Keene and Cheshire County (NH) Historical Photos/Flickr

Keene and Cheshire County (NH) Historical Photos/Flickr

Is the stagnant housing market simply a symptom of the struggling economy, or is it possible that it is the result of a shift in cultural values among a younger generation who no longer view home ownership as part of the American dream?

Ali Hashmi/Chicago Loopster

The Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller seasonally adjusted housing index for 20 cities dropped again in November 2011, the last month for which data is available, falling to the lowest levels since 2003.

The index fell 1.3 percent from October to November and 3.7 percent from November 2010. According to the index, U.S. home prices are back to their mid-2003 levels, down 32.9 percent from their peak, in July 2006.

“I think some of these young people, after witnessing the strategic defaults and foreclosures of recent years are not looking at residential real estate as a place where they can get a return on equity,” said Denise Daniele Akason, Associate Director of the Real Estate program at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. “They may be choosing to invest elsewhere. They also may be choosing to rent longer and will eventually buy when markets recover.”

But can something be said for the changing attitudes and social norms of the Millennial generation?

According to data from a 2010 Pew Research Center study, only 20 percent of Millennials (those born during the 1980s and early 1990s) say owning their own home is one of the most important things to them. The same research shows that roughly a quarter of Millennials (23 percent) say they are currently married, compared with 59 percent of Gen Xers (those born between the early 1960s and early 1980s) and 64 percent of Boomers ( those born between the late 1940s and early 1960s). In general, the research finds that young people are less likely to be married now than was the case 20 years ago.

Although only about a third of Millennials (34 percent) have children, they are just as likely as their
older counterparts to place high value on good parenting. About half (52 percent) said being a good parent is one of the most important things to them. This compares with 50 percent of those ages 30 and older, according to Pew.

Could the fact that fewer young people are marrying and having children play a role in the hurting housing market?

“Each semester, early on, after we talk about the housing crisis and the financial crisis, I ask my students to do a short paper on their views about buying a home. These are people in their early twenties, and over ninety percent of them still want to buy a home,” said Thomas Bothen, Associate Director at the University of Chicago Illinois Center for Urban Real Estate. “What’s preventing them from doing that is some uncertainty about the economy, the security of their jobs or getting a job.”

According to Pew, households headed by adults younger than 35 had less housing wealth in 2009 than did households headed by younger adults in 1984. These household heads are slightly less likely to be homeowners (38 percent in 2009 versus 40 percent in 1984), and home equity plays a smaller role in their overall wealth (31% in 2009 versus 46% in 1984).

“I think mansions are an endangered species,” Bothen said. “I think the preference now is for smaller homes. Environmental and energy sustainability is a factor for the younger homebuyer. I don’t think there is a cultural shift though. The students that I teach still want to own a home at some point. There are economic barriers to overcome, though.”

Audrey Thibeau/The Plant Chicago

The Plant. Home to the New Chicago Beer Co.

The Evans brothers are building a completely sustainable production brewery in the Whiskey Point section of the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago in collaboration with The Plant Chicago, a 93,500 square foot former meatpacking facility that has been converted into a net-zero energy vertical farm.

“We were at a Whole Foods in Evanston having brunch and there wasn’t much to read. But there was this magazine called Mindful Metropolis, which is a conscious community magazine with a lot of yoga and that kind of thing. They had this story about The Plant in the very early days,” Jesse Evans said. “On the caption of the story we saw that they were planning on having breweries. So, we decided to contact them, partially to see who these guys were and partially to try and see if we could be one of the breweries.”

The Evans brothers contacted Executive Director John Edel and took a tour of The Plant.

“When we got to the end of the tour we ended up at this four or five thousand square-foot hall with 18-foot ceilings and he goes ‘this is the brewery.’ We had kind of realized by that point that there wasn’t a brewery in there yet. So we were asking about it and found out that he was looking for the right brewery to move in. So we were like ‘we’re the right brewery’, and that’s really kind of how it started.“

The Plant is still in the process of being built, however, some parts of the structure, such as the vertical farm, are already operational. When complete, one-third of the space will hold aquaponic-growing systems and the other two-thirds will incubate sustainable food businesses by offering low rent, low energy costs, and a licensed shared kitchen.

The Plant plans to create 125 jobs in Chicago’s economically distressed Back of the Yards neighborhood. The new jobs will require no fossil fuel and neither will the building itself. Instead, The Plant will eventually divert over 10,000 tons of food waste from landfills each year to meet all of its heat and power needs.

Audrey Thibeau/The Plant Chicago

The Plant emits steam not smoke.

“I realized that this is going to be at net carbon zero brewery and that was really exciting to us,” Evans said.

Funded in part by $1.5 million grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, The Plant will install an anaerobic digestion and a combined heat and power system to operate completely off the grid. Anaerobic digestion is a recycling system that uses bacteria to break down food waste to generate methane gas which, in turn, powers a turbine that generates electricity.

By 2015, the enclosed, odorless anaerobic digester will consume 27 tons of food waste a day including all of the waste produced in the facility and by neighboring food manufacturers.

The New Chicago Beer Co. will be doing their part to keep The Plant running. The brewing kettles used by the Evans brothers will depend on steam instead of burning non-renewable natural gas from the grid. The carbon dioxide from the fermentation process will be captured and transmitted to hydroponic operations. Thanks to this system, the brewery will be able to churn out strong ales, their specialty, with a virtually net-zero cost to the environment.

“We already had a tendency to do things the right way, but we had no idea that the whole system could be this fantastic,” said Evans who was already conscious of sustainability thanks to a spell starting a much smaller professional brewery, Lucky Hand, with his brother in northern California before moving back home to Chicago to be closer to family.

