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WEST HUMBOLDT PARK — Neighbors kept calling 911 about the vacant bungalow at 849 N. St. Louis. 

Still, the drug business there went on as usual.

Even a stretch of bitter cold in mid-January didn’t slow traffic: People gathered in front of the boarded-up house and on the sidewalk and street. When customers approached on foot or pulled over in their cars, the sellers — mostly young men and women — exchanged baggies for cash. 

On Jan. 17, neighbors once again alerted police, including an officer who had given out his cellphone number so they could contact him directly. In a text, he noted the buyers and sellers were out early that morning.

Yes, one of the neighbors responded, they’re out there every morning. 

Within a couple hours, police were conducting a “surveillance operation” on the vacant house, according to a report filed later that day. One officer saw a man walk up to the empty house and shove several items inside a hole in the crumbling masonry. 

The officer relayed what he’d seen to another cop, who went to the vacant home, reached into the opening in the brick and pulled out 24 baggies — 21 filled with apparent heroin and three with crack cocaine. In total, police estimated the drugs had a street value of $450.

But the officers said they lost track of the man who stashed the baggies. After the police left, the heroin and crack business soon resumed. 

And, once again, the neighbors wondered why no one seemed willing to do anything about the abandoned home, especially since it’s owned by a city agency: the Chicago Housing Authority.

“It’s amazing to me that the city has known about this for years and they’ve done nothing,” said one frustrated neighbor. “Why?”

Last fall, Block Club and the Illinois Answers Project reported that the CHA is sitting on hundreds of empty homes. While the city is struggling with an acute shortage of affordable homes, many of the vacant properties have gone unused for years — some even for decades — and often become magnets for crime, leading to scenes like the one unfolding on North St. Louis Avenue.

Just before that story was published, the CHA promised it would spend as much as $50 million in 2024 to rehab dozens of homes and sell some to CHA residents. The two-story, red-brick home at 849 N. St. Louis was picked to be one of them.

Nearly six months later, only a handful of units have been finished citywide, and no work has been done at 849 N. St. Louis. Neighbors say it’s in worse shape than ever.

A CHA spokesman told Block Club the agency still plans to “address” the property through its Restore Home rehab initiative. 

“CHA shares the community’s concerns,” spokesman Matt Aguilar wrote in an email. “CHA monitors our site, reports suspicious activity to law enforcement, and will continue coordinating with City partners in efforts to keep the neighborhood safe.”

Aguilar’s statement urged members of the community to call 911 if they see “illegal activity.”

But neighbors have already called 911 dozens of times about the home and the drug trade that has flourished around it. Since the beginning of 2023, police have made more narcotics arrests on the 800 block of North St. Louis than on any other block in the city, according to a Block Club analysis of police crime data. Police have also reported burglaries, caught people with guns and investigated shootings near the empty home. 

Yet neighbors say little has changed there, and despite the CHA’s statements, no one has taken responsibility for the abandoned bungalow. When neighbors have asked for help, they’ve been ping-ponged from one department to another as officials at the city and CHA failed to communicate with each other, or with the residents they’re responsible for serving.

As the frustrated neighbor put it, “What would it take for these people to do something?”

‘It’s Usually In Broad Daylight’

The 800 block of North St. Louis is in a working-class part of West Humboldt Park lined with bungalows, workers cottages and small frame homes. Some of the quiet blocks have been nicknamed “the suburbs.”

But as nearby factories and businesses closed over the past several decades, the illegal drug trade became one of the area’s largest employers. Thousands of arrests by police and federal agents have disrupted and even dismantled some of the operations. Yet the demand for drugs and the need for work are too strong to be eliminated by law enforcement alone. 

West Humboldt Park also has a long history of neighbors and community leaders fighting back, including initiatives to counter the drug business by creating legal jobs. At the same time, neither the government nor the private sector have consistently invested in the West Side, including West Humboldt Park.

So the drug trade continues to thrive, especially in locations where sellers see little competition or resistance — like abandoned homes.

The CHA has owned the 682-square-foot house at 849 N. St. Louis since the early ’80s, records show. But even though more than 200,000 people are on the CHA’s waiting lists for housing assistance, the bungalow has sat vacant for more than seven years.

