WEEKLY IN CHICAGO
The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.
Volume 11, Issue 15
Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato
Managing Editor Adam Przybyl
Investigations Editor Jim Daley
Senior Editors Martha Bayne
Christopher Good Olivia Stovicek
Sam Stecklow Alma Campos
Politics Editor J. Patrick Patterson
Music Editor Jocelyn Martínez-Rosales
Immigration Editor Wendy Wei
Community Builder Chima Ikoro
Public Meetings Editor Scott Pemberton
Visuals Editor Kayla Bickham
Deputy Visuals Editor Shane Tolentino
Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma Shane Tolentino
Staff Reporter Michael Liptrot
Director of Fact Checking: Savannah Hugueley
Fact Checkers: Patrick Edwards Arieon Whittsey Christopher Good Mo Dunne
Layout Editor Tony Zralka
Executive Director Malik Jackson
Office Manager Mary Leonard
Advertising Manager Susan Malone
Webmaster Pat Sier
The Weekly publishes online weekly and in print every other Thursday. We seek contributions from all over the city.
Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to:
South Side Weekly
6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637
For advertising inquiries, please contact: Susan Malone (773) 358-3129 or email: malone@southsideweekly.com
For general inquiries, please call: (773) 643-8533
The Housing Issue
Owning a house is a key to not only creating wealth, but building a stable home from which to put down roots for one’s family for generations to come. But Chicago is a city of renters for whom homeownership is increasingly difficult to attain. It is also a city of activists, organizers, and change makers. In this issue we highlight the myriad of community-driven solutions championed by Chicagoans who want to see a city that everyone can call home.
Our issue examines efforts by the City to spur the development of affordable housing, such as massive investment programs like INVEST South/West and a $1.25 billion Housing and Economic Development Bond, as well as why these programs may not always live up to their promise. Inside you’ll also find a story on why additional dwelling units (ADUs), which could in theory help create affordable housing, are not being built on the South Side, and why multi-unit buildings are being deconverted into single family residences, taking affordable units off the market. The center spread of the issue will take you on a historical journey, sourced from the Chicago Workers Cottage Initiative, of one Bronzeville workers cottage that has so far avoided falling prey to deconversion and demolition as it’s changed hands over the decades.
We’ve reprinted the first part of a larger Injustice Watch series on how the courts are stacked against tenants, giving landlords the upper hand even when they’re at fault for code and rental violations, and trapping tenants in unsafe situations. Some tenants are taking matters into their own hands—read through interviews with organizers at four tenant unions on what it takes to sustain a pressure campaign against a negligent landlord and what the future of tenant unionism holds in store.
Damen Green line stop opens
The Damen CTA Green Line station opened on Aug. 5, following several delays. The stop, located at Lake Street and Damen Avenue, originally closed when the CTA was created in 1948 due to low ridership. In 2017 former Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced plans for the station to reopen in 2020, but was delayed. A Block Club Chicago report includes the station costing $80.2 million and was paid for by the Kinzie Industrial Corridor Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District. Ald. Water Burnett Jr. (27th) led this effort to reopen the stop to provide transportation to residents in public housing. The correction against disinvestment on the West Side comes intentionally ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago from Aug. 19 to Aug. 22.
Without the Damen stop, there is 1.5 miles between the nearest stops, California and Ashland.
Counter convention
As Chicago gears up to host the Democratic National Convention, movement organizers have announced a counter-event called “F*** the [G]NC,” organized by Chicago Dissenters. The alternative convention, which runs from this Saturday until August 23, will feature programming alongside March on the DNC. The free event includes panels, workshops, community spaces and parties “to provide a unifying space for organizers and actionists” and to be able “to explore, struggle and learn.” Topics on the agenda range from labor organizing for Palestine to prison abolition. This is a masked event with COVID guidelines, including testing at least two days before the convention. The South Side will host the majority of the convention with activities scheduled at Pilsen Community Books, Marz Brewing, and CoProsperity Chicago. Space is limited, and registration is required. You can register for the counter convention at this link: bit.ly/3YJ1HH7
THIS ISSUE
chicago prepares for possible migrant surge ahead of dnc
After Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he’d send 25,000 migrants to Chicago before the DNC, City leaders take stock of how Chicago has handled surges in the past.
alma campos
chicago se prepara para una posible oleada de migrantes antes de la convención demócrata
4
Después de que el gobernador de Texas, Greg Abbott, dijera que enviaría 25,000 migrantes a Chicago antes de la DNC, los funcionarios locales evalúan de qué manera Chicago ha manejado la situación. alma campos ............................................
johnson’s housing bond promises to succeed where tifs fall short
Over the next five years, the South and West Sides will see much of the $1.25 billion allocated earlier this year for affordable housing and economic development.
michael liptrot
johnson administration breathes new life into invest south/west developments in englewood
The program is going through a revamp and new policies are making their way to City Council in order to bolster efforts to increase the supply of affordable housing.
cordell longstreath
5
6
7 ‘just get to know your neighbors’
Four tenant unions reflect on building collective power and the future of the movement.
emeline posner
9 the twin fates of two-flats
Chicago’s two-to-four-flats are disappearing across the city as single-family homes and vacant lots are popping up in their place.
reema saleh........................................... 12
hardworking cottage
Tracing the story of one worker’s cottage in Bronzeville as it changed hands over more than a century. nick merlock jackson, matt bergstrom with the chicago workers cottage initiative ................................................ 14 additional dwelling unit ordinance predominantly benefits the north side, data shows
Three years since the pilot’s creation, 94 percent of ADU permits went to Chicago’s North and Northwest zones.
xuandi wang 16 rising rents, unlivable apartments leave tenants desperate, confused, and often helpless
Injustice Watch found thousands of buildings with chronic code violations and a court system that protects landlords over tenants.
alejandra cancino, maya dukmasova, forest gregg, alex richards, injustice watch ...................................................... 18
chicago’s homegrown talent shines at lolla Emerging artists brought raw energy and unforgettable performances to the summer music festival.
Cover photo by Grace Coudal
Chicago Prepares for Possible Migrant Surge Ahead of DNC
After Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he’d send 25,000 migrants to Chicago before the DNC, City leaders take stock of how Chicago has handled surges in the past.
BY ALMA CAMPOS
City leaders are trying to prepare in case of another surge of migrants.
At the Republican National Convention last month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott warned that he would continue to bus migrants to cities in blue states, and claimed that he would send as many as 25,000 migrants between now and the National Democratic Convention.
The arrival of Venezuelan migrants in Chicago and top Democratic hubs has been used by Republicans to promote anti-immigrant sentiment and overwhelm city resources. While blasting Democrats’ immigration policies, Abbott declared that Texas will keep sending migrants to Chicago and other sanctuary cities “until we finally secure our border.” These remarks come in weeks before Chicago will have the national spotlight hosting the Democratic National Convention and the world will be watching.
In a July meeting on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, 22nd Ward Alderman Michael Rodriguez brought up the potential surge of migrants arriving this summer and wanted to know if this was budgeted for. Annette Guzman, budget director for the City's Office of Budget and Management, said it was not.
“We have anticipated through discussions with people at the border… and the comments made by the governor of Texas that we would need upwards of 25,000 beds,” Guzman said. But she noted that there are only approximately 5,000 beds currently available.
“There is no coordination with the state of Texas, but at [the peak of incoming migrants in] October, November and December [of 2023], we were seeing about 2,000 arrivals a week,” she added.
Following President Biden's temporary suspension of migrants’ entry across the southern border, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a 29% decrease in migrant encounters in June 2024.
The city has found it difficult to handle the humanitarian crisis, rushing to open makeshift shelters during the winter, while migrants, including children, slept on the floors of police stations throughout the city for months.
The City-maintained arrival dashboard indicates 46,191 asylum seekers have arrived in Chicago since August 2022. Approximately 20,000 migrant children have been enrolled at Chicago Public Schools.
Currently, over 5,000 migrants are being housed in seventeen shelters by the city and state, 2,000 of whom are minors.
“This is from a peak of 15,000 the week right after Christmas,” Deputy Immigration Mayor Beatriz Ponce de Léon said in the July meeting. During this peak, the daily cost of temporary shelter was over $1.4 million a day.
The data from June shows that number has gone down to approximately $680,000 per day.
Last week, the city dashboard reported a total of eight migrants at the designated “landing zone” at 800 S. Desplaines and nine migrants “awaiting placement”—not a drastic increase.
“As you have seen, this has not been a perfect mission, this has not always been pretty, we have had to make adjustments along the way,” Ponce de Léon said. “We have had to be nimble and flexible and course correct and build partnerships that we did not have before.
As of July, over 8,000 work permit applications in the Chicago region have
been submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), of which more than 5,000 have been approved.
Some of the partnerships are nonprofits and their local network partners that have been working to support asylum seekers and migrants who have arrived from Texas.
The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) has been helping new arrivals navigate the labyrinth of the legal system to help people remain in the U.S. and obtain employment.
“We’ve been hearing what everyone else has been hearing, that there’s this expectation that the governor of Texas might try to send an increased number of Southwest border arrivals to the Chicago area around the time of the Democratic National Convention,” said Lisa Koop, who is the National Director of Legal Services at NIJC.
“I think looking at it more broadly, the city of Chicago has worked really hard over the last months, and at this point we’re moving into years to set up structures to receive people, to keep people safe to first and foremost, recognize the humanity of people. And obviously, it’s not always been perfect, and systems have been strained.”
“For us, it’s a top priority to help people get stabilized. Oftentimes, that means if we can help someone achieve employment authorization that gives them the tools that they need to move out of shelters and find a stable place to live and get their kids enrolled in school,” said Koop.
Throughout his 2024 campaign and during his presidency, Donald Trump has often issued anti-immigrant rhetoric. During an April campaign speech in Wisconsin, Trump dubbed immigrants
“animals” and “not human.”
Just weeks ago, at the National Association of Black Journalists 2024 conference, the presidential candidate used the platform to blast migrants for taking “Black jobs,” something he has done before, controversially, including in a June debate with Joe Biden.
“It’s really sad and disappointing to hear politicians dehumanize immigrants, and treat them as political instruments to further promote negative messaging,” said Koop. “I’m very proud that NIJC is a part of a Chicago community that has countered harmful narratives and has worked really hard to show that we embrace the humanity of everybody that arrives in our communities,” she added.
At the July meeting, Antonio José Reyes Ortega, a Venezuelan migrant wearing a gray sweater with an embroidered Chicago Bulls logo, stood up during the public comment period. He expressed gratitude at being able to stay at a shelter in Chicago, but said he is struggling to get work because he doesn’t have a work permit.
Addressing the people and members of the City Council he said in Spanish, “You’ve provided me with a roof, somewhere to sleep, somewhere to shower. I think that what you do is wonderful. I have tried to look for work. I don’t even know where to go to look for work anymore. I think, every time I go look for work, I go to a place farther and farther away. If it’s farther than I’d been, there I will go. But the answer remains the same, ‘No. Because you don’t have a work permit’ or ‘because you don’t speak English.”’ ¬
Alma Campos is a senior editor at the Weekly.
Chicago se prepara para una posible oleada de migrantes antes de la Convención Demócrata
Después de que el gobernador de Texas, Greg Abbott, dijera que enviaría 25,000 migrantes a Chicago antes de la DNC, los funcionarios locales evalúan de qué manera Chicago ha manejado la situación.
POR
ALMA CAMPOS
Los funcionarios de Chicago están tratando de prepararse en caso de otra oleada de migrantes luego de que, en la Convención Nacional Republicana del mes pasado, el gobernador de Texas Greg Abbott advirtiera que seguiría enviando migrantes en autobús a ciudades de estados demócratas o azules. Abbott afirmó que enviaría hasta 25,000 migrantes de aquí a la Convención Nacional Demócrata que tendrá lugar en Chicago en menos de una semana.
La llegada de migrantes venezolanos a Chicago y otros estados demócratas ha sido aprovechada por los republicanos para promover el sentimiento antiinmigrante y agobiar los recursos municipales.
Mientras criticaba las políticas de inmigración de los demócratas, Abbott declaró que Texas seguirá enviando migrantes a Chicago y a otras ciudades santuario “hasta que finalmente aseguremos nuestra frontera.” Estos comentarios se producen semanas antes de que Chicago sea anfitrión de la Convención Nacional Demócrata (DNC, por sus siglas en inglés).
En una reunión llevada acabo por el comité de los derechos de los inmigrantes y refugiados del Concejo Municipal, el concejal del distrito 22 Michael Rodriguez mencionó la posible oleada de migrantes que llegarían este verano y quiso saber si esto estaba previsto en el presupuesto. Annette Guzmán, directora de presupuesto de la Oficina de Presupuesto y Gestión, dijo que no.
“Lo hemos anticipado a través de discusiones con personas en la frontera... y los comentarios hechos por el gobernador de Texas que necesitaríamos más de 25,000 camas”, dijo Guzmán. Pero también señaló que actualmente sólo hay unas 5,000 camas disponibles.
“No hay coordinación con el estado de Texas, pero en octubre, noviembre y
diciembre [de 2023] se registraron unas 2,000 llegadas semanales”, agregó.
