My own apartment search included a few affordable units in luxury developments in West Town and West Loop. However, grocery shopping at Fox Trot Market and a long commute via the Green Line back home to Austin to see family and friends didn’t seem appeasing.
All developments built in Chicago beginning in 2007 have had the option to create affordable units on-site or pay an in-lieu fee. Nearly 11,010 projects have paid fees totaling more than $85 million dollars, according to records obtained by City Bureau through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Most of these developments, which are privately funded and operated, are located on the North Side of the city. While high-income neighborhoods receive beautiful developments and new businesses, low-income neighborhoods receive Low Income Housing Trust Fund and Affordable Housing Trust fund donations. Those funds subsidize rents for low-income citizens through grants and reduced rents on units.
But what if those funds were used to ameliorate the core issue? In 2019, I was searching for affordable housing because I was being paid $6.50 an hour working as a bartender. What if those millions went to a universal base income to eliminate low-income renters, owners and eventually neighborhoods?
The woman operating a candy store out of her garage could open a brick-and-mortar shop. The community garden on my great-grandmother’s block would be able to expand and provide food as well as a safe haven for neighborhood kids. The small shops that often employ people who have been incarcerated might be able to keep their doors open and provide more opportunity. Small organizations such as 360 Nation, a West Side-based organization that utilizes education and mutual aid to promote positive development in the Black community, could expand neighborhood education for Black youth.
Teach a woman to fish and you feed her for a lifetime. More aptly, pay her a living wage and hand her funds that have been allocated elsewhere historically and you house her and her family for generations. Subsidized rents, low-income housing, and privately funded high risk loans have existed for awhile. However, if the city isn’t increasing wages and providing higher incomes isn’t it simply perpetuating the need for those policies?
The West Side of Chicago, despite its shortfalls, is my home. As a Black, queer woman, it’s invaluable seeing people who look like me and my family in my community. Conversely, it is demoralizing to have to leave my community in search of a living wage paying job, grocery stores and safety.
This summer, as convenience stores, banks and luxury shops burned in the wake of police murders, I watched my community gallantly redistribute money, food, medicine. If my community — historically defunded, redlined, and forgotten — can persevere in the face of such adversity, I have a duty to be a part of that effort.
Neighborhoods such as Austin, North Lawndale, South Shore, and so many others deserve more than leftovers from private developments. We deserve capital and median income that will precipitate development and investment. We deserve grocery stores, neighborhood coffee shops and bookstores. We deserve safe morning jogs, bike lanes and city blocks unfettered by police barricades.
I thought moving to Oak Park could erase the implications of growing up in a neighborhood like Austin. That wasn’t the case for me. Even though I’m still struggling, I plan to do it in and with my own community. A living wage job and owning property are less far flung prospects than they were in March and as those things materialize for me, I plan to do my best to make sure others in my community attain them as well.