Vacant properties received quite a bit of attention from the city of Chicago recently. This past July, the city passed an ordinance making banks and lenders responsible for the upkeep of empty buildings on their books. If a new ordinace proposed by the Chicago Teacher’s Union and alderman were to pass the City Council, owners of abandoned properties close to schools may be required to post security guards outside those buildings during daytime hours. To find out what effect vacant buildings had on Chicago’s hardest hit communities and if the proposed ordinances could do anything to improve the situation, Eight Forty-Eight spoke to Angela Caputo of the Chicago Reporter. Caputo covers housing and criminal justice for the Chicago Reporter.