Tras la suspensión temporal de Biden del ingreso de migrantes por la frontera sur, la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza de Estados Unidos reportó una disminución del 29% en los encuentros con migrantes en junio de 2024.
La Ciudad de Chicago ha tenido dificultades para tratar la crisis humanitaria, apresurándose a abrir refugios temporales en el invierno mientras los migrantes, incluyendo niños, dormían en el suelo de las comisarías de policía de toda la ciudad durante meses.
Los últimos datos municipales sobre los recién llegados indican que 46,191 solicitantes de asilo han llegado a Chicago desde agosto de 2022. Aproximadamente 20,000 niños migrantes han sido matriculados en las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago.
Actualmente, la Municipalidad y el Estado alojan a más de 5,000 migrantes en diecisiete refugios, 2,000 de los cuales son menores de edad.
“Comparado a un pico de 15,000 la semana después de Navidad”, dijo la alcaldesa adjunta de Inmigración, Beatriz Ponce de Léon, en la reunión de julio. Durante este pico, el costo diario del alojamiento temporal superaba los $1.4 millones al día.
Los datos de junio muestran que esa cifra ha bajado a unos $680,000 diarios.
La semana pasada, la Municipalidad contó un total de ocho migrantes en la “zona de aterrizaje” designada en 800 S. Desplaines y nueve migrantes en espera de ser alojados, lo que no supone un aumento drástico.
“Como han visto, esta no ha sido una misión perfecta, esto no siempre ha sido bonito, hemos tenido que hacer ajustes a lo largo del camino”, dijo Ponce de Léon.
“Hemos tenido que ser ágiles y flexibles, corregir y crear asociaciones que antes no teníamos”.
Hasta julio, se habían presentado más de 8,000 solicitudes de permiso de trabajo al Servicio de Ciudadanía e Inmigración de los Estados Unidos (USCIS, por sus siglas en inglés), de las cuales más de 5,000 han sido aprobadas.
Algunas de estas asociaciones son organizaciones sin fines de lucro y sus socios que han estado trabajando para ayudar a los solicitantes de asilo y migrantes que han llegado de Texas.
El Centro Nacional de Justicia para Inmigrantes (NIJC, por sus siglas en inglés) ha estado ayudando a los recién llegados a navegar el laberinto del sistema legal para ayudar a las personas a permanecer en los Estados Unidos y obtener un empleo.
“Hemos estado escuchando lo que todo el mundo ha escuchado, que existe la expectativa de que el gobernador de Texas podría tratar de enviar un mayor número de personas de la frontera suroeste al área de Chicago alrededor de la fecha de la Convención Nacional Demócrata”, dijo Lisa Koop, quien es la directora nacional de servicios legales de NIJC.
“Creo que mirándolo en términos más generales, la Municipalidad ha trabajado muy duro en los últimos meses, que a estas alturas se están convirtiendo en años, para establecer estructuras para recibir a la gente, para mantener a las personas seguras y, ante todo, reconocer la humanidad de las personas. Y obviamente, no siempre ha sido perfecto, y los sistemas han estado al límite”.
A lo largo de su campaña para 2024 y durante su presidencia, Donald Trump ha utilizado a menudo retórica antiinmigrante. Durante un discurso de campaña en abril en Wisconsin, Trump se refirió a los inmigrantes como “animales”
y “no humanos”.
Hace unas semanas, en la conferencia de la Asociación Nacional de Periodistas Negros 2024, el candidato presidencial utilizó la plataforma para atacar a los migrantes por quitarles “empleos a los negros”, algo que ya ha dicho antes, polémicamente, incluso en un debate con Joe Biden en junio.
“Es realmente triste y decepcionante oír a políticos deshumanizar a los inmigrantes y tratarlos como instrumentos políticos para promover mensajes negativos”, dijo Koop. “Estoy muy orgullosa de que el NIJC forme parte de una comunidad de Chicago que ha contrarrestado los discursos dañinos y ha trabajado muy duro para demostrar que aceptamos la humanidad de todos los que llegan a nuestras comunidades”, agregó.
En la reunión de julio, Antonio José Reyes Ortega, un migrante venezolano que vestía un suéter gris con el logotipo bordado de los Chicago Bulls, se levantó durante el periodo de comentarios del público. Expresó su gratitud por poder quedarse en un refugio de Chicago, pero dijo que tiene dificultades para trabajar porque no tiene permiso de trabajo.
Dirigiéndose a las personas y a los miembros del Concejo Municipal, dijo en español: “Me han dado un techo, un lugar donde dormir, un lugar donde ducharme. Creo que lo que hacen es maravilloso. He intentado buscar trabajo. Ya ni siquiera sé dónde ir a buscar trabajo. Creo que cada vez que voy a buscar trabajo, voy a un sitio cada vez más lejos. Si está más lejos que antes, hasta allá iré. Pero la respuesta sigue siendo la misma: ‘No. Porque no tienes permiso de trabajo’ o 'porque no hablas inglés’”. ¬
Alma Campos es una editora principal del Weekly.
Johnson’s Housing Bond Promises to Succeed Where TIFs Fall Short
Over the next five years, the South and West Sides will see much of the $1.25 billion allocated earlier this year for affordable housing and economic development.
BY MICHAEL LIPTROT
As Chicago prepares to welcome the Democratic National Convention next week, Mayor Brandon Johnson is ready to highlight his administration’s track record so far—particularly around common disparities that receive national attention.
Chicago’s tale of two cities has long centered on the disparate investments between the North Side and the South and West Sides. Access to affordable housing, economic development to create thriving commercial corridors, and policies to spur the two are often the subject of political agendas aimed to improve the areas.
Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot sought to address these issues by launching the INVEST South/West initiative in her first six months in office. The initiative, operated through the Department of Planning and Development, sought to be a “spark for equity” by using an initial $250 million of DPD funds to stimulate commercial developments and create affordable housing on the South and West Sides. This injection was meant to encourage public and private investors to contribute towards generating equitable developments. In 2021, the Department of Housing under Lightfoot also announced the then-largest investment in affordable housing—more than $1 billion dedicated to 24 developments and 2,428 units.
As time passed in Lightfoot’s term, the reception to INVEST S/W was mixed. Three years after the initiative was launched, a 2022 Crain’s Chicago Business report showed that no project through the initiative had broken ground on construction or been granted city approval. A 2023 Sun Times opinion piece by developers working on the United Yards project in the Back of the Yards defends the initiative’s goals needing to “take time, hard work, collaboration and a lot of patience.”
Lightfoot’s policies sought to spur affordable housing and economic development through legislation such as the revised Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO) in 2021, to secure affordable units and dollars for other equitable development. 2020’s Fair Notice Ordinance worked to protect tenants from sudden lease terminations and evictions. The anti-deconversion ordinance of 2021 sought to slow gentrification by limiting the conversion of apartment buildings to single-family homes, though only in certain areas like Pilsen.
Lightfoot’s term as mayor ended with INVEST S/W continuing, though direction for the program was not clear. The Sun Times reported in September that Johnson was to end the program, but not its goal of rejuvenating the South and West Sides.
As Johnson emerged as a leader in the Chicago mayoral race against Paul Vallas, he quickly made affordable housing a focus of his politics. Johnson’s campaign promised to hold the Chicago Housing Authority accountable, make building affordable housing easier to build, and heavily promoted the Bring Chicago home real estate transfer tax—which was voted down by the public in a ballot referendum in the March primary.
“We can create a prosperous city which no one is too poor to live in,” Johnson said in his inaugural address in May 2023. “I’m talking about a Chicago where 65,000 people don’t wake up on the streets or in a shelter, where public housing and affordable housing and a pathway to homeownership exists for everyone.”
In February, Johnson announced a $1.25 billion Housing and Economic Development Bond to work throughout the next five years (2024-2028), which would capture the revenues from expiring TIF
districts to create a more flexible funding stream for development around the city. Previously through TIF districts, property taxes were used by local municipalities to fund economic development and commercial corridors. This model largely depends on raising property values and taxes in an area to create a positive feedback loop of community investment, though it does not favor areas with depreciating property values. TIF’s have also been criticized for contributing to gentrification.
“TIF in itself is not predictable nor is it equitable, particularly in areas where you don’t have a strong tax base,” Chicago Deputy Mayor of Business and Neighborhood Development Kenya Merritt told the Weekly. “What ends up happening is a cycle of disinvestment that perpetuates some of our neighborhoods on the South, Southwest, and West Sides.”
Merritt and her Business and Neighborhood Development team worked closely with Johnson upon him taking office to research how to institute an equitable funding model throughout disinvested areas, and learned that Chicago was unique in its reliance on TIFs.
“Chicago has been an anomaly in that TIFs have been our main funding source,” Merritt said. “What you’ll see from a lot of major cities is that they use bond funding because it gives you the flexibility and, most importantly, it gives you the ability to plan strategically and long term around your investment. With the Housing and Economic Development Bond, we now know that we will have a reliable resource over the next five years.”
“We now have a tool that allows us to go into neighborhoods where we may have a significant amount of vacant lots or we may have commercial corridors that need investment, but may not have a
healthy TIF that allows for us to do that,” Merritt continued. “Now we have bond funds that are flexible enough for us to do that development. So now you’ll see that we have a commitment of being able to do 5,400 housing units…We’re able to serve over 500 businesses to build back our commercial corridors.”
The commitments included in the bond are split evenly between the Chicago Department of Planning and Development and Department of Housing, with each department receiving $625 million. The Bond Allocation Plan outlines that the DPD will focus on providing community development grants, small business capacity building through loans and grants, and jobs and workforce training grants.
Community development grants are where the majority of DPD’s bond funds will be allocated, set to total between $400 million and $500 million of the department’s $625 million. DPD says that the grants are to “support real estate development projects that result in rehabilitation or new construction of commercial, industrial, or mixed-use properties.” Grant dispersal prioritizes majority-Black and majorityLatinx neighborhoods on the South and West Sides that have historically experienced significant disinvestment. Mayor Johnson stated that $5 million in bond funds would be allocated to the recently announced quantum computing campus, per reporting from Block Club Chicago. Projects funded by the grant can use the funding to acquire property, rehab or demolish sites or further development costs.
“A game-changing aspect of the bond is its availability for economic developments projects anywhere in the City and for vertical construction,” said Peter Strazzabosco, deputy commissioner of the Department of Planning and
Development. “Until the bond, most support for economic development projects was limited to the geographies of healthy TIF districts and for site prep only.”
Strazzabosco says the bond has given DPD a jumpstart on economic developments across the city in lieu of shrinking TIF funds as districts are to expire.
“[The bond] is approximately commensurate with the amount of TIF revenue in recent years, but TIF revenues are expected to shrink by approximately 50 percent as districts expire over the next ten years,” Strazzabosco said. “In terms of a citywide jumpstart, DPD is working on proposals to eliminate all parking minimums for new development that would make new construction projects easier to finance and foster more pedestrian-friendly construction, allow ground floor-residential as of right in business corridors to reduce vacancies, and activate underutilized spaces.”
“There are also approximately 175 active grant-assisted economic development projects in the pipeline that will have catalytic impacts upon completion in coming months.”
With bond funds, the Department of Housing is allocating their funds primarily to providing affordable rental housing and empowering residents towards homeownership. $360 to $390 million of the funds is aimed at construction and preserving 600 to 1,000 affordable rental homes. Additionally, these funds contribute to a Green Social Housing Revolving fund that provides loans to developers with the intention that the developers sell newly constructed affordable housing back to the government. This fund looks to yield more than 600 rental homes every five years. These funds also are expanding on preexisting programs to lower greenhouse gas emissions for 250 multifamily affordable housing units throughout the city via the installations of modern, low-carbon HVAC, heat pumps, and water heaters.
Homeownership support accounts for $210 to $240 million of the departments’ bond funds and comes in the form of down payment assistance, home repair, and other support programs. The Building Neighborhoods and Affordable Homes program provides buyers with forgivable grants up to $100,000 towards purchasing residences that are newly constructed single-family residences containing no more than four units. These funds are to
be used towards appraisal costs, down payments, and closing costs.
“The bond issue isn’t meant to reject TIF, but to enhance it. It’s innovative because it’s a more equitable approach to funding housing. DOH can really focus on communities that need safe, affordable housing now because it’ll be able to spread funds outside of TIF districts,” DOH public relations representative Takiesha Taylor said. “The bond is aimed at increasing both housing and economic opportunity across the City, and Cut the Tape is aimed at shortening processes and obstacles to these goals. They work hand in hand. DOH’s goal is to increase housing options all around, from investing over $20 million dollars in Single Room Occupancy (SRO) units via the bond to supporting the expansion of Additional Dwelling Units (ADUs).”
Working alongside Johnson’s Housing and Economic Development Bond is the Cut the Tape Initiative, a plan to fast track housing and commercial development. Stemming from a December 2023 executive order, the initiative is to back Johnson’s strategic priorities of “build faster,” “build everywhere,” “build together.”
