The story of Indian Trails and the real Sausage King of Chicago is about what happened when a corporation led by a pair of out-of-town real estate investors with a penchant for 1980s pop culture bought a property in Chicago. It\u2019s about how wealthy real estate investors purchase buildings where rent is subsidized by the federal government and collect tens of millions of dollars in rental income without providing low-income residents a safe and clean place to live.<\/p>\n
\u2018Everything\u2019s cold\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n
Jasmine Duckett was born and raised at Indian Trails. After a few years away, she moved back in 2021.<\/p>\n
The past three winters, Duckett, 34, said she had to rely on two space heaters provided by property managers to warm her two-bedroom unit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the wintertime, you can\u2019t come out of your [bedroom] because everything else is freezing \u2014 bathroom\u2019s cold, hallway\u2019s cold, everything\u2019s cold,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Some days, she used her stove to heat the place, which exacerbated asthma symptoms for her two young sons, 6 and 2. They have been in and out of the hospital with pneumonia, asthma attacks and febrile seizures.<\/p>\n
Duckett said the children have struggled in school because of challenges at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they\u2019re sleepy or something, nine of 10 times it\u2019s not because of them, it\u2019s because of their living situation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The freezing temps are not all Duckett has endured as she\u2019s juggled jobs as a home care aide, forklift driver and UPS assistant. She described broken cabinets that went unrepaired for years, a ceiling that would leak anytime there was rain or snow, roaches crawling everywhere and mold in her apartment and common areas around the building.<\/p>\n
Duckett said things have been so bad at times that she and her kids have had to crash at relatives\u2019 homes.<\/p>\n
Until recently, she had not heard of her landlord, The Sausage King of Chicago LLC.<\/p>\n
The real Sausage King of Chicago<\/b><\/p>\n
Public records show that the cheekily named company is primarily owned by two investors from California: Alan Smolinisky and Brian Chien-Chih Chen. Two other investors, Robert Budman and Patrick Luke, are \u201cminority and non-controlling\u201d owners of Indian Trails, according to Budman. \u201cWe have no knowledge of or involvement in the operations of the property.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Indian Trails Apartments, located at 221 E. 121st Pl. in the West Pullman community area on Chicago\u2019s South Side.<\/p>\n Gary Middendorf\/For the Sun-Times<\/p>\n Neither Smolinisky nor Chen responded to requests for interviews. But Smolinisky, in podcast appearances, videos<\/a> and news reports<\/a>, has spoken about his life and businesses.<\/p>\n Smolinisky has said he was a student at the University of Southern California in the 1990s when he met Chen, his future business partner. Chen, an immigrant from Taiwan, was Smolinisky\u2019s landlord and owned a real estate business renting apartments to USC students.<\/p>\n Smolinisky, the son of Jewish Argentinian immigrants, said he found Chen a good fit for a business partner.<\/p>\n \u201cChinese and Jews are very, very similar cultures, very similar worldviews, very similar values around education, around business, around family,\u201d Smolinisky said in an interview with the \u201cGoing Big\u201d podcast<\/a> this past summer.<\/p>\n Smolinisky and Chen formed Conquest Student Housing. They built and renovated apartment buildings around the USC campus, eventually expanding to the University of California at Santa Barbara. At one point, Conquest owned and operated so much of the private housing around USC that the university sued the company in federal court, citing the Sherman Antitrust Act.<\/p>\n The university accused Conquest of using lawsuits to stop other developers from building around campus and even cited how the company referred to itself as the \u201cal Qaeda of USC student housing\u201d because it knew \u201chow to \u2018bomb\u2019 competitive projects through litigation,\u201d according to the federal lawsuit, w<\/a>hich was settled<\/a> in 2008.<\/p>\n That year, in a stroke of luck and impeccable timing, Smolinisky and Chen sold their business for $205 million just before the housing market crash.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then it was a good time to have a lot of capital, because the whole world was on sale,\u201d Smolinisky said in the podcast. \u201cAny asset anywhere in the world, from stocks to real estate, anything you wanted to buy was in the bargain bin.