849 N. St. Louis Ave. in Humboldt Park on Nov. 14, 2023. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

During that time, neighbors repeatedly called 911 and 311 to complain about the property, and the city cited it for code violations. The CHA has boarded up the property but done little to maintain it or work with neighbors.

In February 2021, an administrative law judge fined the CHA $640 for dumping and garbage accumulation in the backyard, which is not fully fenced off. But after the CHA contested the violations, the judge signed off on a plea deal that reduced the total fine to $360. The same thing happened in 2022.

By last year, the backyard was being used for more than garbage: Drug sellers and their customers were congregating at all times of the day and night, neighbors complained in calls to 911. Sometimes dozens of customers showed up when the dealers were passing out free heroin samples.

“Usually they’ll go to the back of the house, but sometimes [the line is] so long they go all the way around the house,” said a second neighbor. “It’s usually in broad daylight.”

Unintended Consequences

In November, the CHA conducted a “physical needs assessment” that determined the home at 849 N. St. Louis needed $208,476 in repairs. That’s probably a low estimate, housing experts say. The external walls, doors and windows were in poor condition, with holes and cracks in the bricks, loose window frames and missing panes. The home had also been stripped of rainwater drainage pipes, electrical wiring, plumbing fixtures and its HVAC system, according to the assessment.

Later that month, Block Club and Illinois Answers featured the house as an example of vacant CHA scattered-site homes that have become neighborhood blights. Neighbors hoped the media spotlight would move the CHA to action. 

Weeks passed. The house continued to sit vacant and deteriorate. 

In the meantime, the outraged neighbor called Hispanic Housing Development Corporation, the private company hired by the CHA to manage the St. Louis property. She never heard back.

Her partner then talked to their alderman, Walter Burnett Jr. (27th), at one of his weekly ward nights. Burnett said he would call the CHA and notify the police, the neighbor said. Afterward, though, she and her partner didn’t hear anything from the alderman or his office.

Burnett told Block Club he asked one of his aides to contact the CHA as well as the Police Department. 

That aide, Jesse Smart Jr., said he asked the CHA to board up and secure the 849 property on multiple occasions. Burnett’s office also made sure city crews trimmed trees on the block to improve visibility and lighting, Smart said. 

Perhaps most significantly, at Burnett’s request, police last year installed a security camera at Chicago and St. Louis avenues, at the south end of the block, Smart said. But that had the unintended consequence of pushing drug sales elsewhere.

“In the 700 block of St. Louis, they moved down to Huron [Street], and on the 800 block, they moved up to Iowa [Street]” — at the north end of the block, near the empty house — “so they can get out of the camera,” Smart said. “That’s what we’re dealing with now.”

Neighbors also noticed the shifts after the camera was installed. Around the same time, drug sellers and their customers moved from the backyard to the front of the 849 house while extending their business hours from the early morning until midnight or later every day.

The police were aware. On Dec. 22, officers went to the block after having “prior knowledge that unknown offenders routinely utilize the front porch area … to store contraband” on a vacant property fitting the description of 849. During a search of the porch, the officers found 89 ziploc baggies of suspected heroin with a street value of more than $1,200. They took the baggies in for processing. They didn’t make any arrests.

When contacted for this story, Don Terry, a Police Department spokesperson, declined to provide any additional information on police activity on the block.

On Their Own

On Jan. 13, after hearing from neighbors again, police watched as someone in a blue coat bought baggies from a man standing on the sidewalk just south of the CHA property. Soon after, they saw a man in a red coat buy from the same dealer. Officers arrested both of the customers as they walked away. 

The busts revealed a lot about the mix of people involved in the drug market on the block. The first person they nabbed was a 64-year-old Puerto Rican man from Avondale, the second a 39-year-old white man from Austin; both had traveled several miles to buy a few $10 baggies wrapped in green tape, the drug operation’s well-known packaging for heroin. 

The police didn’t get to the seller: “Unknown male Black made good on his escape,” they wrote in their report. It made no mention of the CHA property.

On other days, the neighbors understood all too clearly they were on their own. One morning when the drug business was booming, the first neighbor texted the officer who had shared his phone number. The cop offered to drive by the block but said the police didn’t have enough people on duty to arrest anyone.