“We have three goals for Cut the Tape and a focus of our plan was to be able to build faster by streamlining our processes that will hopefully accelerate development. And that makes it easier for our emerging developers that are looking to do development particularly on the South and West Sides,” Merritt said. “Streamlining the process in terms of working through the building department and making sure that if you’re doing a build of several houses on a specific block that we can make the process easier for you.”
As Johnson’s administration works to implement these housing and development plans throughout the coming years he must navigate the chaos that seems to inevitably cloud Chicago politics. The influx of new arrivals, aldermanic conflicts, and ongoing Community Benefit Agreement kerfuffles all provide added layers of complexity to the administration’s ambitions to create an equitable Chicago. Still, both the Housing and Economic Development Bond and Cut the Tape initiative have great potential to create a lasting legacy for Johnson and further the goals previously tackled by Lightfoot and mayors past. ¬
Michael Liptrot is a staff writer for the Weekly and the Hyde Park Herald
Johnson Administration Breathes New Life into INVEST South/ West Developments in Englewood
The program is going through a revamp and new policies are making their way to City Council in order to bolster efforts to increase the supply of affordable housing.
BY CORDELL LONGSTREATH
INVEST South/West, a community development initiative steered by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, was bold in its intentions to create a standard for what community investment could look like for the city’s long underserved neighborhoods. Under Mayor Brandon Johnson, the program is going through a revamp and new policies are making their way to City Council in order to bolster efforts to increase the supply of affordable housing and advance a greater number of community development projects.
Lightfoot’s stated goal with INVEST S/W was primarily to invest in key neighborhood corridors in ten different neighborhoods throughout the city that hadn’t gotten as much attention from private investment. The funding was pooled and community stakeholders were identified, yet some of the chosen projects and rollout of funding has been criticized as being biased and slow.
In the city’s three-year update for INVEST S/W, multiple projects were deemed successful, like the Montclare Residence, The Racine Village, transitional housing for returning citizens at The Regenerator, Thrive Englewood’s mixedincome workforce housing, military veteran housing at Hope Manor, and other projects funded by the program, amounting to over $100 million investment.
But these specific projects, which place housing at the center of their proposals, do not take up that large a piece of the overall pie. At the three-year mark for INVEST S/W, there was $2.2 billion in investment from private and public investors, and housing made up a total of just $536 million.
The Cut The Tape Report has over 100 recommendations to streamline the application, evaluation, and approval processes for community development projects in hopes to create more equity. This
report also created a task force of forty-nine stakeholders, which includes the developers and nonprofits that lead these projects.
In Englewood, The Earle School Family Residence project, from the Lightfoot-era, is now being coined an adaptive reuse historic project and is an example of an affordable housing project in the original INVEST S/W pipeline. The data shows that Englewood has a median income ($22,127) that fits the qualifications for an affordable housing program. The citywide median income is three times greater.
The INVEST S/W report doesn’t disclose the actual cost of a unit, but in a Finance Committee meeting in March 2024, the Earle School Family Residences showcased their estimates.The development would be one hundred percent affordable, with fifty total units. Depending on the type of unit, which range from one to twobedroom apartments, people making up to 43.2 percent of the area median income (AMI) would qualify for an apartment. Forty-eight percent of those units would also offer rental assistance in the form of housing vouchers.
One of the community partners that took part in the community engagement process for multiple proposals in Englewood was R.A.G.E. (Residents’ Association of Greater Englewood), a community organization focused on building power and economic self-determination in Englewood.
Nikki Patin is program director at R.A.G.E, where she has worked with the Chicago Recovery Plan. One of her tasks was mapping vacant lots and vacant properties in order to assess and catalog for redevelopment and to help create community safety.
“Part of that is also to develop community-led real estate work, where we are looking at blocks that may have five or more properties on what some people call superblocks, where we are looking to rehab properties [and make them] affordable for purchase,” Patin said.
Patin outlined the different programs that can help with the purchase of a home, like the IHDA grant, the CHA downpayment assistance program, FHA loans, as well as RAGE’s Buy The Block Program, which completed its eleventh cohort earlier this year. In summary, she said, “There is no magic bullet for buying a
home,” which she felt was part of a holistic approach when creating affordable housing in communities like Englewood.
From a developer’s point of view, the idea of investing in a disinvested community can be seen as counterintuitive. A key objective of INVEST S/W was to attract developers. Gorman and Company was one such developer, taking lead on the Earle School Family Residence project, and also as the developer of the Regenerator project. But if INVEST S/W’s goal was to get private capital to follow development proposals, there needed to be vehicles for sustainable investment.
“The challenge under Lightfoot was getting the money to the table,” said Ron Clewer, the Midwest market president for Gorman and Company. “Johnson, however, was able to get the council to agree to [a] bond and creating a pool for affordable housing and housing development adjacent to economic development, not either-or.”
RAGE was a part of the outreach for both the Go Green on Racine Project and the Earle School Family Residence project, and has participated in both administrations’ community engagement processes. Englewood is a community that has a collaborative relationship with alderpersons David Moore and Stephanie Coleman, an active Quality of Life plan, and strong community involvement that former Commissioner Maurice Cox recognized.
Patin talked about what community
development looked like and how that would help create affordable housing opportunities. She believes there is always more room for equity, stating, “When the process is made more accessible, the pool of people tend to reflect that.”
Patin believes moves like this allow the strongest applicants by creating accessibility for all community stakeholders. “An example I can give was when I started to see a trend where [the city] didn’t require the answer to every question to be written. They started offering the ability for people to submit audio”.
RAGE, along with a constellation of other community organizations, did the community engagement part of finding out what Englewood needed and wanted.
During the March Committee on Finance meeting, Clewer stated, “I understand that people in Englewood may not look like me,” as his opening statement to going over all the wraparound services being offered by the project.
The AMI of Chicago is a significant measurement of affordability, but what’s more critical is Englewood’s actual income. Gorman and Company presented Englewood’s median income at $22,127.
“If we look at Chicago median rents and median incomes, the concern we had is that the Chicago median income is significantly higher than the Englewood median income. If we built an affordable project using that, people who don’t live in Englewood could come into Englewood
and be housed in Englewood”, Clewer said, later adding, “we could literally not be servicing anyone in Englewood.”
Clewer referenced an example of a project in Gary, Indiana as the basis for the project in Englewood. That project used small area income to advise the project in Gary, where a fair market rate apartment is under $600. Using this model in Englewood, without vouchers, prices could range from $1,000 to $1,220 for studio, 1-bedroom, and 2-bedroom apartments.
The developers dealt with this dilemma by utilizing the small area income estimates, low-income housing tax credits, historic tax credits, and MAUI vouchers. Clewer pointed out what could have happened: “We could be greedy and say we want 100 percent vouchers on this project and want every unit renting for $2200, still taking 30 percent [from the tenant] with the government paying the rest… that’s really unfair.”
Clewer explained that each of these proponents services different people on Englewood’s income ladder while still prioritizing the lowest-income residents.
Clewer and Patin both worked with the city and other government agencies on these different projects. Patin views translatability as an important element for any city-led program. “It’s a matter of how you connect these [processes] to people and how you make them translatable for people, and that also depends on your goals and values as an administration.”
The vision of Lightfoot, the conditions of the pandemic, and progressive policymaking of the Johnson administration have created opportunities for community investment in the neighborhoods that need it most. Mayor Lightfoot and Johnson have found multiple ways to do community development, partnering with city government, community stakeholders, and private equity to invest in communities.
Lightfoot started a snowball effect that changed the dynamic of developers’ approaches to communities like Englewood, and Johnson is creating a more streamlined process that can meet the community's expectations. ¬
Cordell Longstreath is an Army veteran, writer, community advocate and activist, and teacher. He last interviewed South Side writer and actor Diallo Riddle for the Weekly
The Earle School Family Residence project promises to be one hundred percent affordable housing.
Photo courtesy of Gorman and Company
‘Just
Get to Know Your Neighbors’
Four tenant unions reflect on building collective power and the future of the movement.
BY EMELINE POSNER
In early spring, three tenants in a Pilsen building got a notification that their property company was offering to renew their leases for the following year. The devil was in the details. The monthly rent for all three apartments would rise significantly—in one case by $725, a 55 percent increase.
The tenants had spent the better part of the past year organizing a tenants union and pressing the company, First Western Properties, for safer building conditions. They filed suit against the company for the rent hike, alleging that it was retaliation for their organizing. “We have done everything by the book, according to the RLTO (Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance), but we are still facing retaliatory rent increases,” said Tulsi McDaniels, one of the union’s members and one of the plaintiffs listed in the lawsuit, at a late May press conference outside the company’s West Loop office. (A lawyer for the company has said the new rent is “reasonable” and within the normal range of the rental market, and that the suggestion they were raised in response to organizing was “a bit ridiculous,” the Sun-Times reported.)
The lawsuit will take time to make its way through the courts; the first hearing isn’t until late September. But the First Western Tenant Union, a recent entrant into Chicago’s tenant organizing ecosystem, isn’t sitting around waiting for a judge’s ruling. Members are still canvassing and helping neighbors navigate the legal framework that dictates what tenants can do, what they can’t, when tenants can withhold rent for a lack of repairs, and how much is reasonable to withhold, McDaniels and co-organizers
Cristina Miranda and Alex Wirt told the Weekly in an interview. Then the union will look to strengthen ties with other tenant unions based in other parts of the city.
including First Western Tenant Union, have cropped up across the city in the last several years in response to evictions and poor or unsafe housing conditions. As they accomplish their primary goals—helping themselves and their neighbors through crisis—many are sticking around. Some are going nationwide: South Shore-based
for tenant protections” and ultimately “guarantee housing as a public good.”
The Weekly interviewed members from four different tenants unions across the city about how they got started, what they’ve learned along the way, and what the future of tenant unionism could look like in Chicago.
First Western Tenant Union
It’s crazy how quickly things got fixed in one year of us coming together, talking to our neighbors. It’s not hard to talk to your neighbors, especially when you’re talking about your landlord, who you're all paying money to. If you’re in a situation where they’re not taking care of the building, you’re probably more likely to have a connection about this. So it’s really easy to talk to your neighbor, and then you actually see results because you’re acting collectively.
In our initial tenant meetings, we would talk about the issues that we wanted fixed. We included this in [our union] demand letter. We would meet on an as-needed basis. After that, we decided we wanted to start withholding [a small portion of our rent]. So we would discuss how we would withhold, and we would, you know, not have a formal vote, but essentially decide collectively on what our withholding percentages would be on certain issues. And we would do this for basically six months, meeting before we would send letters on certain issues.
We’ve done majority rules for a lot of our decisions. If anyone is feeling hesitant about something, we’ll talk it over and make the best decision that benefits everyone. It’s been really easy going. It has not been difficult to make decisions or or get things done.
With a lot of tenant unions starting out, you want to deal with your immediate needs before you can get to the rest of the stuff. And now we would like to build our base a little bit and obviously organize across other First Western buildings, and then organize across different organizations, working closer with [other tenant groups in the city], and then working with Just Cause [Chicago] and Lift the Ban. So we want to get these larger pieces of legislation passed as well,
and be a tool for them to use.
The challenge we probably face the most is having consistently engaged tenants in other buildings. There’s an extremely high turnover rate with tenants. People are constantly cycling in and out of these apartments. We had a very successful canvassing campaign, but the people we were most engaged with, one was booted out of their apartment in May for no reason, and other tenants just moved out.
There’s a lot of inter-organization information sharing. We got a lot of information from NSRA [North Spaulding Renters Association, now known as All-Chicago Tenant Alliance, or ACTA] and learned our rights through MTO [Metropolitan Tenants Organization]. NSRA already had a monthly newsletter, or a bi-monthly newsletter letter, and some how-to guide books and stuff like that. Some of it is grassroots writing that we’re using. A lot of [tenant unions] have actually made their own material, like pamphlets and just like written material that has really helped us out. CUT [Chicago Union of Tenants] has already made a tenants rights handbook.
What’s scary is that Bring Chicago Home didn’t pass. I think people are even more angry and upset. And the Supreme Court makes homelessness essentially…I mean, they’re criminalizing it, right? So while we’re trying to move forward, there’s signs of things moving backward. But that’s not going to stop us.
What keeps us going would probably be small wins. This building that’s a couple blocks away from our building, their mailbox was entirely busted. They didn’t have access to their mail until we helped them fill out a withholding letter and they literally responded immediately to them. There was some mold in the basement. They painted over the mold, but they fixed the mailbox.
All-Chicago Tenant Alliance (formerly North Spaulding Renters Association)
There’s a few different legal campaigns going on right now. Some people are campaigning for rent control [and] Just Cause for Eviction. It would be nice to see both of those happen. But we also
have experience with the existing tenant laws and that makes us skeptical. A Just Cause Eviction law without rent control lets landlords hike the rents; the other way around, they can just do weird evictions to get tenants out.
A lot of these laws that are meant to give rights to tenants, [but] they ended up sort of making it so that tenants have to go through the court system in order to do anything at all. We’ve had a heat case in the courts. And it still hasn’t been resolved, from two winters ago. And in the meantime, every tenant involved was pushed out of the building.
