Review Responses From the Mayoral Run-Off Candidates

Get to know the mayoral candidates. StreetWise emailed the run-off candidates the same two questions on homelessness and on how to retain the middle class in Chicago. This is re-printed from StreetWise Vol.31 No. 8 (February 20 - 26, 2023).

1.Chicago is deservedly proud of its reputation as a world-class city in terms of art, theater, music and restaurants, but urbanologist Richard Florida says that the flip side is the "new urban crisis" of a shrinking middle class, deepening segregation and increasing inequality.

What is your solution to prevent the displacement of low-income Chicagoans and the retention of middleclass Chicagoans?

2.There are a lot of solutions to homelessness out there, starting with the proposed Bring Chicago Home ordinance, which would raise the Real Estate Transfer Tax (RETT), a one-time tax paid when a property is sold, by 1.9 percentage points on properties over $1 million and dedicate the funding to permanent housing with services.

Are you in favor? What other solutions do YOU support?

BRANDON JOHNSON

1. In 2021, the City of Chicago put up $290 million for affordable housing production and preservation. But that money ended up going to build houses and condos the average Chicagoan can’t afford. While the median household income in our city is $62,000, 40 percent of the units the city calls “affordable” are for incomes higher than that threshold.

Luxury housing developments don’t need public subsidies. Chicago should focus its housing investments where they will make the most difference – building units for middle class and low-income Chicagoans.

I would encourage the Chicago Housing Authority to cease any land grabs or private partnerships, and instead, develop local community processes for land use to deliver on the promises to rebuild public housing in our city. This is how the City and its people and communities can address the housing and humanitarian crisis together.

The City of Chicago needs to work with existing homeowners who are behind on their mortgages or maintenance to rehabilitate those buildings and create new affordable rental units in the process. The CIty can also develop comprehensive plans to support local affordable housing projects such as 18th and Peoria in Pilsen – the largest affordable housing plan in the city. We must ensure that the local average median income and local residents are considered, and encourage residents to apply for quality affordable housing units. With tax increment financing (TIF) reform, those funds can be an important source of revenue. We can also support and invest in innovative models like housing co-ops that create permanent affordable housing units, and encourage the creation of a public bank to ensure fair lending opportunities for Chicagoans.

Finally, we must strengthen tenant protection and pathways to home ownership, and protect naturally occurring affordable housing by capping property tax hikes and working with state officials to 1) create tax breaks for those who keep rents affordable, and 2) change State statutes to assess taxes based on rental income.

2.Yes, I support the proposed Bring Chicago Home ordinance. Any serious housing plan needs to start with a real vision for moving unhoused Chicagoans into safe and affordable housing. Studies have shown that safe and stable housing reduces trauma and crime, and protects some of our city’s most vulnerable residents – ending the continued cycle of displacement and our neighbors dying from exposure to the elements.

The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) has unfortunately failed in its commitment to build the housing that it promised to residents more than 20 years ago. In 2000, the CHA embarked on a plan to tear down 39,000 public housing units and replace them with 25,000 units. But two decades later, residents are still waiting to see that promise fulfilled. Lots sit vacant, while the CHA gives away land to the Chicago Fire and 65,000+ Chicagoans remain unhoused.

We need more housing at every income level across the city; a moratorium on commercial development on CHA land until the Authority makes significant progress towards building more affordable housing; and a freeze on the transfer of CHA land for non-housing use. We can’t allow public land intended for housing to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Brandon Johnson has been a member of the Cook County Board who has represented the 1st district since 2018. Johnson is a Democrat and attended Aurora University. He was a public school teacher and became an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union.

PAUL VALLAS

1.We must start with making the City safe. The generational spike in all sorts of crime amplifies decisions by the middle class to leave the city. See my detailed plan at https://www.paulvallas2023.com/ publicsafety.

A few highlights:

Public safety is a human right and I will protect it as one; The Federal Court Consent Decree is a floor, not a ceiling. I will fast-track a standing reform structure within the department that recruits civilian expertise on police reform and operations;

● I will quickly deploy officers back to districts so there is full integrity of officers patrolling and walking beats;

● Community policing must be a philosophy at all levels of the department, a career track in a department that values relationship building.

With safe streets, more individuals, businesses and institutions will stay and invest in growing the city. However, that must occur without gentrification and displacement.

My Community Economic Development Plan, laid out January 31 to the City Club of Chicago, prioritizes true community-led, informed and owned economic development without gentrification-based displacement. Community benefits agreements (CBAs) in proposed plans should prioritize dedication of benefits/resources to local social service support organizations, including mental health and addiction and community health centers. I favor restoring mental health centers closed by the Emanuel Administration and not reopened by the Lightfoot Administration; I would expand them to 22 facilities encompassed by each of the city’s geographic police districts. They would be run by the city, in coordination with county facilities.

I also propose:

• creation of a Municipal Bank to leverage city revenues held by private sector municipal depositories (some with histories of predatory and discriminatory lending), to make available low-interest mortgage and residential rehab loans.

• aggressive revitalization of the CHA to fast-track development of affordable housing, which was not replaced during the Plan for Transformation and for which CHA has not been held accountable.

• city/private investment in vacant land for tiny homes.

• priority in city procurement to businesses that hire and retain returning citizens who have received training in expanded partnerships with numerous non-profits around the city.

Ultimately, community economic development must be ownership in the community by people of the community. This would grow the middle class and help low-income community members enter the middle class.

2. I support the objectives of the proposed Bring Chicago Home ordinance, but not the methodology.

Homelessness is a crisis at individual, community, city and national levels. Its causes and effects connect to social deficits and crises, such as public health, addiction, mental health, economic inequities. (See 1st question’s answer on mental health centers, drug addiction/treatment facilities, community-led, informed and owned development, CBAs, Municipal Bank, CHA accountability for affordable units not completed during the Plan for Transformation, priority on returning citizens for solutions.)

Each area of deficit must be fixed. That deficit is the noble prompt for the Bring Chicago Home ordinance.

Added taxes to generate income for action for which there is no proposed plan on the table is not responsible governance.

However, I am committed to finding funding that might have been generated from such an added tax from existing programs and resources to achieve the objectives of Bring Chicago Home. That should be collaborative work with the City Council. The current Administration’s parliamentary maneuvering has impeded public debate on this issue and this ordinance.

Paul Gust Vallas is former superintendent of the Bridgeport Public Schools and the Recovery School District of Louisiana, former CEO of both the School District of Philadelphia and the Chicago Public Schools, and former budget director for the city of Chicago.

Compiled by Suzanne Hanney / Bios by Emma Murphy