In the beloved 1986 movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” the “Sausage King of Chicago” is a mythical man named Abe Froman. Bueller, a mischievous high school senior skipping school, says he’s Froman to get seated at a ritzy restaurant with his girlfriend and a buddy.
In real life, the Sausage King of Chicago is the name of a company that owns Indian Trails Apartments, a 180-unit subsidized housing development in West Pullman on the Far South Side. The development, once considered a good place to live by longtime residents, is now in flux as it is poised to change hands after years of neglect.
The story of Indian Trails and the real Sausage King of Chicago is about what happened when a corporation led by a pair of out-of-town real estate investors with a penchant for 1980s pop culture bought a property in Chicago. It’s about how wealthy real estate investors buy buildings where rent is subsidized by the federal government and get tens of millions of dollars in rental income without providing low-income residents a safe and clean place to live.
‘Everything’s cold’
Jasmine Duckett was born and raised at Indian Trails. After a few years away, she moved back in 2021…