What we find is that landlords have a much more robust system of keeping track of everything, all their
other one is doing our street team and tabling, which is just like running around and setting up and going into buildings. The other one is what we call “social investigation”—we go and meet tenants at laundromats.
Tenant organizing is basically the Wild West. There’s no formal union structures, there’s no agreements between tenants and landlords the way there is between labor and companies. This is what makes it very difficult, but at the same time, a place where a lot of creativity is possible, and different forms of experimentation are possible.
When it first started, there wasn’t very much structure. We sort of built a formal structure from our work that
“People are still taking the collective knowledge to their new communities or new neighborhoods, and a lot of the referrals that we get now after eight years, is really word of mouth.” —Antonio Gutierrez of Autonomous Tenants Union
communications, because it’s their job. And that’s just the first inequality between tenants and landlords when it comes to the courts. Once they get into the court, the landlords typically have high-powered expensive lawyers, tenants have basically whatever [we can find].
We think that tenants across the city ideally would realize this, build organizations that are able to take control of the little bit of leverage that they do have, and really hold the landlords to it. In the 60s and 70s, there were activist lawyers who were willing to go to the courts with the intent of changing the law. But that’s secondary to tenants taking ownership of their building, being ready to rent strike, being ready to talk to their neighbors, being ready to do what they can to get changes.
We have three channels of reaching people this summer. One of them is the People's Cooling Army [editor’s note: this is an ACTA initiative through which members source and distribute free air conditioners to West Side tenants for summer use.] The
we were doing. We like to undertake structural processes as something where we experiment a little bit, and then we look at what has been working and formalize that—instead of immediately sitting down and cutting out like ten ground rules or whatever.
From that, we arrived at what might historically be called a cadre organization, where there’s an interior group that takes most of the work and responsibility. And then there’s a broader group that we pull in for smaller things based on their willingness. We formalized some ways of doing democratic votes. This structure remedies the [issue] that people have all different levels of involvement. We think that that keeps us going long-term. We have very committed people and they have responsibilities, and then other people can come and go as they please.
Our core has been kicked out of buildings and moved around and everything. In a lot of other unions this would typically cause it to dissolve, because it would seem that the point of
the meeting was to improve the building conditions. And we see that as part of what we do. But we’re committed to a much larger tenant union as a part of a political project.
We can take seriously the idea that a union is a place where we can become new types of people and really address the maladies that we feel we are experiencing in society.
East Lake Tenants Union
We started in 2021. East Lake Tenants Union is for tenants residing in East Lake [buildings], past and current tenants. The majority of [East Lake’s] portfolio is low-income housing. And that is our audience. We organize them, educate them on their rights, try to change their mindset about being fearful of sticking up for themselves, and then mobilize them to action. And the end of what we’re trying to do is tenant ownership of these buildings.
We also have the Ella Flagg Tenants Union [editor’s note: a tenant union that is part of East Lake Tenant Union at a senior building that is owned by the Chicago Housing Authority and managed by East Lake Management]
So we have a meeting every month where we talk about things that we want to do. At the beginning of the year, we set a plan in place that we follow. And sometimes people come in and think, “Oh, we're just here as a savior.” We are not—we are each other’s neighbors, friends, lovers, you know, everything. We come together as members. We’re membership driven. So the members are with it, we’re with it. If the members are not with it, we’re not with it. And that’s how we move.
Conditions, issues, that’s number one. And of course, retaliation and stuff. But it all stems from conditions. People are living in horrible, deplorable conditions: no hot water, mold, mildew, black mold, pest control, rats, roaches, broken ceilings. [Broken] elevators are a big thing.
Okay, you have a landlord, a property manager, she has an attitude or whatever. But you might put that aside if your elevator is working, if you don’t have rats and roaches.
[What would you say to people who are having issues in their building or
thinking about starting a tenants union?]
I would say being resilient, knowing your audience, knowing what your audience likes, what your audience doesn’t like. I had the grocery giveaway at that building I used to live in, my neighbors love to party. Always sat out on the front lawn. So what did we do? We had our giveaway on the front lawn. Had some music. We brought people out.
I have this marketing mindset. They say you’re supposed to know your audience. If you say, “Oh, everyone’s my audience,” you have no audience. We know our base, so we have to be able to market to them. Yes, it’s challenging. We’re dealing with decades of neglect, decades of negligence, racism, all this stuff. So it’s going to take a little minute, but it can be done.
Seeing the community engagement, which is really important, seeing other tenants sharing their stories and sticking up for themselves, really overshadows the “I’m gonna get evicted” mindset that tenants have.
Ella Flagg Tenants Union finally got some good work with laundry machines. My seniors were out there in the snow, traveling blocks and blocks to do laundry so they don’t have to worry about that anymore.
Two days ago, I got a call from a woman, she was like, “Is this the tenants union?” I was like, “Yeah.” She was like, “Well, I live at such and such,” and I’m like, “The address is not in Chicago, where are you located?” She said, “I’m in Denver … my girlfriend gave me your information.” So that made me think about our reach.
The partnership and collaboration is really important. Yes, what we do is so hard, so we have to be able to be in community with one another, because there are folks who’ve been doing this for decades. I want to give a big shout out to folks that we’ve worked with, Northside Action for Justice, Alliance of the Southeast, Altgeld-Murray Homes Alumni Association, Uptown People’s Law Center.
I hope to see more tenants in control, and that is something that we’re doing right now. Next month, we will be hosting a community land trust training, also open to the public, about how to create a community land trust—because
again, our overall end goal is to be in control and to be permanent people in the neighborhoods in which we are in.
Autonomous Tenants Union
ATU started in 2016. Many of the cofounders—it was eight of us, and more than half [of us] had already experienced an eviction, a mass eviction. We worked together at a community center in Albany Park. And when we left the community center, when we created ATU, we wanted to escape the nonprofit industrial complex. We wanted to not have staff, but to really create an organization that [builds] capacity by developing directly impacted tenants that were facing eviction.
When a new owner comes in and evicts everybody at the same time, that creates many crises. Not just for the individuals being evicted, but then it also saturates the amount of units that might be available in a specific area, because then you’re having thirty families that are
having to move out. All of them want to stay within the community, because they have their kids in school, they have their grocery store, they have the networks in those communities, and ultimately having to relocate somewhere else, not only is costly, but it can also have other impacts, mentally.
The main practice that we bring as ATU around making people understand the power of collectivity, or like working collectively and collaboratively with each other. And the tactic is to create a union… in order for them to feel like they’re not coming to the owner by themselves. Many times, it doesn’t work to go by as an individual to request condition repairs or cancellation of an eviction, but together, there’s a lot more power.
It is much more difficult than just forming the union in order for people to actually believe in collective power, especially when landlords tend to want to divide them.
The asamblea, that is our community
assembly. That’s where all ATU members are expected to attend once a month right now. That’s also the space for like, if people know somebody that is going through an eviction, they can actually invite them there, and we can talk about what referrals, what support they need, resources that we have to offer collectively. Other members, especially tenants [who] have been [in] an eviction before, they can kind of sympathize with the individual and make sure that they get this fear out of the way which all of us, or ATU, has known.
We’re still volunteers. We have a very minimal budget that allows us to have money for direct action, for events.
We don’t have attorneys, we don’t have all those big resources that people sometimes are looking for. But we can offer something that we believe almost nobody else is offering, right? Like, the sense of self-determination, not just around housing, but in general, around other aspects of their lives. There are solutions that we can employ collectively, but we have to do it together, right?
Many of the people [we work with] end up leaving, sometimes months after they were supposed to—and those months were won because of the organizing that they did, or they got some kind of settlement from the owner. And so they take that settlement and they relocate somewhere else. The development of the skill set that we do for them, such as how to talk to the media, how to know your rights as a tenant—all of that, in a way, is great, because people are still taking the collective knowledge to their new communities or new neighborhoods, and a lot of the referrals that we get now after eight years, is really word of mouth. People talk about us, and they refer people to us…So we’re always trying to form a base and we see that as a creation of our power. ¬
Emeline Posner is an independent journalist whose recent reporting can be found in the Weekly, the Investigative Project on Race and Equity, Illinois Answers Project, the Reader and elsewhere.
Illustrations by Julia O’Brien
The Twin Fates of Two-Flats
Chicago’s two-to-four-flats are disappearing across the city as single-family homes and vacant lots are popping up in their place.
BY JORDAN ESPARZA-KELLEY
If Chicago has a signature building, it’s two-to-four-flats. From vintage greystones to multi-story cottages, these small, multi-unit apartments are scattered across the city—they usually make up two or more apartment dwellings stacked on top of each other.a
But between 2012 and 2019, Chicago lost over 4,800 of these types of buildings. Nearly half were transformed into single-family homes, permanently removing rental units in the area, according to a 2021 report from the Institute for Housing Studies (IHS) at DePaul University. While this trend is more prevalent in North and Northwest Side neighborhoods, it also emerged in neighborhoods on the South Side, including Grand Boulevard, Bridgeport, and the Lower West Side (most of which is Pilsen), which all saw upticks between 2013 and 2019.
Many of the neighborhoods where deconversions are happening have also become hotspots for gentrification in the past decade—something it’s helped exacerbate by reducing the amount of affordable housing in their neighborhoods.
In the past five years, Chicago Lawn saw nineteen deconversion applications, Woodlawn nine, Gage Park nine, Bridgeport eight, and Grand Boulevard seven. It’s significantly less than what a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood like North Center is experiencing, which leads the city with forty-three deconversion permit applications in the same time span. But it’s also a sign that the deconversion trend could spread elsewhere.
Two-flats have often been dubbed the “workhouse” of Chicago’s housing stock and for good reason. Many of these buildings date back to the early 1900s as the city’s first-generation, Eastern
European immigrants began assembling two-, three-, and four-flats from mailorder catalogs. Building multi-story units helped larger families spread out while also creating ways to earn extra income by renting out the other units to tenants.
“They were largely built for immigrant families, who were working in nearby industries. The reason there were two-flats is because that was often the structure—a family living on one floor and relatives living on another unit,” said Geoff Smith, director of the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University.
Today, they make up over a quarter of residential housing in Chicago, circling from the lakefront through South and West Side neighborhoods. They hold a significant portion of the city’s affordable housing and 73 percent of the rental units in these types of buildings are occupied by a person of color.
Deconversion is becoming much more common in North and Northwest Side neighborhoods, where high-cost
neighborhoods like North Center, Lakeview, and West Town are losing small multi-unit buildings and leaving single-family homes in their place. “In a lot of the more expensive neighborhoods, they’re fully built out, so there’s not a lot of vacant land to build new housing on,” Smith said. “You saw changing demand from higher-income families…but there weren’t any single-family homes for them to live in because those areas don’t have that many single-family homes historically.”
As higher-income families move in, many want the bigger space and privacy that single-family homes provide and are willing to pay a premium. For developers, deconversion offers a cheaper way to meet that demand and raise property values, rather than building a new single-family home from scratch.
“When developers see that situation, they look to, how can we create new single-family homes and the lowest value housing type are either older single-
family homes, or two-flats, which were pretty common types of housing in those neighborhoods,” he added.
Two-to-four-flats make up what experts consider a “missing middle” of affordable housing— essentially rental housing that’s affordable to most residents in the area but not subsidized by the government. They tend to be more affordable because they’re often run by smaller-scale, “mom-and-pop” landlords or owner-occupants who live in one unit and rent out the other.
“Two to fours represent naturally occurring affordable housing, often because they are owner occupied, and so they are making units available. It might be somebody that they know, a friend of a friend, or a family member, and there’s a network effect of people identifying those units, and the mom-and-pop owner perhaps are more inclined to offer an affordable rent for the right tenant,” said Maggie Cassidy, director of The Preservation Compact, a policy collaborative working toward preserving affordable rental housing.
Two-to-four-flats often carry cheaper rents precisely because they’re older buildings. New affordable housing can be surprisingly expensive to build, and developers want to recoup the costs of construction. Once older units like this disappear, that affordability is hard to replace.
“That’s a direct, obvious way to see gentrification on the landscape because you’re taking what was historically one of the more reliable forms of naturally occurring affordable housing in Chicago and turning it into a source of housing that is not affordable,” said Winifred Curran, professor of geography at DePaul University.
Deconversions to single-
Two-flats in the Woodlawn neighborhood. The building on the right was converted into a single-family home.
Photo by Grace Coudal
family homes don’t necessarily cause gentrification in working-class neighborhoods. But once real estate interest spikes in an area, deconversions can exacerbate it which reduces the number of affordable rental units in the area and creates more luxury housing in the process, said Curran.
“Two-flats are kind of this historical anomaly. It’s reflective of a period of time, of housing development, and we don’t really do that so much anymore, so they tend to be in neighborhoods that are zoned for single-family use,” Curran said. “If you’re looking for a large, single-family home in the city of Chicago, a great way to get it relatively more affordably than building a ‘McMansion’ from scratch is to deconvert a two-flat.”
Part of the problem comes from how our zoning code is designed. Many of the city’s two-to-four flats are located in single-family zones, where building multi-unit housing nowadays is prohibited. Most of these buildings escaped these regulations because they’re older than Chicago’s zoning ordinance itself, but once deconverted, they can’t go back to multi-unit housing.
