Skyline Newspaper

Scamming is an unfortunate reality that strikes many people when they think their luck is finally turning around. Scammers often target the elderly, young people living on their own for the first time, and people desperate for a good deal. It was no different in the case of a Woodridge, IL man.

David L. Briggs, 29, is facing two counts of felony theft by deception after charging an elderly man $117,000 for remodels that he never finished. One count is for the charges exceeding $100,000, and the other is for the victim being over the age of 60. Police were notified by the victim’s family after they were notified by the 79-year-old’s bank about the numerous payments going to Briggs.

The family’s statement says that the victim was told that Briggs owned a remodeling company. Briggs offered to complete numerous projects at the man’s Villa Park home, but then never completed them.

After interviewing Briggs and completing criminal subpoenas for his bank account, authorities found that the total cash amount came to about $117,000. Briggs had spent all of it without completing any of the remodels promised. He is now being held on $500,000 bail at the DuPage County Jail, and police encourage anyone else who may have similar dealings to contact them.

It is unfortunate incidents like this which overshadow a booming home remodel industry. The annual Cost vs. Value Report from Remodeling shows most remodel projects on the rise, many making large jumps from last year. In fact, a simple bathroom remodel has a return on investment of 63.6%, placing it at number 10 on the list of top home remodels.

But scammers such as Briggs plant a seed of doubt in homeowners’ minds. The last thing anyone needs is to have tens of thousands of dollars worth of hard-earned money taken from them. The answer is simple, however: do your research. If something seems too good to be true, it likely is. Follow your instincts and ask around before hiring anyone. Homeowners can also check with the Better Business Bureau, and read reviews on websites such as Angie’s List.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has detailed the fallout he attributes to Chicago Public Schools making good on a $634 million pension payment: 1,050 workers will lose their jobs, 350 vacant positions will be eliminated, and several education programs will be discontinued as a result of $200 million in budget cuts.

The plan also includes $175 million property tax increase to help pay for teacher pensions — but that can only happen if the state and Chicago’s teachers invest in what the mayor described as a “grand bargain” to end the district’s perennial money woes. Much of this plan requires approval from state legislators, who remain stuck with their own budget problems.

“In my view, these cuts are intolerable, they’re unacceptable and they’re totally unconscionable,” Emanuel said. “They’re a result of a political system that’s sprung a leak and now it’s a geyser. There’s a series of political compromises and patchwork over the years that can no longer continue.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, CPS interim Chief Executive Jesse Ruiz has stated that the budget cuts will not affect the length of the school day, although classes will start and end 45 minutes later to “reduce transportation costs.”

Cutting out 1,400 faculty jobs will also mean that extracurricular programs, such as athletics, will be downsized. This means that from the time children are placed in public education programs — possibly as early as four years old, for the average preschool program — they won’t have as many opportunities to cultivate creativity and teamwork-focused mindsets. Most preschools serve three-, four-, and five-year-olds — a time when creativity and expression are of utmost importance.

District officials say that this time, they tapped into borrowed money, which included $200 million of tax anticipation notes to make the pension payment. A bill was recently passed which aims to ease pension pressures at CPS, while giving Governor Bruce Rauner the tax freeze he has been pushing for. Any solid plans on fixing the problem in the long term have yet to be released.

A new analysis from Zillow has concluded that Chicago has more “underwater” mortgages than any other real estate market in the country, meaning there are more homeowners in Chicago than anywhere else whose houses are worth less than they still owe on their mortgage.

The total figure for the Chicago metro area, according to Zillow, is 413,690. That’s far and away the highest number of total underwater loans; New York comes in a distant second with 307,573.

According to the first-quarter data, Chicago also has the second-highest overall rate of homeowners with underwater mortgages, a concept referred to as negative equity. Nearly 24% of Chicago mortgages were underwater as of the first quarter. That’s actually a significant year-over-year improvement, down from 28.1% in the first quarter of 2014, but the market still trails only Las Vegas, which has a 25% negative equity rate.

Zillow calculated that rate by comparing the estimated values of each home to “all outstanding mortgage debt and lines of credit associated with the home,” meaning the analysis took into account home equity lines of credit and home equity loans, as well as traditional mortgages. Home values can, of course, be difficult to pinpoint (since something as simple as landscaping can increase home value by between 7% and 15%), but estimates can still act as valuable indicators of the overall condition of a market.

The national negative equity rate now sits at 15.4%, more than a three-point drop from this time last year. At the lowest point of the real estate crisis, more than 15 million American homeowners held underwater mortgages; that figure has now decreased to around 7.9 million.

But those homeowners are quite deeply underwater. “It’s great news that the level of negative equity is falling, but what really worries me is the depth of negative equity,” Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries commented in a news release, explaining that it could take up to a decade for many of those homeowners to build enough equity to get their mortgages right-side-up again.

He also explained that these underwater mortgages affect the entire market, especially with lower-end houses, because they prevent would-be first-time homebuyers from finding affordable entry-level properties.

“The logjam at the bottom is having ripple effects throughout the market, and as home value growth slows, it will be years before it gets cleared up,” Humphries predicted. “In the meantime, we’ll be left with volatile prices, limited inventory, tepid demand, elevated foreclosures and a whole lot of frustration.”

Northwest Community Healthcare, which serves suburbs to the northwest of Chicago, is embracing technological advances to offer more convenience and better care to its patients.

The group just finished the implementation of a new electronic health record system, a project that has been in the works since late 2013.

The system “helps improve communication between clinicians, allows patient data to be readily available across all units and saves time for clinicians who no longer chase down patient charts,” CEO Steve Scogna said in a statement.

It also allows patients to access their own information through a 24-hour online portal so they can request or schedule appointments, view their test results, request refills on prescriptions, keep track of immunization and medications, and even securely communicate with healthcare providers directly.

Electronic Health Records in the U.S.
Despite their undeniable promise, electronic health records have become a fraught issue in the United States, largely because of government programs that first incentivized and have now essentially mandated their use for providers accepting Medicare or Medicaid payments.

There’s no doubt that the market for EHR systems is growing; the industry is projected to reach nearly $30 billion by 2022, according to the latest projections. Data for last year is still being collected, but adoption of basic EHR systems by office-based physicians went up by 21% in just one year between 2012 and 2013 (bringing the total figure to about 78%). Critics say, however, that doctors have had very little choice in whether to implement those systems and in how they are implemented.

Federal regulators are now having to back off on some requirements in order to give doctors, hospitals and medical software systems more time to comply with government requirements.

The next big challenge, those in the industry say, will be to bridge the gaps among various EHR software systems so that both providers and patients can reap all the benefits that EHRs can — at least in theory — offer.