The four-story brick building tucked under the Stevenson Expressway at 3022 S. Archer is far from an ideal place to live. The hallways are narrow and dank, the rooms are small, stuffy, and mostly windowless. Each floor has two bathrooms, but some don’t work.
Now residents are afraid their days here are numbered. The building is in foreclosure, and the management company running it has ordered them out by the end of the day Monday.
Last year a foreclosure court appointed John J. Fitzmaurice as the receiver responsible for managing the building, which he does through his company, JCF Real Estate. On March 29, Adkins and his company, JHA Associates, notified the city that the building is up for sale, as required under the city’s SRO ordinance. The 12,500-square-foot building had previously been listed for $1.9 million. Today commercial real estate brokerage firm SVN’s website lists it for $850,000, touting a “price reduction!”
Mimi Simon, spokesperson for the Buildings Department, says that Fitzmaurice is on shaky legal ground in trying to evict the tenants. According to Simon, the city is moving the building into a housing court that deals with building code violations and “troubled buildings.”
A few weeks ago, a tenant called the Metropolitan Tenants Organization hotline and asked for help avoiding eviction. Since then, the tenants’ group, the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, and the nearby community group Pilsen Alliance have been in contact with city officials and have tried to organize tenants.
A number of residents here have criminal backgrounds that make it extremely difficult to find jobs or housing.
