Inside Room 317: counting down the last days of the Chateau Hotel

By Odette Yousef
Inside Room 317: counting down the last days of the Chateau Hotel
Robert Rohdenburg fought his eviction from the Chateau Hotel until the very end. Now he’s looking to put nearly all his belongings into a storage unit until he finds a new home. WBEZ/Odette Yousef
Inside Room 317: counting down the last days of the Chateau Hotel
Robert Rohdenburg fought his eviction from the Chateau Hotel until the very end. Now he’s looking to put nearly all his belongings into a storage unit until he finds a new home. WBEZ/Odette Yousef

Inside Room 317: counting down the last days of the Chateau Hotel

By Odette Yousef
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Tonight at midnight the last tenants of the Chateau Hotel will have to vacate their building, per court order. 

The Chateau is one of several North Side single-room occupancy buildings that developers have bought recently, to turn into upmarket rental housing.

This has displaced hundreds of low-income residents of the North Side. Robert Rohdenburg will soon be among them.

Rohdenburg fought his eviction from the Chateau Hotel until the very end. In recent weeks, the new owners started gutting the building, even as he and a few others lived there. In the video below, crews decked out in hazardous materials suits are seen tossing carpets from the building’s back windows.

WBEZ’s Odette Yousef asked Rohdenburg to record his last week at the Chateau amidst this chaos. This is what he gave us.

Odette Yousef is WBEZ’s North Side Bureau reporter. Follow her at @oyousef and @WBEZoutloud.