Weekend Links: Chicago Neighborhood Research Special

I tend to do a lot of research as you might have noticed. As I'm in the process of making a "welcome to the neighborhood" letter for a couple of renter clients who signed leases this week I figured I'd share with you some of the sites I use to put these letters together.

Buildings

• Cook County Property Info - a trove of info on property owner names, addresses, and tax/mortgage payment history.
• CityNews Chicago. Unfortunately not updated anymore. Still has valid property construction dates for buildings built before 2002, and also useful for finding address ranges on large buildings.
• Building code violation database. Landlords are supposed to disclose any violations from the past 12 months when you sign or renew a lease. They almost never do. Check it out for yourself.
• Bedbug Registry. Yeah, that exists.

Maps

• Chicago street coordinates. South siders don't need this as much, but we north siders have to learn to cross reference street names with numbers.
• School district lookup (Chicago only).
• Extremely thorough neighborhood map. Or if you want to go long, here's one of the whole Chicagoland area.
• Food truck map.

Politicians & People in your Neighborhood

• Police District lookup. It's always good to know which police district & beat you live in. Sometimes calling the district directly will yield more answers than you can get from calling 911 or 311. CAPS meetings are scheduled by beat and are a great way to learn about safety concerns in your immediate area.
• Ward/alderman lookup. The ward office will be your source for parking permits, street cleaning schedules, block party permits, trash pickup, and far more. Your alderman is also your neighborhood's representative to city council. It's worth knowing who they are and what they stand for.
• Find elected officials (federal and state).

Transit & Parking

• Bus Tracker and Train Tracker. Metra map & schedules. Pace bus routes & schedules.
• Trip/commute cost calculator. Enter start and end locations, make & model of car, and calculate fuel costs for your trip.
• List of City owned parking lots that offer monthly rental options.
• Find parking spaces for rent on the private market.

Miscellaneous

• Track the Tamale Guys on Twitter.
• Everything else you could ever possibly need to know about Chicago. (This is my favorite site EVER.)

• Building code violation database. Landlords are supposed to disclose any violations from the past 12 months when you sign or renew a lease. They almost never do. Check it out for yourself.