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Michael C. Rohrbeck
Michael C. Rohrbeck has been a Chicago resident and an advocate for community development for 25 years. He began as a VISTA volunteer and staff person at Bethel New Life and later joined PRIDE, a non-profit housing and community development group in the Austin community. He worked there for 16 years as an Assistant Director and Executive Director in one of Chicago’s premier community controlled, community development corporations -- overseeing development, property management, home improvement and technical assistance efforts, as well as tenant services programming.[1]
 Since 1996, Mike’s been an at-home father of son Christopher, and daughters Reah and Rianna; a Block Club President in the Edgewater neighborhood; and for five years a part-time coordinator of community research at Loyola University’s Center for Urban Research & Learning (CURL). In his work at CURL, he helped coordinate collaborative research with non-profits citywide on issues and programming in social services, housing, childcare and micro-enterprise business development.
Mike is a co-owner and full-time manager at Andrea A. Raila & Associates, a family-owned property tax appeals and public policy consulting business. He remains active in affordable housing issues as publisher/author of his Housing Quest newsletter and website, and as an affordable housing resource person.
Mike is experienced with housing development financing, property management, and cooperatives, as well as advocacy efforts and policy initiatives, particularly with the Chicago Rehab Network. For many years there he spearheaded efforts to utilize property tax law/programs to transfer tax delinquent properties for affordable housing development. For two years he served as President of this coalition, one of the most racially, geographically and ethnically diverse community controlled coalitions in the country.
Mike and Kale Williams at CURL authored a report on strategies for preserving affordable housing in Rogers Park. This community is not unlike many in the City and across the country – highly built up and appreciating in value -- where many traditional community development strategies do not address the needs of the lowest income and working class people. This and related research was conducted for and on behalf of a local consortium of housing and service organizations, the Community of Opportunity Affordable Housing Coalition (COAHC).
1In 2003, PRIDE was dissolved under the pressures of funding, property management, very low-income market forces and their inability to restructure projects to the satisfaction of lenders and investors. This has added impetus and contextual experience to his interest in reform and innovation in the field of community development financing and funding.
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