Peppi Wilson, 60, remembers the “glory years” of the Chatham Park Village Cooperative.
He grew up at the property playing hide-and-seek on the verdant grounds, sledding down small hills that once seemed big. Residents across the 23-acre property knew him, and Wilson recalls some yelling at him to “get off our grass!” There was “a sense of community,” Wilson said. “People cared.”
After a handful of years away, Wilson moved back to the co-op around 2005 when his mother got sick. But the co-op wasn’t the same. Wilson said he no longer felt the sense of community that he remembered fondly from his childhood.
Wilson moved out of the co-op in April, exchanging a two-bedroom duplex that cost him around $877 a month for a pricier rental downtown. His unit at the co-op is still vacant.
“Ten years from now, you’ll come by this place and there’ll be a gate surrounding it, and everything’s going to be empty,” Wilson said. “That’s where we’re headed if something isn’t done soon.”
Once noted for its beautiful and carefully tended facilities, the Chatham Park Village Cooperative has offered affordable homeownership on Chicago’s South Side for more than 60 years. Today more than 20% of the over 500 units at Chatham Park Village are vacant, said co-op board member Eneal Lee, and the property is at risk of foreclosure as the co-op has defaulted on its mortgage, according to documents reviewed by the Tribune.