And in areas that allow multi-unit buildings like two-to-four-flats, nothing usually prohibits people from turning them into single-family homes. It’s something that has made deconversions harder for the city to notice or take policy action against, said Curran.
In 2021, city council passed two anti-deconversion ordinances, trying to penalize developers from taking on deconversions in different gentrifying neighborhoods along the 606 and in Pilsen. In 2021, Pilsen saw an immediate drop off in deconversions, while neighboring areas continued at similar rates.
At the same time, some are optimistic that more homeowners will take advantage of two-flat ownership and preserve the forms of affordable rental that those buildings provide.
“Maintaining an intact flat may become a more attractive option for families than it was five years ago, where a deconversion might be more costeffective,” Cassidy said. “We may be trending in a direction where maintaining the property as the most cost-effective, and that people are thinking about
having flexible spaces and generational living opportunities to have the income stream of a unit or two.”
That opportunity for wealth building was what drew LeNnierre Watkins to buying and fixing up multi-unit buildings. In 2019, he closed on a two-flat in Woodlawn and began living in one unit
2013 and 2019, Greater Englewood and New City each lost around ten percent of these multi-unit buildings to foreclosure. Community organizations, like Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS), are trying to circumvent this loss by helping small-scale landlords avoid losing buildings like this to foreclosure.
“That’s a direct, obvious way to see gentrification on the landscape because you’re taking what was historically one of the more reliable forms of naturally occurring affordable housing in Chicago and turning it into a source of housing that is not affordable,” – Winifred Curran
and renting out the other. The building needed a lot of rehab, but it’s a process he always pitches to people looking to buy a home.
“You get to learn how to manage the business, so for a lot of people, it’s an opportunity to learn how to become more professional. It’s an opportunity to learn how to help other people because people move in, and you get to learn how to be the landlord that you would like to have rented from, as opposed to someone who acts as though [they’re] doing the tenant such a favor and not acting like it’s not doing a favor for themselves,” he said.
Two-flats were also being lost to demolitions and disinvestment across the city. Approximately 30 percent were replaced by non-residential uses, and in lower-cost neighborhoods on the South and West sides, most of the demolished two-flats became vacant land. Compared to demolitions, Cassidy characterizes deconversions as the lesser of two evils.
“When I think of the South Side and the housing stock that exists there, a deconversion of a two-flat to a single family that results in the loss of an affordable unit is an extremely unfortunate event. [But] the loss of an entire building because there is not a buyer or somebody who wants to take that on rehab it as a two-flat? That’s a much worse outcome,” she said.
Those missing two-to-four-flats usually went to foreclosure, especially during the Great Recession. Between
“When an eviction occurs in one of these properties, the economic shock to the owner is more significant,” said NHS President and CEO Anthony Simpkins. “If you get three units in the property, and one of them is not paying rent, that
can be a really harsh economic burden for the owner, which can push the owner into foreclosure. At the same time, if that tenant’s evicted, that tenant is now struggling to find another affordable apartment.”
When two to four flats disappear from a neighborhood from deconversions or disinvestments, the affordable housing they hold is often lost for good. And there’s a lot at stake for people whom higher rents could displace.
“You’re going to have fewer people in the neighborhood because there aren’t places for them to live…those people are leaving schools, they’re leaving maybe jobs, they’re leaving businesses,” Curran said. “Everyday businesses that relied on the population that was there when it was a more working-class affordable neighborhood may not be able to survive in a gentrified neighborhood.” ¬
Reema Saleh is a writer, journalist, and digital media producer. She last wrote about post-COVID clinics in Chicago.
Additional Dwelling Unit Ordinance Predominantly Benefits the North Side, Data Shows
Three years since the pilot’s creation, 94 percent of ADU permits went to Chicago’s North and Northwest zones.
BY XUANDI WANG
In December 2020, Chicago lifted its historic ban on accessory dwelling units, or ADUs. Commonly known as “granny flats” or “coach houses,” applications for permits to build ADUs became available across five city areas through an accompanying pilot program, which took effect in May 2021. Housing advocates have championed ADUs for years as a means to increase population density, create an additional income stream for the property owner, and
increase affordable housing. When the ordinance was approved in 2020, the Lightfoot administration promised that the program would “support our most vulnerable residents and our business community.”
However, architects, housing advocates, and residents say the program has been too restrictive and has fallen short of its equity commitments. Three years after the program went into effect, only 44 percent of pre-approved applications (262
out of 601 applications) actually received a building permit authorizing the owner to begin construction on an ADU, and 94 percent (245) are in the city’s North and Northwest Sides, according to City of Chicago data and Cityscape, a real estate information platform.
Since 2021, Chicago's Department of Housing has issued 601 ADU preapprovals. Pre-approval applications are self-reported forms, including the address of the property, the number of ADU units the owner intends to build, and proof that the owner has notified their neighbors and ward office of their intent to build. Permits, however, require a slew of inspections and financing.
“That [disparity] worries me a little bit, because I’m wondering who they’re really using the program for,” said Bryan Hudson, Principal Architect and owner of SOMA Design Consultants, a Chicago-
based architectural firm. “The South and West Sides are predominantly Black and brown. They probably need it more than the other parts of the state that are more economically well off.”
During the 1950s, Chicago was hitting its peak population—about one million more people than there is today. The 1957 zoning code, which includes a ban on ADUs, was a response to overcrowding in the city, according to Steven Vance, an urban planner and an early advocate for ADUs. In 2014, Vance founded Chicago Cityscape, which hosts an online tool that allows people to check if their address falls within the pilot areas.
When housing advocates helped pass the ordinance in 2020, the pilot program was limited to five zones—about 20 percent of the city—to test the policy. Cityscape estimates that there are 92,322 properties in Chicago eligible for the
ADU program.
But even for households that fall under the pilot areas, many factors deter them from building ADUs, Vance said. Legacy parking space requirements, banks’ reluctance to finance mediumsized projects, strict design and zoning guidelines, and the high cost of connecting coach homes to utilities have prevented the program from widespread adoption.
Requirements for ADUs are also more strict in the West, South, and Southeast areas. Only two ADU permits can be issued per block per year in these zones, while there is no limit on ADU permits for the North and Northwest zones. The West, South, and Southeast areas also require that the buildings eligible for ADUs be owner-occupied and that coach houses cannot be built on vacant lots before a principal residence—restrictions that do not apply to North Side residences. According to Vance, some alderpeople added these additional restrictions in their pilot areas over concerns that ADUs would “drastically change the character of the neighborhood.”
Hudson said these restrictions created additional barriers for residents in the West, South, and Southeast Side—areas that already have more vacancy and lower residential density.
“[The] West Side and South Side of Chicago have a lot of vacant lots,” Hudson said. “If a young couple is going to come in and build, and they want to add a coach house at the rear [of] their new property, they can’t do it because two other families on the block already are there? I don’t understand.”
On the ADU expansion’s promise to improve housing access, “it’s very minimal,” said Cristina Gallo, architect and co-founder of Via Chicago Architects. “It’s not making a dent in the housing crisis.” Gallo and her firm helped build one of the first ADUs in Chicago under the pilot—a 525 square foot couch house that sits above her client’s rear garage. The main house is a $1 million brick row house in Wicker Park.
The ADU pilot program stipulates that if two or more residential units are added, every other unit must be an affordable unit, meaning the unit is limited to tenants earning 60 percent of the area’s median income. However, according to Cityscape data, the majority of property
owners to whom a permit was issued built single dwelling units, thus they are not beholden to the affordable housing requirement. About one in ten dwelling units built under the ADU ordinance were affordable units.
Income disparity and financial inequality also make it more difficult for residents on the South and West Sides to finance ADU projects, Vance said. Building ADUs can be costly—about $200,000 for a basement unit or $300,000 for a small coach house. Residents in lower-income neighborhoods typically have less access to loans and financial knowledge, Vance said.
“I am not saying that people don’t deserve it, but if the program is set up to help folks that need the help get a financial leg up, then I don’t know if I
the inspection. By the time she received approval, the fund was discontinued.
“I think that us – being low income – the funds run out fast. I think they help people who aren’t as in need as us, who can pay for what they have to do, and for us, they take too long.” Salgado said.
According to CityScape, the average city-wide processing time from application to permit issuance was about 120 days, or four months.
Salgado and her family have lived in Little Village since 1995, but with rising property taxes, she feared she would have to relocate. “Because our community is very impacted financially…we [c]ould lose our house,” she said. “Having an additional legal unit—the property value would go up a bit and that would help us.”
Simone Alexander, a member of Únete La Villita, an affordable housing
“If the program is set up to help folks that need…a financial leg up, then I don't know if I would champion somebody build[ing] an ADU in Lincoln Park.”
would champion somebody build[ing] an ADU in Lincoln Park,” Hudson said. “But if there’s a retired couple in Englewood [who] worked at the post office for years, and they have medical bills, being able to rent that [ADU] unit can help offset some regular cost of living.”
While the city initially offered financial support for ADU projects through a grant program, it was only enough to cover some consultation or design costs, and the fund has since run out, according to the program website.
Hericelda Montiel de Salgado, a mother of five children in Little Village, wanted to renovate her house’s attic into a residential unit so their oldest children could live there. The city requires ADUs to have two exits so Salgado applied for a permit to construct a second exit in the attic. About three years later, she still hasn’t been able to put in that second exit. The fund was available when she first started applying for the ADU permit two years ago, but the inspection process dragged on due to lack of architects to complete
advocacy group in Little Village who helped Salgado’s case, suggested that increasing homeowner assistance funds and adding dedicated staff to facilitate the program could help the city use ADUs as a tool to address gentrification and displacement in her community.
“If low- to moderate- homeowners are unable to fully benefit, then it will be upper-income homeowners and developers who will create the majority of new ADUs,” Alexander said.
Gallo said regional restrictions on ADUs should be removed so that vulnerable populations can truly benefit from the program. For example, residents in the West, South, and Southeast regions should be allowed to construct ADUs on vacant lots, which are predominantly located in those areas.
“If you’re already paying for costly land and you can afford to build 500 to 1000 square feet, but no more than that, [you should have] the option to build an ADU towards the rear of the lot and leave the front of the lot vacant
for future opportunities into expanding building,” Gallo said. “That is an entry into home ownership, which is an entry into increasing your wealth and laying roots in your own community. It’s really empowering.”
Monica Chadha, architect and founder of Civic Projects Architecture in Woodlawn, said she has received many inquiries about ADUs but had to turn people away either because they live outside the pilot areas or because their requests are not allowed under the current guidelines.
“Not all the parameters work right now,” Chadha said. “But the ability to legalize the additional unit or provide that extra living? You have multi-generational opportunities, caregiving opportunities, and additional income opportunities. The promise of being able to have additional space is fabulous.”
She hopes the ADU program will soon expand citywide so that it can address development issues on the South Side, where the lack of residential density hampers the attraction of commercial and community services.
On July 16, the Zoning Committee discussed a proposal to expand the program citywide and loosen some of the current requirements such as a parking requirement and cap on floor area to 700 sq ft, which would make ADU construction more affordable. However, the vote has been delayed. While Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies are pushing to allow ADUs to be built in single-family districts without needing City Hall approval, some other City Council members are unwilling to give up some level of control and want ADU applicants to receive a special use permit from the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals. That disagreement could jeopardize the program’s potential expansion and reform, leading to more situations like Salgado’s.
“We feel frustrated that [my children] can’t live upstairs because the city requires us to have two exits,” Salgado said. “We all feel frustrated because we thought it would be faster, but it’s been three years.” ¬
Xuandi Wang is a journalist and policy researcher whose writing has appeared in Block Club, the Chicago Reader, In These Times, and elsewhere.
Rising Rents, Unlivable Apartments Leave Tenants
Desperate, Confused, and Often Helpless
An Injustice Watch investigation found thousands of lower-income renters in Chicago are trapped in unsafe buildings, forced to pay rising rents, even as many landlords are allowed to shirk their responsibilities to keep buildings safe, warm, and free of rats.
BY ALEJANDRA CANCINO, MAYA DUKMASOVA, FOREST GREGG, ALEX RICHARDS, INJUSTICE WATCH
This is the first part in an Injustice Watch series, The Tenant Trap, originally published on August 7. You can check out the entire project on their page, injusticewatch.org/projects/tenanttrap, which contains three more stories on ways tenants are fighting back—by withholding rent, suing their landlords, and calling the city—and another story on potential solutions. The web version of the story also includes interactive maps put together by the Injustice Watch team. Reprinted with permission.
In January, seventy-one-year-old
Paul London was among two dozen tenants kicked out of the four-story South Side apartment building he called home for the past twenty-five years.
Over the years, London had become a fixture on the grounds of the terra-cottaclad former hotel with its floral-carved facade, the guy people knew to call for routine maintenance and repairs for the fifty modestly priced studios and onebedrooms and the many bustling businesses on the ground floor.
