the Clinic’s assistance) in 2006. Parkside 5 includes an 8-story elevator building with 69 units and three, 3-story walk-up buildings with 30 units. The project will add 37 public housing replacement units, 28 affordable housing units, and 34 market-rate units, with a mix of studios and one- to four-bedroom units.  The financing structure for Parkside 5 included an approximately $27 million construction loan, a permanent loan of approximately $10 million, a second position construction/permanent loan in the amount of $1 million, Chicago Housing Authority funding in the amount of $11.5 million, two tranches of City of Chicago funding in the amount of $4.24 million and $16.4 million, along with Illinois Affordable Housing Tax Credits and federal low income housing tax credits. The size and complexity of this last phase of Parkside continues the Clinic’s streak of working on some of the most challenging and complicated affordable housing transactions in the US. 

SACRED Apartments. In April 2025, the Clinic’s client, Claretian Associates Inc., and its co-developer partner closed on the land and financing for the SACRED Apartments, located in the South Chicago neighborhood. The SACRED Apartments will feature 81 apartment units with community space and common area improvements including an office, a lounge with coffee bar for tenant use and meeting rooms.  The project includes 15 studio apartments, 11 one-bedroom units, 21 two-bedroom units, 25 three-bedroom units, and 9 four-bedroom units. The development budget for the project totaled approximately $67 million and included tax exempt bond financing in the approximate amount of $22 million issued by the City of Chicago; federal low income housing tax credit equity in the approximate amount of $22 million; a permanent loan from a private lender insured by Fannie Mae; and a series of subordinate construction and permanent loans from the City of Chicago and the Illinois Housing Development Authority.

Other Community Development Work

Chicago Torture Justice Memorial. The Clinic represents the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Foundation in negotiating and drafting the architect agreement for the design of a memorial to the survivors of Jon Burge-era police torture by the Chicago Police Department. In 2015, the City Council enacted a reparations ordinance, in response to many years of organizing and media scrutiny of credible allegations of torture by disgraced Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his “midnight crew” of officers who violently coerced false confessions from more than 100 people over multiple decades. The reparations included land and funding for a memorial, and the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Foundation has been actively working on securing the land and assembling the development team for its construction. As the architectural team changed composition, clinic students re-negotiated an architect agreement with the new design team, and drafted documentation for the transfer of the early concept designs to the new team. 

Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO). The Clinic represented this longstanding community organization in closing on the financing for the redevelopment of KOCO’s headquarters building.  Clinic students reviewed documentation for multiple layers of financing for the $6.2 million project, including a construction and bridge loan from the IFF (formerly the Illinois Facilities Fund) and funding from the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development, among others. The resulting project will transform KOCO’s headquarters into a multi-use building with community amenities, office space, and a new café.