The sellers also started taking advantage of another vacant home across the street. Though it appears to be in better physical shape, the brick house at 852 N. St. Louis is owned by a group of investors who have properties all over the city, according to public records. The dealers and buyers began doing business or hanging out in the street between the properties.

“It’s kind of like a drive-thru,” said the second neighbor. “Sometimes you see cars line up, people line up.”

By mid-January, after the police found the heroin and crack tucked into the masonry, neighbors could almost predict the frustrating cycles around 849: They would call 311 or 911 again, sanitation crews or police might show up, the CHA might get a ticket or a low-level drug customer might get picked up. 

Regardless of the details, people would soon gather around the empty house again. The transactions would resume along with yelling and partying, and afterward the block would be littered with cans, wrappers, baggies and other garbage.

Longtime neighbors worried the sellers were growing more defiant. In the past, they recalled, most dealers tried to avoid conflict with residents or even worked to get on their good side. A story circulated about one former seller who had helped rescue a kitten, and others had picked up trash or at least said hello in the morning. 

But, like their buyers, the workers in this new operation commuted to the block from somewhere else, and they didn’t seem to care what the neighbors thought.

And then everything got worse.

‘Gunshots! Gunshots!’

As usual, late in the afternoon of Jan. 22, people were standing in the intersection at the north end of the block. The drug operation often had someone posted there to look out for customers or cops driving west on Iowa Street. 

This time a car drove past, proceeded up the next block and apparently circled around from the east. As it moved through the intersection again, someone inside fired a gun multiple times, according to witnesses and police reports.

In their home nearby, the second neighbor was watching TV with his family when they heard the gunshots. Then they heard bullets striking their house — one hitting the siding, another sticking in the front door, and another piercing the front window before knocking a statuette off a table and ricocheting into the kitchen, just missing the neighbor’s father and mother, who was holding his 6-month-old nephew.

“My mom kind of screamed ‘Gunshots! Gunshots!’” the neighbor recalled. “Everyone got on the floor.”

Outside, a 27-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man had been hit. Police learned of the shooting from a SpotSpotter alert, according to their report. They arrived minutes later, and ambulances took the wounded to the hospital. Police didn’t know who the shooter was but suggested the incident was tied to the drug market.

Neighbors were understandably upset. 

“I think we do have to put the fault on the CHA,” the second neighbor said. “I’m blaming them for putting my family at risk.”

Three days later, police were back on the block when they saw a woman in a black winter hat and long black coat make a series of handoffs for money in front of 849. After one of the customers drove off, police pulled over his Dodge Journey SUV a couple blocks away. He was a 34-year-old white man from suburban Skokie, and when the officers confronted him about what they’d seen, he surrendered two baggies of heroin wrapped in green tape, according to their report. They arrested him and took him to the station for booking.

This time, police also busted the 20-year-old woman selling in front of the CHA property. At the station they found that she had 10 baggies with green tape, worth about $100 on the street, as well as $109 in cash. She didn’t live in the neighborhood either: She gave police an address in Englewood on the South Side.

Feeling Unsafe

Despite the arrests, no one seemed to be getting at the source of the problems on the block.

On Jan. 31, a neighbor called 311 to register more complaints about 849 N. St. Louis. “Building does not have fences and people keep going into the lot/home for drug use,” the 311 operator wrote in a summary of the call. 

One line in the 311 form asked “Is this a CHA property?” The operator wrote “No.” Another line asked, “Is anyone in danger because of this condition?” The operator wrote “No” again.

The first neighbor was fed up. She called Burnett’s office again. She said she didn’t hear back. 

On Feb. 15, she called the Harrison (11th) Police District to try to reach an officer who focuses on buildings that have become magnets for crime. He wasn’t available, so she told another police officer about the issues at 849 N. St Louis, including the drug activity. “And it’s owned by the Housing Authority,” she added, according to a recording of the call.

The officer listened and then told her the police couldn’t do much with a CHA property. “We can try to send a letter to CHA about the building and letting them know that they need to contact us,” the officer said. She urged the neighbor to keep calling 911 when she saw drug activity.

The neighbor stressed that people on the block had called 911 dozens of times and the property was still being used as a stash house.

