Aging housing stock: home age and lead-paint risk
Chicago’s housing is old — and older homes carry more lead paint and more deferred maintenance. This map shows the median age of a community area’s single- and multi-family homes, and the share built before 1978, when lead paint was banned for residential use. Search your address or click any community area, and switch between the two views.
How to read this map
Median home age is the middle year built among a community area’s homes, shown as an age so older areas read warmer. Pre-1978 is the share of homes built before the 1978 residential lead-paint ban — a lead-exposure-risk read, since older stock is far more likely to carry lead paint. Both are warmer where the housing is older; the drawer shows the underlying median year built and the share of the area’s homes carrying a build year.
This covers single- and multi-family homes only. The Cook County Assessor records a year built for houses and small apartment buildings, but condominiums are tracked separately and don’t carry a comparable build year here — so in condo-heavy community areas (much of the lakefront and the Loop) this describes the houses and 2–4-flats, not every residence. The drawer reports what share of each area’s homes the median is based on; where that coverage is thin, the area is suppressed.
Source: Cook County Assessor — Single and Multi-Family Improvement Characteristics (open data). See methodology for the year-built source, the 1978 cutoff, and the coverage caveat.