A new study shows that Chicago renters, not just owners, are losing their homes due to foreclosures.

Woodstock Institute, a group that researches housing policy, crunched the 2007 foreclosure numbers in Chicago. It discovered that more than a third of foreclosures were on buildings with two to six units. Woodstock vice president Geoff Smith says a lot of those units were rentals. He says the hardest hit neighborhoods are on the West and South sides, like West Garfield Park, Austin and Englewood. And he says the number of affordable rentals had already been shrinking since 1990.

SMITH: It’s going to be much more difficult for people who live in those neighborhoods and you’re going to see an increasing shortage of affordable housing.

The report urges lawmakers to make it easier for non-profits and government agencies to buy foreclosed buildings and keep renting out the units.

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