According to Evans, New Chicago will be releasing its first beers over the next couple months. They specialize in what they call strong ales, meaning that the brews contain a slightly higher than usual alcohol content, and will be using local and seasonal ingredients from around the Chicago area. They will also source some ingredients from inside The Plant itself.

New Chicago has recently signed a distribution deal that will make their beers available on draft and in bottles across the city in the coming year.

“Having that alternative energy aspect to our brewery is really kind of something we like to say is to put on the back label,” Evans said. “We don’t want to make it a big deal because if we can do things this way then it’s probably a good idea. It’s the right thing to do.”

The majority is from coal and nuclear energy. According to the 2011 ComEd Environmental disclosure statement, which measures energy consumption in the city from Oct.1, 2010 to Sept.30, 2011: 44 percent came from coal, 40 percent from nuclear, 12 percent form natural gas and the remain four percent came from sustainable sources such as solar, wind, biomass and hydro power. ComEd provides power for 3.8 million customers in northern Illinois, roughly 70 percent of the state’s population.

Ali Hashmi/Chicago Loopster

This may change in the relatively near future however. In recent years, an increasing amount of pressure has been put on the city to close the Crawford and Fisk coal plants.

“Recently grass roots efforts and legislation have been focused on trying to close coal plants within the city limits, and a lot of attention has been drawn to the negative health effects that can result from having a carbon emitting power station near population centers,” Villano said.

According to Cindy Klein-Banai, Associate Chancellor for Sustainability at University of Illinois at Chicago, the city is moving in a renewable direction.

“I think that its making strides toward being more sustainable,” Klein-Banai said. “There are some concerns though with some resources, like the coal fire power plants and the pollution that they generate and the carbon emissions in particular. Nuclear is clean in terms of carbon but comes with different concerns.”

Ali Hashmi/Chicago Loopster

“There’s a lot of room for improvement,” She said.

Offshore wind energy from Lake Michigan has been under consideration by Evanston and the City of Chicago, but that is still a long way off in regards to actual implementation, Villano said.

He also pointed out that solar companies, such as SoCore Energy, are making solar cost competitive with our traditional fuel sources in the city.

Sustainability may have its supporters, but without government assistance and the proper legislation the city’s small steps to sustainability may remain just that.

“In regards to our overall energy mix, the city doesn’t have much to say about it. The state and the federal government have most of the leverage in regards to increasing support for renewables. In general, some easy things for the city to do to make it easier on (for example) solar installers is to pass bills to streamline the solar installation permitting process.”

Ali Hashmi/Chicago Loopster

Villano said that while sustainable energy is important to the city’s future, financial factors that will play a major role in years to come.

“Cost. Our electricity is generally very cheap, so to see renewable energy implemented here we will need to see legislation passed to support this mix,” He said.

Mike DiFerdinando/Chicago Loopster

As the first real signs of winter poke their heads out this week, the walk to the grocery store may seem that much further away.

But have no fear. There’s no longer any reason to risk life and limb braving the elements for a six-pack of beer or a last minute dinner. Through the magic of the Internet, a variety of online grocery and food delivery options are available to Chicago residents.

Yeah, there’s a delivery fee. And you might pay a little more than at the traditional store, but sometimes it’s cold, or you’re tired or you just don’t feel like leaving the house again. During these unavoidable times, online grocery delivery may be just the ticket. Customers order products online and then later that day or within a few days (depending on the service), your groceries are delivered to you at home.

Peapod.com is one of the oldest and biggest such sites. Founded in Evanston and now based out of Skokie, Peapod began partnering with Chicago-area Jewel-Osco Food Stores to make deliveries in 1990. By the time the Internet swung into full gear in 1996, it created its own website and began delivering independently. The same year Peapod was named to the Inc. 500 list of fast-growing privately held U.S. companies. As the largest of the Chicago-area delivery services, if you live in the city, they probably have you covered.

There are a few large national services such as netgrocer.com, which offers a full range of goods, including frozen foods, for delivery or Amazon Grocery, (through amazon.com) which will deliver a large variety of nonperishable goods to your home or apartment. Whole Foods delivers its prepared foods through wholefoodsmarket.com. The locations in the Gold Coast, Lincoln Park and South Loop areas deliver in the city.

Don’t forget about the little guy. Many local businesses have been able to use the online and home delivery models with success in the city. Karen Keane, co-owner of Newleaf Natural Grocery in Rogers Park, said her store has been able to expand its home delivery service of organic fruit and vegetable boxes as well as specialty goods.

“In the last nine to 10 years, the whole idea of expanding the business by moving beyond the brick and mortar and using the Internet and social media has really been amazing for us. To go from a tiny little place to having a deliver zone that runs from Wilmette in the north to UIC in the south. That’s huge for a little tiny place like ours.”

Newleaf sells an average of 200 to 250 boxes of organic fruits and vegetables per week during the summer and up to 350 in the winter and spring months when there is less access to fresh produce available.
“We deliver downtown to a lot of offices,” Keane said. “Instead of a 3 p.m. sugar fix they have fruit in their refrigerator.”

Local businesses offer specialty products and other amenities: in the case of Newleaf, a delivery driver who has been making the rounds for the last nine years.

“He won’t put your groceries in the refrigerator but some people will give him a key and want him to drop it inside the door, and he’s just that trustworthy and great,” Keane said.

If a quick dinner from you’re favorite restaurant is all you can think about on that train ride home, restaurant delivery services like grubhub.com or seamless.com will have a meal delivered to your door roughly about an hour after you place an order from your computer, smartphone or tablet device. Again, the dreaded delivery fee may come into play, but sometimes it’s worth the extra $2-3 to have dinner meet you at home.