More than two months after a fatal shooting in the Hilliard Towers Apartments, tenants are still waiting for answers about what happened, whether it could have been prevented, and what it means for the building.
In the early morning of October 5, police responding to a call at 2030 S. State St. found a young man with apparent gunshot wounds in a vacant apartment on the building’s first floor, according to the department (CPD). He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office identified the young man, twenty-one, as Kody H. Velazquez-Brand of Oak Brook, Illinois. The homicide remains under investigation and no one has been arrested, according to a CPD spokesperson.
The victim was not a current or former tenant of the building, according to a spokesperson for Holsten Management Corporation, the real estate company that owns and manages the Towers.
“We were heartbroken,” said Anna (not her real name), a tenant who has lived in the building for more than a decade, and who said she did not know the victim. “It’s something that could have been avoided.”
The shooting occurred amid rising concerns about building safety and security, and an upcoming renovation, tenants said.
Tenants interviewed by the Weekly alleged that over the past few years there have been recurring security and habitability issues in the 117-unit building. That includes broken front entry doors that don’t lock and other instances of people gaining access to vacant apartments.
Holsten has announced plans to rehabilitate all four Hilliard Towers. Renovations on the first two buildings are expected to begin in March 2025, but financing and a construction timeline have not yet been finalized for the building where the shooting occurred.
In the days leading up to October 5, building residents were aware that people were using the first-floor vacant apartment and notified security and management, said Lily, another tenant in the building. “Nobody listened,” she said. (Anna and Lily are pseudonyms for tenants in the building who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation for speaking with the press.)
In previous cases, Holsten resecured other vacant apartments that were being used or squatted after being notified, tenants said.
Still, tenants want to see more proactive management, better communication and security practices, and improved living conditions.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Holsten wrote that the homicide occurred in a “secured, locked” vacant unit and that the company has “re-secured the unit to prevent further access.”
Originally a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) development built in 1966, the iconic brutalist complex in the South Loop is now a mixed-income community, owned and managed by Holsten. There are four buildings on the campus, two designated for families and two for senior citizens. Though no longer managed by the CHA, many tenants in the mixed-income community rely on Section 8 vouchers, a rental assistance program managed by the CHA.
Renters in the family buildings formed a tenants union last November to demand improved living conditions in the two family buildings on the Hilliard Homes campus. Their demands to Holsten included better building security practices, along with addressing persistent roach infestations and faster repairs for leaks and mold.
At the time, Holsten senior vice president Jackie Holsten said, “we take their concerns seriously and will work with the residents of Hilliard to resolve their concerns.”
“Like nothing ever happened”
It’s not uncommon for investigations into fatal shootings not to result in arrests in Chicago. Between 2013 and 2023, in only 21 percent of fatal shooting cases did Chicago police make an arrest within one calendar year, according to a data analysis by The Trace.
Tenants said they wish Holsten had acknowledged the incident sooner, and provided more information about how they plan to improve building safety.
Property managers acknowledged a security incident that resulted in a loss of life in a brief email the following week, tenants said.
“You would think the security would be beefed up, but it feels the same way, nothing has changed,” Lily said. “You walk past the apartment where the young man was killed, [maintenance staff is] repairing and painting it like nothing ever happened.”
“I’m still shaken up from the incident, because someone lost their life,” said Larayne Wilson, the assistant director of operations for the Hilliard site. “I wish I had more information to share with the residents throughout the site and in the community, but I do not because I have not spoken with the police regarding it since.”
Deteriorating conditions
Over the past year and a half, the main entry door to the 2030 S. State St. building has repeatedly broken or been easily opened without a key, tenants said. The tenants union has asked management to find a permanent solution since it formed last November.
Wilson acknowledged the challenges keeping the door in good condition but said it was tenants’ use of the door, not the door itself, that caused damages.
“It’s not the parts, it’s the yanking on the doors,” Wilson said. “We are constantly fixing the main doors and the side doors.”
Tenants have repeatedly said that building security is one of their biggest barriers to feeling safe in the 2030 building. “I’ve come home—and not just coming home, but leaving to go out—where the front entrance door is wide open,” said one tenant in an interview with the Weekly last year. That tenant, who also requested anonymity at the time due to fear of retaliation, said that in her ten years in the building, she had also experienced serious water-related damages in her apartment that took years to fully repair.
“I’m frustrated and disappointed by management for this to be going on for so long,” the tenant said at the time. “I just want it to be a safe, clean building.”
For Lily, who has lived in the building for about ten years, poor building security has brought back traumatic memories of an ex she had a restraining order against who, years ago, showed up at her apartment door in Hilliard without being buzzed in.
Lily believes that if tenants were in a building without a CHA subsidy, management would have installed a more solid doorframe or have a more consistent security presence. Instead, she said she feels like management doesn’t think it’s worth the investment. “It just feels like it’s a stigma of, ‘Oh, because we have some tenants who are Section 8… .’ They say it like, ’These people are this mastermind of breaking doors, you know, like these are top-notch criminals.’”
Holsten spokesperson Melinda Guerra provided the following statement: “Holsten Real Estate Development Corporation offers residents an affordable and quality place to call home regardless of how much they can pay, and we pride ourselves on our partnerships that allow for subsidized housing. We do not, and never would, restrict building safety repairs or maintenance based on the rate our residents pay for their housing.”
“We are excited about the major renovation coming soon to this building, and the chance to modernize our Hilliard Towers. In the interim, our commitment remains the same: to manage our mixed-income housing in a way that aligns with our belief that everyone deserves affordable, quality housing.”
Failed inspections but years until a building-wide renovation
Holsten filed plans for a comprehensive $142 million renovation at two other buildings on the property, records show. The renovation will update both the interior and exterior of one family building and one senior building. In addition, the renovation will replace the building roofs and hot water plants, install all-electric kitchen appliances and introduce native landscaping on the campus.
Construction was slated to start by the end of this year, according to a funding application the company submitted to the City, which approved a preliminary application to distribute federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit financing for the renovation. That timeline has been pushed back.
Wilson confirmed that Holsten intends to begin renovation work in February or March of 2025. The other two buildings, including 2030 S. State St., where the shooting took place, are slated to be included in the next phase of renovation, which does not yet have a timeline.
The plans for renovation come twenty years after the last full rehabs of the building. Between 2004 and 2007, several years after Holsten took ownership from the CHA, the company carried out a $98 million complete rehabilitation of the four building’s interiors and exteriors. That renovation won a Department of Housing and Urban Development design award for excellence in historic preservation.
The latest renovation announcements also come after years of failed inspections and a City building-code violation.
Holsten has failed five of eight inspections of the 2030 S. State St. building that the City conducted in 2024, and all but one of five inspections conducted in 2023.
In November 2023, the City filed a lawsuit against the Hilliard Homes I Limited Partnership over building code violations at the 2030 S. State St. building. Those violations included rusted and warped stairway doors on upper floors of the building and corroding concrete on its exterior facades.
The city’s complaint references a 2021 Critical Exam Report that provided recommendations related to the spalling concrete on the exterior walls. “No action has been taken since the Nov-18-2021 critical exam report recommendations,” the complaint reads.
To Anna, the renovation plans feel like a catch–22. She feels encouraged by the news of upcoming renovations, but worries that conditions will continue to decline in the coming years.
“The issue isn’t even that so much as what has happened to the building, the feeling of them not caring about the building or the residents,” said Anna.
“I would like for them to imagine that this is a building on Michigan Avenue or up north, and how would [they] would treat the residents there.”
Emeline Posner is an independent journalist who lives and works in Chicago.