Kanye West buys childhood South Shore home

(Credit: Daily Mail)

Yeezy is coming back to his South Shore neighborhood. Or at least he has his old house. Kanye West, also known as the Louis Vuitton Don, has recently purchased his childhood home in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood for $225,000.

West’s mother, Donda West, purchased the 1,600 square foot home located at 7815 S. South Shore Drive back in the early 1980s and sold it 2004.

The home was built around 1905 and sits on a roughly 7,000-square-foot lot, which is more than twice the size of the citywide average.

West’s stepfather signed the deed to the three-bedroom home over to the Grammy-winning musician’s  mother in 1985. They lived there while West’s mother taught English at Chicago State University.

“It went through a lot of trouble after that,” said Crain’s Chicago Business real estate reporter Dennis Rodkin. “It went through foreclosure and several years ago a foundation that Kanye was involved with, but Rhymefest — one of Kanye’s collaborators — bought it.”

Rodkin is speaking about Donda’s House, a nonprofit, founded to honor West’s late mother and led in part by West collaborator Che “Rhymefest” Smith. The original plan was to tear down the house and convert it into an arts incubator.


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Those plans were scrapped after the nonprofit failed to raise the $1 million toward the costs of demolition and construction of a new facility, which was expected to be up to 4,000 square feet.

 


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West has been very public about his financial troubles. According to Bloomberg, the rapper was swimming in debt four years ago after pouring money into his fashion company, Yeezy. He revealed his financial woes on Twitter, followed by a plea to Mark Zuckerberg to invest $1 billion in the rapper’s “ideas.”

While Zuckerberg never invested, West kept the brand going and now Bank of America Corp. has valued the sneaker side of the business alone at as much as $3 billion last year, says Bloomberg.

More than enough to buy and repair his home. Although plans remain unclear about what West ultimately plans to do with it.

West and wife Kim Kardashian own properties in Los Angeles and Wyoming.

SOURCE: WGN