Chicago's Latino population is increasingly shaped by where families can find housing they can afford, with Belmont Cragin now surpassing Little Village in total Latino residents. Nearly 58,000 Latinos live in the Northwest Side community, compared with about 56,000 in Little Village, according to a new University of Illinois Chicago analysis. The shift reflects a broader redistribution of the city's Latino population rather than uniform growth across every historically Latino neighborhood.
The findings come from a 175-page report titled Latino Chicago and the Future of the City, published by the Great Cities Institute at UIC. The institute drew on U.S. Census data and state and local government records; the Belmont Cragin comparison was first reported by Block Club Chicago. Citywide, Chicago's Latino population has grown to more than 801,000 people, making up roughly 30 percent of the city's residents, according to the report. More than half of that population is age 35 or younger, and Latinos now live throughout the city, with a strong presence on the Northwest, Southwest and Southeast sides.
Gentrification Pushes Families Beyond Old Enclaves
The report's authors identify housing costs and availability as major forces behind those changes. Gentrification has pushed some Latino residents beyond historically Latino neighborhoods including Pilsen, Logan Square, Irving Park, Humboldt Park, Avondale and Albany Park, according to the report cited by the outlet. The pattern predates the current comparison: a 2003 community analysis from The Chicago Reporter described Belmont Cragin as a “second-step” neighborhood where working-class Latino families who had built savings in Pilsen and Humboldt Park moved in pursuit of homeownership and greater stability.
Belmont Cragin's demographic history also shows that neighborhood change can involve successive waves of relocation. Between 2000 and 2016, its Polish population dropped by 55 percent as Polish-American families moved to the suburbs, according to DNAinfo. Meanwhile, the UIC findings identify Latino population declines in gentrifying neighborhoods including Logan Square, Avondale, Albany Park and West Town.
Austin and Southwest Side Neighborhoods See Growth
Not all the movement is confined to Belmont Cragin. Austin recorded the city's largest Latino population increase from 2019 to 2023 compared with 2010, the report found, and Latino populations also grew in Garfield Ridge, Chicago Lawn, Ashburn, Clearing and West Lawn during the same period. Austin, West Garfield Park and West Englewood led the city in the share of home loans issued to Latino borrowers.
The city's broader Latino population reflects growing diversity beyond its historically Mexican and Puerto Rican base. The community now includes large Ecuadorian, Colombian, Bolivian and Venezuelan populations, with Venezuelans counted among Chicago's fastest-growing groups, Salvadorans standing as the city's largest Central American group, and Ecuadorians forming its largest and most concentrated South American community, according to the report.
Commercial Corridors Show Shifting Economic Weight
Latino commercial corridors across Chicago generated approximately $1.76 billion in taxable sales in 2024, the report found. West Fullerton Avenue in Belmont Cragin alone brought in $181 million in sales that year, edging past Little Village's 26th Street corridor, which generated $177 million in sales in 2024 across 294 businesses. That's a notable shift for a strip that, per CBS News, had historically generated upward of $900 million in annual gross sales across more than 500 businesses and long carried a reputation as the city's second-highest-grossing retail strip after North Michigan Avenue.
Little Village's commercial fortunes have also been squeezed by forces beyond gentrification. Local merchant surveys found that federal immigration enforcement operations in late 2025 caused business sales along the 26th Street corridor to plummet between 20 and 70 percent due to reduced foot traffic, according to Forbes.
Rising Economic Standing, Persistent Cost Burdens
The UIC report points to gains in economic mobility alongside the demographic shifts. Latinos in management, business, science and arts occupations now comprise 28 percent of the Latino workforce, up from roughly 17 percent about a decade earlier. Still, housing costs remain a serious strain: one in every three Latino homeowners is cost-burdened, and the rate climbs to almost one in every two among Latino renters, per the report.
Those affordability pressures have prompted policy responses in some neighborhoods Latino families are leaving behind. In December 2024, the Chicago City Council updated the Northwest Side Housing Preservation Ordinance, quadrupling demolition surcharge fees up to $60,000 and establishing a tenant right of first refusal to curb displacement in Avondale, Hermosa, Humboldt Park and Logan Square, according to the Chicago Association of REALTORS®. The City of Chicago says the September 2024 ordinance raised surcharges in the Pilsen and 606 Pilot Areas from $5,000 per unit and $15,000 per building to $20,000 per unit and $60,000 per building. Earlier anti-deconversion and demolition surcharge ordinances introduced in 2021 had already driven building demolitions down 88 percent near the 606 trail in Logan Square and 25 percent in Pilsen through 2022, according to WTTW.
How to Read the Neighborhood Comparisons
The report's comparisons cover different measures and time periods, so they do not describe one uniform citywide trend. The findings cited here compare some neighborhood changes with 2010, while the separate Pilsen analysis compares 1990 with 2020; a related report from Block Club Chicago found that the Mexican population declined in Pilsen and Little Village since 2000 while growing in neighborhoods including Gage Park, West Lawn, New City and Clearing. Latino population, Latino share and Mexican population are related but distinct measures, which helps explain why a citywide increase can coincide with losses in particular communities. Housing tenure provides another piece of the picture. According to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, 11,823 Belmont Cragin households, or 51.6 percent of occupied households, were owner-occupied in 2023. The city's amended ordinance says its other provisions, including the demolition-surcharge changes, took effect Oct. 9, 2024, while the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase pilot took effect March 1, 2025, creating a policy response to the displacement pressures described in the report.
Transit Gaps and Environmental Burdens
Belmont Cragin's rise as the city's largest Latino neighborhood also underscores a persistent infrastructure gap. The neighborhood has no direct access to CTA trains, though it connects to regional transit through Metra commuter rail stations at Grand/Cicero and Hanson Park on the Milwaukee District West line, according to Metra. Southeast and southwest Chicago rely heavily on buses as well, since large areas of those sides lack train service, the report notes. South Side Latino neighborhoods additionally face industrial and freight corridors, truck traffic, diesel emissions and pollution, per the same findings.
Pilsen's transformation illustrates how steep the population declines have been in some of the city's original Latino strongholds. A May 2023 Great Cities Institute study titled Who Lives in Pilsen found the neighborhood's Latino share dropped from 88 percent in 1990 to 71 percent in 2020, driven by steep declines in foreign-born residents and low-income family households.
Report Authors See a Call to Action
Ricardo Estrada said the report confirms neighborhood changes that service nonprofits have already been observing on the ground. Report authors said they hope the findings will guide public policy and address the challenges Latino Chicagoans face, noting that Latino neighborhoods require policies and investments tailored to their varying local challenges.
José Miguel Acosta Córdova framed the findings in broader terms, saying Latinos are “the engine of Chicago” and that the community played a critical role in the city's economic evolution following population and manufacturing-job losses. The shifting map traced by the UIC report — from Pilsen and Little Village toward Belmont Cragin and Austin — also touches neighborhoods where Hoodline has reported on Latino cultural institutions facing funding gaps, including the Aguijón Theater's ongoing fight for arts funding in Belmont Cragin.
