The Habitat Company

The Habitat Company is a Chicago real estate developer and property manager founded by the late Daniel Levin in 1971. Headquartered on West Hubbard Street in River North, it develops, manages and invests in housing across Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota, from market-rate rentals to affordable and mixed-income communities and condominium buildings. Habitat has worked on Chicago public housing redevelopment for decades. It’s leading the LeClaire Courts redevelopment in Garfield Ridge with Cabrera Capital, the Chicago Housing Authority and the City of Chicago. The $119 million first phase broke ground Oct. 13, 2026, on a site that’s been vacant since 2011, with Solomon Cordwell Buenz as architect and George Sollitt Construction as general contractor.

The phrase Habitat uses for its structure – a vertically integrated platform – has a concrete meaning on the ground. The company says it oversees projects from concept through stabilisation and into long-term management, which means the organisation that develops a community is also the one answering maintenance calls in it a decade later. In affordable and mixed-income housing, where operating performance over 15 or 30 years determines whether the deal worked, that continuity is the business model rather than a convenience.

Three lines of business are published: management, development and investments. Within development, the firm separates mixed-income work from affordable work, and states that affordable housing development has been a core part of its offerings from its start in 1971 to the present. Market-rate rental, condominium and mixed-income communities round out the portfolio.

For residents, the most practical page on the site is the affordable waitlists section, which the company maintains publicly alongside a transfer and emergency plan – the sort of operational detail a pure developer would have no reason to publish, and a good indicator of how much of the business is actually management.

The head office is at 350 West Hubbard Street, Suite 500 in Chicago’s River North, reachable at (312) 527-5400, and the firm publishes both a portfolio and a media section. Its stated aim is comprehensive real estate services designed to maximise value while strengthening the communities it serves, which is the standard formulation; the distinguishing part is that the same company carries both halves of that sentence.

Habitat also recruits publicly through a join-our-team page and maintains a meet-our-team directory, so prospective partners can identify who runs development versus management before making contact.

For public agencies and joint-venture partners, the relevant question is which arm of Habitat is being engaged. A development partnership and a third-party management contract are different relationships with the same firm, and the company is structured to do either – or, as on its Chicago public housing redevelopment work, both at once.