Most of the tenants in the conjoined pair of buildings hugging the 11000 block of South Michigan Avenue in Roseland were single people. They were delivery drivers, barbers, and cooks. Some were retirees collecting Social Security, and some couldn’t work because of disabilities. The storefronts were home to a hair salon, a gym, a tax service company, a day care, and the building owner’s office in the window of which a black, red, and green sign proclaimed “America must atone: Black reparations now!”
Office spaces on the second floor incubated the businesses of a music
producer, a custom print maker, a private investigator, and a waxing specialist. The building was an anchor in a corner of the neighborhood peppered with vacant lots and abandoned storefronts.
“It’s real sad to see,” London told Injustice Watch on a visit to his old home in May after leaving church services nearby.
He sighed heavily as he looked at the abandoned building, standing empty for nearly four months. Its first residential floor was covered with perforated metal shields, which had been installed through open apartment windows and allowed air and moisture to penetrate inside. At night, some units flickered with ghostly light, powered by electricity the displaced residents still hadn’t cut off. What hadn’t been stolen by
intruders clever enough to navigate the board-up was left to decompose inside.
“What a waste,” London said, trailing off. “All the time I put in here.”
On five days’ notice in the middle of winter, London and his neighbors were escorted out of the building by police. Some residents had mobility challenges. Some, like London, were older adults. Some left fully furnished apartments behind, food on the stove, TVs on, and bathtubs half-drawn. Each was given $1,500 for relocation, funded by the building owner.
The order was given by Cook County Associate Judge Joseph Sconza, one of three judges handling most of the lawsuits brought by the city of Chicago against building owners. He agreed with
city lawyers the building had become so riddled with potentially life-threatening code violations and was such a magnet for violence it was no longer habitable.
To London, it felt like an eviction. In reality, it was one of the most severe— and rarest—enforcement actions the government can take against recalcitrant landlords. The building had been bought for $2 million by a limited liability company belonging to then-twenty-eightyear-old Brooklynite Shaya Wurzberger in 2022. Wurzberger managed it through his company, Levav Properties, which he founded last year with forty-nine-year-old Christopher Milliner of Tinley Park.
Wurzberger bought the building from Kamm Howard, a local entrepreneur who was active in the national movement to secure reparations for the descendants of enslaved people. Like prior landlords, Howard paid London and let him live in the building rent-free in exchange for keeping the hydraulic elevator in working order, making plumbing repairs, fumigating, and screening applicants for the apartments.
Under Howard’s sixteen years as owner, the building had its problems. Every year inspectors would cite the building for serious code violations, and on seventeen occasions, they issued tickets sending the building to the city’s administrative hearing officers. There, the cases were usually dropped after Howard proved he’d addressed the problem. Sometimes he had to pay a fine. The city never took the more severe course of suing Howard in the Cook County Circuit Court over unaddressed code violations.
Howard told Injustice Watch he put
Paul London stands in front of the building where he lived and worked for twentyfive years. In January, a judge ordered it vacated because of dangerous and hazardous conditions.
Photo by Abel Uribe for Injustice Watch
the building on the market because he’d gotten tired of the demands of on-site property management. He had bought the building right before the real estate market crashed in 2008, and after that, it never appraised close to what he paid.
“It takes a lot to own property in quote, unquote, the hood,” he said. He was proud of all the Black-owned businesses he was able to support, and some of the tenants had become like family over the years, but others could be exhausting to deal with. “It wears on you over time. So I was just ready to go, and I got a price that I could do some things with, and I took advantage of that.”
Tenants told Injustice Watch things changed quickly and dramatically after Levav took over, claiming the company increased rents and neglected building maintenance. Howard said when the young men from New York showed up to tour the property, they didn’t seem like skilled investors who understood the market in Roseland. During a walk-through of the building, he heard them discussing breaking down larger units into smaller ones by erecting walls and raising rents by $200 or $300.
Howard said it seemed like “simple greed.” He said renters in this part of Roseland wouldn’t be able to pay so much more.
Neither Wurzberger nor Milliner responded to Injustice Watch’s requests for an interview. Levav’s attorney, Erika Norton, said Wurzberger has extensive real estate experience. Norton said she could not speak to the conditions at the property before she began appearing in court on behalf of the company in early 2024. She said she understood the root cause for the need to evacuate the tenants—none of whom she personally knew—lay with a burst pipe.
London told Injustice Watch the new owners began charging him rent a few months after buying the building, though he kept working as the handyman. At first, he said he was charged $540 for his studio, then a few months later, the rent went up to $840. Then, Levav stopped paying him, London said. He continued in his role as the de facto property manager for a while but quit after being attacked and beaten by a guest of one of his neighbors. The building fell into greater disrepair.
A few months after Levav took control of the building, the city sued Wurzberger’s
company for missing smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, extensive mice and roach infestations, defective plumbing, and other code violations.
At the same time, Levav filed an eviction case against London, claiming he owed them $5,075 in rent—the amount he says the company owed him in back pay. He was among five people in the building the company filed to evict on the same day. When London showed up to court on the first scheduled date, he said no one representing Levav was there. The case was dropped.
London said he felt increasingly unsafe. His apartment was burglarized, and the bathroom ceiling caved in because of an
other side of the building, which doubled as his storage space.
In court, the city told Judge Sconza the landlords could not continue to house people at 11000 S. Michigan Ave., and the company agreed. The judge’s order to vacate the building of residents was “definitely a good thing because you don’t want them harmed,” Norton, the attorney representing the building owners, said.
“Levav is an up-and-up property management company who does the best they can with the circumstances at hand. This circumstance ended up being bigger than they anticipated,” she said.
As the building enters its seventh month of vacancy, Norton said “there are
In the absence of clear data, it’s often difficult, even impossible, to differentiate good actors from bad or effectively limit harm to tenants and neighborhoods. In the real estate business, even blatantly criminal enterprises can operate out of view of authorities for years, and fraud can go unchecked.
unaddressed leak in the unit above. An active drug trade had developed in a first-floor unit. Someone had overdosed in the hallway. Fires broke out throughout the building. On Christmas 2023, a woman was shot to death in a stairwell. London said he was fearful of sleeping in his home and sometimes spent the night in a vacant commercial unit on the
no immediate plans about what to do with this property.”
Sconza and other housing court judges cannot force landlords to fix their buildings, but in extreme circumstances, they can force them to stop renting them out. In an interview with Injustice Watch, Sconza described the goal of housing court
as protecting public health and safety while balancing evidence and allegations brought by the city. Sometimes the conditions in the buildings he sees are truly life-threatening. But, he added, many housing complaints are the result of disgruntled tenants, who call the city to complain about “slum landlords,” but “they don’t even know what a slum landlord is.”
He said some of the cases before him involve “out-of-state owners that are trying to make a buck, but they aren’t slum landlords.”
As a result of the court ordering one of the most punitive measures to be taken against Levav, London was suddenly homeless.
Thousands like London
Stories such as London’s are playing out across Chicago, with lower-income tenants forced from their homes through a combination of skyrocketing rents, untenable building conditions, or the city’s plodding attempts to respond to them. When they decide to fight back, tenants usually end up losing battles against a system set up to favor the longestablished rights of property owners over the more ambiguous protections for property occupants.
A yearlong Injustice Watch investigation found tenants are regularly facing eviction and informal displacement at buildings with histories of serious safety violations—all under a legal system wellequipped to protect landlord profits while creating a bureaucratic and procedural labyrinth for tenants who have neither the resources, the legal acumen, nor the time to defend themselves.
The investigation included court watching, more than 100 interviews with landlords, tenants, judges, and experts, as well an unprecedented analysis of more than two decades of data from the Chicago Department of Buildings and the Cook County Circuit Court. The data was used to identify apartment buildings with a history of serious code violations, examine the correlation between building conditions and evictions, and track the government’s attempts to hold building owners accountable.
What exactly constitutes unsafe conditions at a building is up to inspectors’ subjective assessments. But the city has
Cook County Associate Judge Joseph Sconza conducts a housing court hearing in April 2024. Courtroom sketch by Verónica Martinez
JUSTICE
identified dozens of code violations it considers to be red flags for potentially life-threatening problems—from missing smoke detectors to lack of heat to stagnant water in basements and exposed wiring.
Once buildings are cited for these types of problems in at least four distinct calendar years, an Injustice Watch analysis found most buildings continued to rack up serious code violations.
Injustice Watch identified 2,654 buildings repeatedly cited for serious code violations, roughly 2 percent of the 150,000 buildings cited since 2006.
Tens of thousands of Chicagoans live in these buildings, as nearly all of them are some form of housing, according to Cook County and Illinois Department of Revenue data collected by Chicago Cityscape, a real estate information platform. All these buildings in chronic disrepair have had a citation for a serious code violation in the last three years.
code violations were ultimately ordered out by judges. These eviction cases usually took a month to resolve. Meanwhile, the owners of those 328 buildings were typically tied up in proceedings for nearly ten times as long.
Landlords and their real estate industry lobbyists portray Chicago as one of the most tenant-friendly cities in the nation. As they oppose measures aimed to curtail landlord profits or increase scrutiny over their businesses, they often conjure images of mom-and-pop landlords struggling to survive amid rising costs, late rent payers, and enormous delays evicting tenants who chronically violate their lease agreements.
the Community Investment Corporation, and other groups that work to promote responsible building management, told Injustice Watch the rental market in Chicago is dominated by good faith operators. Though no one denied the presence of bad actors, most landlords, they stressed, prioritize customer service and responsiveness to the demands of tenants and the building code because it’s good for business and the right thing to do.
Though these buildings can be found in every ward, two-thirds are in majorityBlack communities, where residents have been disproportionately ticketed and policed; lack access to health care, transportation, and healthy food; and where they disproportionately bear the brunt of gun violence, residential fires, and pollution.
The buildings are also concentrated in neighborhoods with high percentages of people the city considers low income. The financial pressure experienced by tenants often culminates in informal displacement from their homes experts call “forced moves,” illegal lockouts, or in eviction cases.
Landlords in 1,736 buildings filed at least one eviction in the same year they were cited for serious code violations. In at least 328 buildings, landlords filed evictions at the same time the city was taking them to court over building code violations.
The vast majority of the roughly 20,000 eviction cases filed in Chicago every year are over unpaid rent, which is why experts say evictions are a measure of housing affordability. This includes the evictions filed against tenants in buildings that were simultaneously cited, even prosecuted, for serious code violations. These cases represent at least 4 percent of all evictions filed in Chicago since 2007. However, Injustice Watch found evictions increase as buildings rack up more years with serious code violations, a significant counterpoint to the commonly held belief
A tenant in a South Shore apartment building with a fifteen-year history of serious code violations holds up a can of bed bug spray she is using to deal with an infestation. She and her family landed in the building after a dangerous monthslong journey from Venezuela.
that shabbier buildings are more affordable places to live.
The courtrooms processing eviction suits against tenants and building code violation suits against landlords are situated in the same division of the Cook County Circuit Court. They are separated by three floors of the Richard J. Daley Center, which towers above the steel Picasso sculpture in the Loop. Despite their physical and bureaucratic proximity, Injustice Watch found a stark contrast between the administration of justice in these courtrooms.
In an interview with Injustice Watch Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans acknowledged the imbalance of power tenants face in court.
“In many instances these tenants who are the subject of an eviction case come without any lawyers at all, without any representation at all, and they are at a disadvantage,” he said. After reviewing the findings of the investigation Evans said he has ideas for reforms.
Recent reforms have extended the amount of time it takes to evict a tenant, but for those in buildings with histories of serious code violations, the end result has changed little. About two-thirds of the tenants taken by landlords to eviction court in the same year the city was suing them for
On paper, Chicago does have strong laws protecting tenants’ rights. It is timeconsuming to evict people and also expensive compared to many other cities; Cook County’s eviction case filing costs were the third-highest in the nation as of 2023, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. And there are indeed plenty of committed, conscientious landlords trying to do their best to maintain aging buildings in neighborhoods where tenants struggle with poverty.
Yet research suggests the struggling mom-and-pop landlord who lives in a property where they rent apartments at prices just high enough to cover their costs and have personal relationships with tenants is a receding character in American urban life. The real estate industry has increasingly professionalized, with a proliferation of investors, large and small, who are at best treating housing like any other modern service industry business. And at worst, they’re “milking” and “juicing” every last penny of rent while spending as little as possible on building upkeep.
Injustice Watch identified eight buildings as having the worst history of serious code violations in the city—racking up these citations in all but one year of the data. Of those, seven, including London’s former home, are owned by investors with multiple buildings with chronic code violations. None of these investors fit the old mom-and-pop mold. Two live in luxurious downtown high-rises. Two others operate sizable companies out of suburban office parks. Three more are New York-based and New Jersey-based investors whose presence in Chicago has increased in recent years.
Local landlord advocates, such as the Neighborhood Building Owner’s Alliance,
While the universe of bad landlords may be a relatively small one, they still rent to thousands of people in the city. And figuring out who owns what and how those owners actually run their private businesses is a herculean task requiring triangulation between records siloed by many disconnected government agencies. In the absence of clear data, it’s often difficult, even impossible, to differentiate good actors from bad or effectively limit harm to tenants and neighborhoods. In the real estate business, even blatantly criminal enterprises can operate out of view of authorities for years, and fraud can go unchecked.