“So if that’s the case, I’m sure that our narcotics team is already aware of this,” the police officer said. She noted that investigations can take a long time. “And we’re not privy to that because that’s a whole different unit.”

Long after the call, the neighbor was struck by the absurdity.

“Every department I call, they say, ‘I can’t do anything’ and send me around” to someone else, she told Block Club.

She and her partner didn’t feel safe in their own home anymore. They decided to stay with a relative in another part of the city.

A couple weeks later, the neighbor took the bus to the neighborhood to check on her house. On her way back to the bus stop, two police officers in a squad car called out. They wanted to talk to her. 

“Ma’am, were you on the block of St. Louis to buy dope?” one of them asked her.

‘There Are Some Good People on That Block’

The block never seemed to calm down over the next few weeks.

In March, plainclothes officers arrested a 54-year-old man sitting in an SUV with an open Modelo beer and a loaded Colt Mustang .380 pistol in the console. He lived in West Garfield Park more than a mile away, and police determined the gun had been stolen.

A couple weeks later, someone shot and wounded a 26-year-old passenger of a car driving up the block. Police didn’t know who the shooter was.

Just after midnight April 7, fire ravaged a two-story home across the street from the CHA property and next door to 852 N. St. Louis, the empty house owned by investors. 

Extensive fire damage is seen on April 10, 2024, after a blaze ripped through this West Humboldt Park home in the 800 block of North St. Louis Ave. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

None of these events interrupted the drug operation for long. In fact, neighbors concluded the fire actually made the sellers bolder because it left three houses vacant in the middle of the block.

Three days later, more than a dozen people were standing near the fire-damaged property and the empty house next door when Block Club journalists went to report on the aftermath of the fire. One of the men threatened to shoot a Block Club photojournalist if he didn’t put his camera away. 

On April 12, the first neighbor received a call from someone at Hispanic Housing, the private company that’s supposed to manage 849 N. St. Louis. The official was returning the neighbor’s call from months earlier. She said she understood that people were gathering near the vacant house.

“Gathering?” the neighbor said. “They’re selling drugs.” 

The Hispanic Housing official said she would talk to the CHA to see if the agency could fix up the property or tear it down — which is what the CHA had promised to do five months earlier. 

With warmer weather at the end of April, neighbors on the block were dealing with more traffic than ever. 

After hearing from more unhappy residents, Burnett told Block Club he had spoken again with police leaders, but they said “they weren’t sending anyone over there” because a federal task force was conducting a criminal investigation. He vowed to follow up again.

“There are some good people on that block,” Burnett said to Block Club. “Let me find out what’s going on.”

On the morning of April 28, someone on North St. Louis fired about 15 shots toward busy Chicago Avenue, neighbors said. Sellers were seen storing more drugs on the front porch of 849.

“This evening has been the worst I have seen,” the second neighbor emailed Block Club. “There are about 40-50 people on the street breaking bottles, playing loud music, causing traffic, screaming. 911 was called multiple times and [police] just drive by and leave.”

Still, the neighbors were trying to come together. In a Zoom call last week, they shared stories of calling the city or the CHA and never hearing back. Others said they’d noticed police officers acting friendly with the dealers. 

Most felt they had no choice but to continue demanding help.

“They keep calling the cops,” said the first neighbor. “I said, ‘That’s fine, but it’s not doing anything.’”

That same day — Wednesday — Block Club contacted the CHA to ask about 849 N. St. Louis. On Thursday, the CHA provided its response urging neighbors to call 911 if they see criminal activity near the property. Block Club noted neighbors had already made dozens of those calls, yet sellers had been stashing their products on the front porch and in the masonry of the house. 

On Friday, the CHA sent workers to start making repairs to holes in the brick. 

“Funny how it took this long for them to do anything,” the second neighbor told Block Club. “Trying to get as much done as they can before the story comes out.”

It didn’t stop the drug traffic. By that evening, it was back.

Over the weekend, neighbors saw sellers storing baggies on the porch of the vacant home again.

The Normal Town Council met Monday to discuss several items of business, including a new ordinance establishing licensing requirements for retail tobacco shops and a presentation on the affordable housing crisis.

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