After Losing Latino Congregants To ‘Evils Of Gentrification,’ Logan Square Church Could Become All-Affordable Housing.

LOGAN SQUARE — A new plan to convert the Humboldt Park United Methodist Church into an all-affordable housing project is gaining momentum.

Church leaders have teamed up with affordable housing developer LUCHA on the effort to transform the 92-year-old church at 2122 N. Mozart St. into a 22-unit affordable housing complex. If everything goes according to plan, construction would begin next summer.

The deal would mean relocating the congregation away from the corner of Mozart Street and Shakespeare Avenue for the first time in nearly a century, but it would also bring more affordable housing to the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

“We as a congregation have lost our Latinx families who have been displaced out of this neighborhood through the evils of gentrification,” Paula Cripps-Vallejo, Humboldt Park United Methodist Church’s reverend, said at a virtual community meeting Monday evening.