Pulling into a Ford Heights subdivision in a black Chevrolet Malibu, Mayor Charles Griffin notes the four youths on a corner, likely selling drugs.
Then comes the scruffy vacant lots, the houses with plywood-covered windows and the charred remains of homes. A young girl's arm reaches high to hold her mother's hand as they walk down the street.
It is the 1400 block of Congress Lane. And it is also home to a rehabbed, red-brick ranch house that is up for grabs in a $100-a-ticket raffle under Griffin's "Battle Against Abandoned Housing."
"If I can do this street, I can do any of them," Griffin says.
In some cases, charities have raffled off homes to raise money. In rare cases, homeowners desperate to unload their property have tried a raffle. But using raffles to help save a blighted town is unusual, if not unheard of.
Griffin says it is just one part of his efforts to save his town. And housing experts say the small-scale approach of house raffles won't be able to fix the large-scale problem of abandoned homes throughout the Chicago region.
But Metropolitan Planning Council Vice President Robin Snyderman notes, "These are really tough times for communities, and I think municipal leaders are willing to try anything they can to make a dent in the problem."
For $100, participants in the Ford Heights raffle get a 1-in-500 shot at landing a four-bedroom home that was rehabbed with new flooring, kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures after the foreclosure sat vacant and ransacked for years.
If successful, Griffin says the town will plow any profits into another abandoned home, then another and another. He hopes the raffles will save as many as 20 houses.
Tucked between Illinois Highway 394 and the Ford plant along U.S. Route 30, the far south suburb of about 3,000 has long been home to violent and poverty-stricken streets.
Some blocks in Ford Heights have only a few houses left, with lot after lot left bare after abandoned homes were finally demolished or leveled by fire. Even hundreds of public housing town homes that used to dominate the town have been boarded up or torn down.
Cook County sheriff's police took over policing the suburb in 2008 after the town said it couldn't afford the few underpaid officers it once had.
In desperation, town officials have turned to a number of unusual economic saviors, including a strip club, a tire-burning power plant and a failed bid to turn a dump into a ski slope.
Most recently, the first-term Mayor Griffin has been pushing to land a casino. But Gov. Pat Quinn has opposed legislation that lawmakers passed to add five new Illinois casinos, including one designated for the south suburbs that Ford Heights could hope to win.
Today, Griffin considers a casino a "long shot" as he focuses on persuading banks to turn over abandon homes to the city so they can be raffled off to new owners in a block-by-block, ticket-by-ticket redevelopment effort.
Griffin blames the town's abandoned housing problem on both joblessness and the housing bubble.
In some cases, Griffin said, predatory loans got people into homes they couldn't afford. In others, he said, loose mortgage rules allowed Ford Heights homeowners to get large home-equity loans and then flee with the extra cash.
Still, Griffin insists his town is turning a corner.
Some public housing is being rehabbed, and new security cameras are deterring crime. A basketball court next to Village Hall was spruced up, and a few streets have been paved. Now, Griffin hopes residents will buy into the town's raffle ? another chance at hope for Ford Heights.
Since starting the raffle last month through a not-for-profit community organization, Griffin said about 100 tickets have been sold. He said the drawing will come in March. Five hundred tickets are for sale.
"That is a better chance of being successful than going to the riverboat or the lottery," Griffin says.
jbryan@tribune.com
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