Aging buildings, rising rents
Like its population, Chicago’s rental housing stock is aging, particularly in disinvested neighborhoods. A drone flying west from the South Side lakefront would capture pre-Depression-era elevator buildings, giving way to a sprawling maze of courtyard walk-ups, then to a checkerboard of narrow two-flats and single-family homes. The majority of the city’s renters live in buildings with more than four units, most of which are nearing 100 years old, according to an analysis by the DePaul Institute for Housing Studies. These buildings are concentrated in communities where at least a third of households get by on less than $50,000 per year.
There are serious problems in some of these aging buildings where lower-income Chicagoans live—building code violations putting tenants at risk from fire, flooding, sewage backup, mold, insects, rodents, lead paint, freezing in winter, overheating in summer, and dangerous structural defects. These problems cannot just be blamed on tenants’ poor housekeeping. And yet rent prices remain high despite the neglect. As a result, the gap between the supply and demand for affordable housing is growing and has reached its widest point in a decade.
Photo by Abel Uribe for Injustice Watch
The most recent census figures peg the median monthly rent in Chicago at about $1,300—a conservative figure. Whether landlords raise their rents because they have to or because they can, the scarcity of housing keeps tenants paying.
In tandem with rent prices, the prices Chicago’s multifamily apartment buildings fetch when they’re sold to new owners have also been rising, even in disinvested neighborhoods. Since 2019, the per-unit price for multifamily properties in those neighborhoods has more than doubled. The recent boom in the multifamily apartment building market has been spurred by a Trump-era tax cut linked to increased displacement.
These buildings are valuable because of, not despite, their physical dilapidation and location in down-market areas. Unlike in gentrifying areas, what attracts investors is the reliable flow of rents from tenants with few other options, not the desirability of the neighborhood. And if a building gets so bad people can no longer live there, owners can write it off on their taxes as a depreciating asset.
Every few years, a tragic disaster draws public attention to the problem of building code enforcement in the city. Deadly fires, porch collapses, and heat waves spotlight negligent landlords and lapses in government oversight. But in the lulls between the worst disasters lies the chronic grind of life in badly maintained buildings, where rent prices leave people stretched thin—the kind of places historically labeled as “slums.”
In 2017, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration stopped requiring annual inspections for all apartment buildings over two stories tall, replacing them with a complaint-based system. The city’s inspectors general have blasted complaintbased city service provision for being expensive, inequitable, and compromising safety.
“Some populations are not in the habit of calling 311,” said Inspector General Deborah Witzburg. “If all the city is doing is responding to 311 calls, it is missing opportunities to catch problems before they become bigger problems.”
Inspectors go out to buildings after people complain about conditions through 311—though not every complaint results in an inspector visit as there are far more complaints than what the city’s 168-inspector corps can investigate. Some
buildings in the city are in deplorable conditions yet never draw the attention of inspectors, while others are in better shape but attract frequent scrutiny.
Often, inspectors are unable to assess conditions inside because no one lets them in, and they do not have authority to enter private property without a court order. After documenting the violations they’re able to see, inspectors use their discretion to recommend whether the city should send the building owner a warning letter demanding fixes; issue tickets for the violations, which can be punished by fines; or in extreme situations, file a case against the building owner in the Cook County Circuit Court. About 2,000 buildings land before housing court judges each year.
Conditions at the 2,654 buildings with chronic issues identified by Injustice Watch are not always apparent from the outside, but their citation history and age suggest they are properties where serious problems could snowball, especially in the hands of the wrong owner. About 250 of the buildings have more than a decade of citations for serious code violations. No government agency is tasked with keeping tabs on their owners.
A problem as old as the law
Slum conditions persist in American cities despite a near-universal public agreement they shouldn’t and despite decades, even centuries, of scandals around building conditions that harm and kill people.
The public debates around this issue tend to have two focal points. On the one
hand: intentional profiteering by landlords who want to extract maximum rents while allowing buildings to decay. On the other: a perversion of the economy and government regulation to such a point landlords are too inundated with costs to do better.
Either way, our laws and the way they’re enforced play a central role—laws that are supposed to balance this equation in a freemarket economy for which private property is a cornerstone. With little historical deviation since land was first enclosed in 16th century England, the Anglo-American legal system has always put landlords’ property rights ahead of the rights of tenants to safe and affordable housing.
This series follows the stories of tenants in some of the buildings with histories of serious code violations and evictions, detailing their often-heartbreaking battles for fairness in a system weighted heavily against them.
They’ve been stymied in their attempts to invoke a city law designed to allow them to withhold rent from landlords slow to fix safety problems. They’ve been disappointed when they’ve called in the city’s code enforcement authorities for help. And when they attempted to sue the most negligent of landlords over the conditions of their buildings, they’ve found no recourse, either.
While the tenants who organize and fight their landlords for better housing conditions are few, since the pandemic, interest in tenant unions and other forms of collective mobilization for renters has grown in Chicago and across the country. The final installment of the series explores proposals to strengthen tenants’ rights and
increase accountability for landlords.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has centered housing stability in his plan to improve public safety, declined to be interviewed for this series—as did his top lawyer, his top buildings official, his top housing official, and his new chief homelessness officer.
In a brief emailed statement, Buildings Commissioner Marlene Hopkins said, “The men and women of the Chicago Department of Buildings will continue to fight for those who lack the resources to fight for themselves through aggressive enforcement of the minimum health and safety standards as set forth in the Chicago Construction Codes.”
The city’s Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry, Housing Commissioner Lissette Castañeda, and homelessness chief Sendy Soto emailed similar one-paragraph responses.
Plenty of other people, in Chicago and elsewhere, have ideas for what might be done to tackle the problem, envisioning futures in which buildings see lasting improvements, landlords who deliberately mismanage properties are held to account, and renters such as Paul London remain in their homes.
After the sudden shutdown of his building, London, like so many other unhoused Chicagoans, doubled up with an acquaintance, paying $400 per month to sleep in the basement. He considered moving into a house owned by his brother, but that would mean displacing the longtime tenants there, and he didn’t want to do that. Instead, he embarked on a daunting search for affordable apartments in buildings subsidized for seniors. Today, he is still looking. He laments all the belongings he left behind, including family keepsakes, appliances, and expensive tools. He tried many times to reach someone at Levav to get access to his storage space but to no avail. Currently, the company is managing close to 100 properties in Chicago, according to its attorney.
“I wish the city didn’t force everyone to leave,” London said, reflecting on his twenty-five years of life at 11000 S. Michigan Ave. “The city should be after the landlord.” ¬
The Weekly will be reprinting more from The Tenant Trap in print issues in October and November.
Buildings with histories of serious code violations pepper Black neighborhoods on the South and West sides. The owner of this building is a young, local real estate investor with at least seven apartment buildings that have chronic, serious violations, according to city records.
Photo by Abel Uribe for Injustice Watch
Chicago’s Homegrown Talent Shines at Lolla
Emerging artists brought raw energy and unforgettable performances to the summer music festival.
BY JOCELYN MARTINEZ-ROSALES, JESUS J. MONTERO
Lollapalooza celebrated its twentieth year at Grant Park with a lineup filled with icons like Megan Thee Stallion, Sexyy Red, The Killers, Blink-182, and Chappell Roan. For the first time in the festival’s history, local artists also got to shine brightly on a stage dedicated to Chicago talent. Bands like Scarlet Demore and Nico Vega captivated audiences, while fashion designer Joe Freshgoods launched a collection exclusive to the festival.
This year, the John Walt Foundation and the West Side hip-hop collective Pivot Gang provided young artists a chance to perform at Lollapalooza with a pop-up stage at Buckingham Fountain. The showcase highlighted talented young people from across the city, including winners from the Teens in the Park (TIP) festival, a celebration of artists, singers, rappers, and poets organized by the Chicago Park District.
“I love every second of it. It’s pretty lit. I love when Cat jumps up on the drum
“I love it too,” Cat responded.
The band has amassed over 20,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and has garnered a devoted crowd that was on full display at Lolla. “Give me more,” chants from the crowd echoed—and Scarlet Demore delivered. Their next show will be a wicked one as they hit the Lincoln Hall stage for a Halloween show alongside Bugsy, Yada Yada, and La Rosa Noir.
Happy Birthday M.e.H!
to us was really cool,” said vocalist Cat Ayala. Formed in 2017, the four-member alternative rock band consists of Cat, G Passaro on the bass, Joel Smith on guitar, and Jeremiah Elam on the drums.
Rising artists M.e.H, DLow, and Fly Skinz were among those performing in this year’s Chicago MADE Showcase, curated by arts and entertainment company Juan And Only based in Washington Park. The showcase also featured Sonta, Deacon Denzel and the legendary West Sider Twista. Not a minute was wasted, the forty-five minute set on Sunday aimed to bring more of Chicago’s vibrant talent to the Lolla stages.
The four-day festival saw more 500,000 people in attendance, with hundreds of acts spread across eight stages. The Weekly sat down with some of the city’s very own who were part of this year’s lineup.
Scarlet Demore Captivates Crowd With Punk Roots
With sold out shows and the HarleyDavidson Homecoming festival under their belt, Scarlet Demore delivered a thrilling show on Sunday afternoon despite the suffocating heat.
“Hearing people sing our songs back
“We are Scarlet Demore, and we are from Chicago!” Cat announced, before playing the last few songs of their set. An all-girl mosh pit ensued on cue when “Dead Man,” from their 2023 EP Baby Teeth, began to play.
“It encourages women and the queer community to take up the space that they didn’t feel comfortable to take up in the past,” Cat said.
It was electrifying to watch Cat jumping from corner to corner of the stage, the lyrics rolling off her tongue and sending shockwaves of energy down to the audience.
“I grew up really loving punk. And the thing about punk is it’s more about the energy before how good the music sounds,” Cat said. “I pull a lot of influence from the punk scenes and 80s punk and British punk.”
The rest of the band mirrored Cat and reveled in the symbiotic relationship they have fostered throughout the years—even newer members like Jeremiah.
Megan Hammond, also known by her stage name M.e.H, posted on her Instagram the night before her Lolla performance that three “major” things were happening. The first was being part of the Chicago MADE Showcase. The second was the release of her first EP Coup De Grâce. And the third was her birthday.
“I had to make that known, of course, I’m a Leo,” she said through giggles while covering her mouth with a fresh set of nails that spelled out “M.e.H.”
The twentyfour-yearold singer expressed gratitude toward the supportive community that helped her get to a Lolla stage. “There’s a village of people that I could not be here without. I don’t ever think that any of this [would be] possible without all the people I have in my corner,” M.e.H said.
M.e.H was given the opportunity to perform only two songs. She chose “Thrill is Gone” from the new EP and her 2023 single “Wake Up” featuring Drew the Kiiid, who joined for the live performance. With confidence, a custom-made outfit by local fashion brand JELLY, full glam, and braids that spelled out her stage name, M.e.H serenaded the audience with her jazzy and soulful voice.
“I’m kind of moving now more into a neo-soul alternative route, which [is] feeling like home for me right now,” M.e.H said.
As she continues to cement her artistic sound, M.e.H is dedicated to collaborating and creating with the people around her. Currently, M.e.H has a residency at Dorian’s in Wicker Park, where she will next perform on August 24.
DLow’s Homecoming
If you were a Chicago teen a decade ago, you remember when bopping took over the music scene. Rappers created emblematic dance moves and anthems to go along with it, like the “DLow Shuffle” and “Do It Like Me.” The “DLow Shuffle” would amass more than 15,000,000 views on YouTube, and should have been a catalyst for the bop king Daryon Martice Simmons, best known as DLow.
“Creating what I created, my world, [my] royalties got taken away. I never [received] royalties for ‘DLow Shuffle’ or ‘Do It Like Me’—my biggest songs,” DLow told the Weekly. The West Side rapper would go on to struggle despite his early success. “I was homeless, man. I was sleeping in abandoned buildings. I was sleeping in cars. I was sleeping in trap houses,” DLow said. “I had nothing, nobody, just a dream and ambition and hunger.”
Now, DLow is back with new dance moves and an unreleased track that he played for the Chicago MADE stage.
“It’s super surreal. I feel like I’m still
Megan Hammond, also known as M.e.H, wore a custom outfit and bag by local designer Elena Jimenez with glam by makeup artist @amyikemakeup.
Photo by Jesus J. Montero
Scarlet Demore opening the Bacardi Stage on Sunday at Lollapalooza 2024.
Photo by Zeltzin Vazquez.
processing it,” DLow said.
He attributes his determination and comeback to his newfound relationship with God and the people on his team. DLow took the stage with a crew of dancers, played four songs, and for the first time, got to perform his biggest tracks on a Lolla stage.
“It’s not promised that something will come out of this. Don’t have no expectations. Go out there and love it. Be you. Embrace you. This is about you today. Let it be about you for the first time,” DLow said in third person, setting his intentions hours ahead of his performance.
