Former Diplomat Hotel to Reopen This Week

The former Diplomat Hotel, 3208 N. Sheffield Ave., will be reopening this Thursday as an Single-resident Occupancy (SRO) facility, according to DNAinfo. SROs are accessible housing.

To qualify for living in the facility, owners must show proof that they're disabled and that they earn less than 60 percent of the area median income, or less than $30,960, DNAinfo states. Residents will then pay 30 percent of their income each month as rent. If a resident starts earning more than 60 percent of the area's median income, the resident must pay the full rent of $790. 

The City acquired the 85-year-old hotel in 2010 after the building was found to have broken several code violations. 

“The Diplomat Hotel here on Sheffield just north of Belmont was a residence hotel, but we had a lot of issues with crime, drugs and prostitution,” Alderman Tom Tunney's Chief of Staff Bennett Lawson told Patch in Dec. of 2012. “The building itself became unsafe to the point where the city vacated it. The owner transferred it to the city in lieu of millions in fines that he had accumulated. We put a request for proposals for development out, and now Threshold, which is a mental health services provider is going to do 51 units of supportive housing there.”