When the doors to the first dozen units of Rosa Parks Apartments opened last month, the affordable housing complex in West Humboldt Park was at no loss for tenant applications.

“People were lining up around the block to get an apartment in these buildings,” said Ald. Walter Burnett (27th).

Funding for the $27.2 million, 94-unit project came from a myriad of sources: the federal government delivered $9.8 million in stimulus dollars, while the state’s Housing Development Authority and Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity provided $2.2 million, in addition to a million dollar loan and $856,000 in affordable housing tax credits.

Burnett brokered a deal with a Skokie-based developer active in the West Loop to donate $1.2 million and nearly half a million dollars in tax credits to close the financing gap at Rosa Parks. And $3.5 million in tax increment financing funds — property tax dollars drawn off from the district in which the apartment buildings now sit — were included in the project as well.

The scramble for affordable housing financing is commonplace throughout the city, Burnett said, and even more so since the housing market began to nosedive.

With foreclosures still slamming Chicago — there were nearly 23,000 foreclosure filings in the city last year according to the Woodstock Institute — Burnett said that residents are coming to him now more than ever with requests for housing assistance.

In an effort to establish a financing source for affordable housing in Chicago, Burnett and a coalition of advocacy groups are now calling on the city to make annual funding guarantees via its tax increment financing reserves.

Dubbed the Sweet Home Chicago campaign, the movement centers on an ordinance sponsored by Burnett which, if passed, would set aside 20 percent of the city’s annual TIF take to go to redevelopment and new construction projects in the affordable sector.

That cut would have approximated nearly $100 million of the reported $495 million the city collected from its TIF districts last year.

“When you commit money like that, you have protection,” said Burnett. “[It] attracts developers to come to the table.”

Through its Department of Community Development, the city already runs a number of federal- and state-funded programs aimed at bolstering affordable housing projects in Chicago.

In its annual report, the agency estimates it will commit more than $306 million to create and rehab 6,387 affordable rental units in the city this year through various government financing mechanisms.

Since the 1980s, more than $268 million in TIF funds specifically have been used to develop and preserve affordable housing in Chicago according to community development spokeswoman Molly Sullivan.

In that light, Sullivan cautioned that the authors of the Sweet Home ordinance should tread lightly existing TIF operations.

“It is important to understand that TIF is used for a variety development needs,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The proposal by Sweet Home Chicago that establishes a minimum investment could have an adverse impact other development activities which are critical to overall neighborhood health.”

Stephen Aquino, of the Interfaith Housing Development Corp. of Chicago, said that his firm, which develops affordable housing on the West Side, has researched the possibility of utilizing TIF dollars in the past. They’ve always chosen to look elsewhere for project funding. But, he added, no non-profit would turn away help if the Sweet Home ordinance passes.

“[Burnett] just wants to see a more concerted effort, instead of relying on how the financial winds may be blowing at any given time,” he said.

Last week, Burnett brought the ordinance before city council for the first time. And though 25 aldermen have already given support for the measure, some still had questions as to how it would distribute the housing subsidies among various TIF districts.

Ald. Bernard Stone (50th) noted early in the hearing that tax increment financing was never intended for housing, stating that “it was [originally] used primarily for commercial premises and it was extended to housing at a later date.”

Stone also criticized the ordinance for what he saw as fundamental contradiction in the mechanics of TIF disbursement.

“You must take it from the individual district, because the increment has to be returned to [that district] … that’s the whole concept of tax increment funding,” he said.

Burnett countered that, while the workings of the ordinance could stand revision, the overriding sentiment of the measure would redirect the benefits of TIF back toward the taxpayers.

Other council members asked how the annual housing allotment would be used if unspent, or if specific wards, presumably those with less residential area, could opt out of the ordinance.

Burnett said that these issues could be ironed out in amendments once the ordinance was passed.

No vote was taken on the ordinance.

Looking back at the Rosa Parks development, which took nearly six years to complete, Burnett argued that finding better and faster ways to build affordable housing would benefit the entire city.

“[Those] apartments are the nicest things built right now in that community,” he said.