\u201d<\/p>\n In subsequent years, Smolinisky and Chen scooped up more properties not just in California but all across the United States, naming many of the companies they created to operate them after 1980s and \u201990s movies and TV shows.<\/p>\n According to a WBEZ analysis of U.S. Housing and Urban Development records, at least 24 properties across 13 states receiving federal rent subsidies last year were associated with an address for several of Smolinisky\u2019s or Chen\u2019s businesses. In all, the properties received more than $37 million in rental income from HUD last year. Other limited liability companies that owned these buildings had names like We\u2019ll Drive Home Backwards LLC, another line from \u201cFerris Bueller\u2019s Day Off,\u201d and What Is A Plethora LLC, a line from the 1986 film \u201cThe Three Amigos.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2019, Smolinisky also became part-owner<\/a> \u2014 at less than 5% \u2014 of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the 2024 and 2025 MLB World Series champions valued by Forbes at nearly $7 billion<\/a>. In 2022, he partnered with Nike founder Phil Knight in an unsuccessful attempt to purchase the NBA\u2019s Portland Trail Blazers for more than $2 billion. Smolinisky also dabbles<\/a> in media, having purchased<\/a> his hometown newspaper, the Palisadian-Post, in 2012.<\/p>\n Asked about his ventures on the \u201cGoing Big\u201d podcast, Smolinisky said he is \u201clooking at a number of businesses \u2026 watching publicly traded securities and the debt markets every morning, looking for opportunities there.\u201d<\/p>\n Deteriorating conditions<\/b><\/p>\n On a rainy day, as two WBEZ reporters walked around Indian Trails with a couple of residents and a housing organizer from the Jane Addams Senior Caucus, tenants gathered around. Each shared photos and stories about their units: a rodent infestation, lack of heat, water shut-offs with no advance notice, flooding, no hot water, maintenance workers showing up out of the blue.<\/p>\n Inside one of the buildings, Barbara Harrison, 58, stood in the hallway across from an elevator with a pool of liquid on the floor that smelled like urine. She\u2019s lived at the development for about 16 years.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first moved here, it was beautiful,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you had something [that needed repair] in your apartment, within 24 hours it was taken care of.\u201d<\/p>\n Harrison said Indian Trails\u2019 previous owner \u2014 the late Kenneth Ringbloom of southwest suburban Darien \u2014 ran a tight ship. Under his ownership, each building had its own live-in maintenance person, she said. Property managers screened potential tenants and were more selective about who they allowed to move in, according to Harrison.<\/p>\n In 2017, a year before he died, Ringbloom sold the complex for $16.6 million to The Sausage King of Chicago LLC, which is owned by Smolinisky and Chen, according to public financing and mortgage documents.<\/p>\n Residents said Indian Trails wasn\u2019t in perfect condition during Ringbloom\u2019s final years, but things deteriorated quickly after the sale to The Sausage King. There were no more maintenance workers living on-site, and Indian Trails was passed from one property manager to the next, residents said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The laundry room of one of the buildings at the Indian Trails development is pictured on June 18, 2025.<\/p>\n Dichonda Sandelin, 43, walked through the laundry room in the basement, stepping over a puddle of sewage and pointing to a nonfunctioning bathroom.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a big plummet from when the original owners [Ringbloom] were here to now,\u201d according to Sandelin, who said that many older tenants no longer rely on property management to make repairs. \u201cThey try to fix it themselves, or they have their sons who grew up here fix it for them.\u201d<\/p>\n Residents and organizers said the development\u2019s current property management company, an arm of Smolinisky\u2019s and Chen\u2019s Conquest Housing, has been the least responsive of the property managers Indian Trails has had in recent years.<\/p>\n Indian Trails has been in building court for more than two years for a recurring set of building code violations \u2014 broken heating and hot water systems, plumbing and electrical issues, missing or broken smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, missing fire extinguishers \u2014 and The Sausage King of Chicago LLC has repeatedly missed deadlines to fix the problems, city of Chicago and court records show.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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