Fly Skinz Gives Roses to Roseland
Fly Skinz stepped onto the Tito’s Stage for the Chicago MADE Showcase filled with excitement and pride, ready to represent his roots. His latest project, <i>Roseland’s Very Own</i>, is more than just an album—it’s a heartfelt tribute to the far South Side community that shaped him.
“I’ve lived in Roseland my whole life,” Skinz reflected, underscoring the deep personal connection he has to the area. “This project is my story. When people tell me my music resonates with them, it’s because they come from a similar environment.”
Roseland’s Very Own stands out as Skinz’s most collaborative effort yet, brought to life with the support of his community and contributions from toptier producers like Benny The Butcher.
Despite their past collaborations and years working together, Butcher wasn’t aware that Skinz rapped, until he was in Chicago and hometown fans showed love crowning Skinz as one of Chicago’s best.
“I like things to unfold naturally,” Skinz said. “It’s all about hard work and dedication.”
Nico Vega Reunites: Chicago’s
Michael Peña Returns for Lollapalooza Performance
The Los Angeles indie rock band Nico Vega is known for its energetic style and powerful, emotive vocals. After disbanding in 2016, they reformed in 2023 with the return of Chicago’s own Michael Peña—a founding member whose mother gave the group its name. The group brought a set that fans raved over at the Bacardi and Toyota Music Den.
Peña, from Chicago, is a versatile actor known for his roles in Crash, End of Watch, and Ant-Man, he’s become a standout in TV and film while celebrating his Latino heritage throughout his career.
“I always stick to the process. It starts in the moment: do the process and reflect later. I’m in that mode, we’re just like, let’s go. And then looking back will be really super sweet,” Peña said of reuniting with Nico Vega and performing with the group.
Peña grew up across the street from Douglass Park on 16th and California, where he witnessed Chicago violence firsthand. It wasn’t until he moved to Chicago Lawn that he discovered what Lollapalooza was after being invited by a classmate from Marist High School.
“How can you describe the first time rock and roll hits you in the face? It just completely enveloped me,” Peña said of his first time at Lollapalooza, when he saw festival goers sliding in the mud while listening to the music.
Bands like Jesus and Mary Chain, Ministry, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Cypress Hill captivated Peña, which is why Nico Vega’s performance at Lollapalooza was a surreal experience for him.
“To be on the other end of it, a kid from the inner city of Chicago, being able to be on stage and hopefully embracing the audience from a different point of view—it hasn’t hit me yet,” Pena shared on being in “let’s go” mode. “But the idea of [performing at Lollapalooza], I’m sure it’s gonna hit me one day when gardening. That will make a grown man break down and cry.”
Pivot Gang Surprises Chicago Youth with Performances in Support of John Walt Foundation
Pivot Gang, the West Side group made of made up of DaeDae, Frsh Waters, Joseph Chillliams, MFnMelo and Saba, thrilled
Lollapalooza festivalgoers with a surprise performance at the John Walt Foundation’s (JWF) pop-up near Buckingham Fountain.
The JWF, founded in memory of Pivot Gang member Walter Long Jr. who was tragically killed in 2017, aims to empower Chicago’s youth. Led by Long Jr.’s mother, Nachelle Pugh, the foundation supports young artists across various platforms, inspiring them to pursue their musical dreams.
“These programs are crucial,” Pugh said. “We’re not just giving young people opportunities to perform, we’re teaching them the skills they need to succeed behind the scenes, from production to professional development. It’s about more than just music; it’s about building better lives.”
Pinqy Ring is a Puerto Rican rapper and community alchemist at the JWF. Her role has been to organize performers and lead the pop-up showcase.
“It’s been a challenging task,” Ring explained. “But seeing the results reminds me why we do this work. I’ve been a hip-hop artist since high school, and opportunities like this didn’t exist for me. Now I’m grateful to help provide them for the next generation.”
The showcase of young artists included the 2023 Teens in the Park competition winners Zia Jenaye, Jonathan, Nae Chic, and Queen, with hosting duties were handled by Pivot Gang and Pinqy Ring along with DJ Ca$h Era.
The last time Pivot Gang was at Lollapalooza was in support of Saba’s 2019 set. Returning with a showcase that gave young Chicago artists a platform brought up memories from Lollapalooza, including their feelings about being back together and performing their last big project live again.
“The first time I came up to Lollapalooza, Noname was performing, and she broke down, and everybody on stage broke down too. It was a special moment. Music means something, being able to see that it connected with folks. It was a special moment for me,” Frsh Waters said.
“I left Lollapalooza the first year I performed and totaled my car. I’ll never forget that that happened, like that was crazy,” Saba said.
MFnMelo shared how good it felt being back together and performing. “It feels great, it reminded me of when we were
back on tour. It’s a beautiful feeling.”
“Being back together, it feels like a hug. It feels whole,” Chilliams said. “It feels like I was supposed to be here, like we got some respect on our names. We’re legends in the city, Black Beatles.”
“We’ll be back here again, bigger and better,” DeeDee added.
In an exciting announcement, Pivot Gang shared that they will debut new music when they headline the free Vocalo Summer Finale at Millennium Park on Friday, September 20.
From the West Side of Chicago to Paris and Lollapalooza
Joseph Robinson, better known as Joe Freshgoods, has gone from the West Side to the global stage, making streetwear culture change with his creativity and designs.
At this year’s Lollapalooza, the designer unveiled an exclusive merch collection, showcasing his deep connection to the city that raised him. JFG’s culturally rich style blends streetwear elements of art and social commentary. His Lollapalooza collection included longsleeve lineup tees, hats, and a signed and numbered poster.
“I feel like I represent the city,” JFG said, emphasizing his role as an inspiration to Chicago’s youth. “It’s amazing to be here, knowing that I’m making an impact on the kids.”
Despite his global achievements, including the recent debut of his exhibition A Friend Named Cousin during the Paris Olympics, JFG remains committed to his roots in Chicago—and the city's future. “No matter how far I go, I’ve got to keep investing in Chicago,” he said. “I’ve got to keep going.” ¬
Jocelyn Martinez-Rosales is a Mexican American independent journalist from Belmont Cragin who is passionate about covering communities of color with a social justice lens. She’s also the music editor at the Weekly.
Jesús J. Montero is the son of Mexican immigrants. From Cicero, Montero is a Chicago-based journalist and producer. His work reflects through different forms of storytelling a deep connection to his cultural roots and the vibrant, diverse communities of Chicago.
DLow hours before his Lolla performance expresses gratitude and excitement.
Photo by Jesus J. Montero
Our thoughts in exchange for yours.
The Exchange is the Weekly’s poetry corner, where a poem or piece of writing is presented with a prompt. Readers are welcome to respond to the prompt with original poems, and pieces may be featured in the next issue of the Weekly
For Sale by chima “naira”
ikoro
After “I’m Only Addressing What is Permanent or Pretends to be”
It’s not the end of the world unless 23 years is almost all of your life.
A fraction of my parents’ existence; my entirety with only a little left over.
They talk about the house like it is just a place, say they’re happy in their respective condos not needing to trim grass or fight with broken screen doors and marriages, but I’ve never owned anything.
I don’t know when I’ll have a driveway or a garage next.
Folks who bought their homes back when a small fry was a dollar say my generation isn’t trying hard enough. No matter how early I clock in, a down payment is a pipe dream.
Your advice begs me to break my back just to still go lay in a bed under a leaky roof in a building that’ll one day be rebranded as luxury condos.
They’ll paint the mold matte black and say the popcorn ceilings are <i>rustic</i>.
23 years will one day be just a piece of me.
I will forget which floor board to avoid when I sneak in the house, and I’ll wish I never thought anything could last forever, but for now, I redecorate my apartment like it belongs to me. Clean the baseboards and wipe the walls, take doors off their hinges and redecorate so it can feel new.
My landlord asks if I’m staying another year as a formality. He comes over to help me put the curtains back on their rods and change the tube behind the dryer, and I buy furniture to replace what I got for free before I could actually afford to live anywhere but home.
I have always been good at playing pretend, 23 years taught me how to turn a small space into the home you wished the rest of your house would be.
I used to tell my little brother to leave his shoes at the threshold of my bedroom door and knock before entering the only space I could control.
Last month, I slept through the ceiling leaking and saved up to swap out the fixtures in the shower. I put furniture over the floorboards that creak and use a walnut to buff out all the scratches.
My landlord’s daughter carved her name into the brick by the furnace back when fries were just a dollar. I let go of my childhood home and take good care of someone else’s.
Let’s have thanksgiving here. I bought a Christmas tree. My friend sold me his dining table for forty bucks.
I put a down payment on a rack to hold shoes at the door and my mom takes hers off without being asked, says it feels good to step on a floor free of eggshells. I stretch so my back doesn’t break while I sit at my laptop and work.
Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s Community Builder.
THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: “WHAT DO YOU NEED IN ORDER TO MAKE A HOME OUT OF WHEREVER YOU’RE STANDING?”
This could be a poem, journal entry, or a stream-of-consciousness piece. Submissions could be new or formerly written pieces. Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com
Public Meetings Report
A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.
BY SCOTT PEMBERTON AND DOCUMENTERS
July 18
At its meeting, the Chicago Police Board heard public comments calling for justice for the family of Dexter Reed, twenty-six years old, who was killed by police in March after a traffic stop. “No one from the police district has come and apologized to me and my family on behalf of my son—as though he was [in] a crime syndicate or something, and that really hurt my heart,” said Nicole Banks, Reed’s mother, addressing CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling. In March, Judge Michael Mullen ruled that police officers facing misconduct cases can choose to have their cases brought before the Police Board or an arbitrator. Either option would require public hearings, however, and the police union opposes public arbitration. New information has also been added to the Dexter Reed case file in connection with why he was pulled over initially, and lawyers are urging the federal judge to throw out portions of the case, which was filed by Reed’s mother. The Chicago Police Board is made up of nine individuals appointed by the mayor. Among its roles are “deciding discipline cases involving police officers” and “nominating candidates for Superintendent of Police.”
July 22
At its meeting, the City Council Committee on Health and Human Relations received an update on Treatment Not Trauma, a proposed citywide mental health crisis response system. The update came from the Treatment Not Trauma working group charged by the mayor with implementing the system. The report touted the reopening of a mental health clinic in Roseland and doubling the number of alternate response teams among the city’s 2024 wins. It also reported an estimated funding gap of $44.6 million of the estimated $103.5 million needed for mental health programs over the next three years. Key objectives from the report include: expanding mental health clinical services, enhancing non-police crisis interventions, and educating communities about available mental health resources.
At a meeting of the Illinois Missing and Murdered Women Task Force, a public commenter raised the issue of misgendering and misrepresentation in reporting missing persons. Mandy Sark, founder of the Chicago Missing Persons Guild, suggested
the task force contact the nonprofit Trevor Project for guidance. The Trevor Project supports suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ young people. A misidentification issue exists when a missing person’s actual gender identity and reported gender identity are different. The guild actively supports reforms in how local and state law enforcement handles missing-persons cases. By law the task force is charged with examining and reporting on several issues, including “the systemic causes behind violence that Chicago women and girls experience,” tracking data on such violence, the policies and institutions that affect violence against Chicago women and girls, ways to reduce the violence, and support for victims, their families, and communities.
July 23
At its meeting, the City Council Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights heard community members and aid organizations call for an extension on a sixty-day policy that limits how long new migrants can remain in City shelters. After sixty days, migrants must return to the city intake center, or “landing zone,” and from there, they are eligible to return to shelters. City officials confirmed that migrants can return to be placed back into a shelter. Council members complained that many migrants remain on the streets after sixty days and can’t return to the landing zone because they don’t have transportation. Families are typically prioritized over single individuals. Some committee members blamed the continued presence of migrants living in tents for the problem.
July 25
Security in connection with the upcoming Democratic National Convention, Aug. 1922 at the United Center, was a key topic at a meeting of the City Council Committee on Public Safety. The Committee received updates from city officials on the security plan. Security has become a more urgent issue after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The Secret Service, the Illinois National Guard, and Chicago police will be present for the convention. CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling said Chicago police officers have been trained on constitutional rights, including the freedom of speech and protection from unwarranted search and seizures. The City is currently in a legal battle with March on the DNC 2024 over permits to march near the convention site. The coalition represents “the rights and liberation of oppressed people and against the exploitation of workers,” according to its website. The organization expects up to 50,000 marchers and does not believe the routes proposed by the City can accommodate a protest march of that size.
August 3
Pretextual traffic stops was the topic at a meeting of the 14th Police District Council - Logan Square/Humboldt Park/Wicker Park. The council heard calls for the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) to push for a CPD policy change. District council member David Orlikoff shared data showing pretextual traffic stops have declined in most of the city after reaching a record high last year except in 14th and 25th districts (specifically Logan Square) where, he said, they increased. The Free2Move coalition collected 2,400 signatures on its petition to end the stops—enough to require CCPSA to schedule a public hearing about the topic. The hearing is scheduled for 6pm Tuesday, Aug. 27, location to be determined. Pretextual traffic stops are considered to be made for minor traffic violations as a pretext for police to look for evidence of serious crimes.
This information was collected and curated by the Weekly in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org.
illustration by Holley Appold/South Side Weekly
