This week, a series of setbacks within Chicago’s City Council has paused movement on the Bring Chicago Home (BCH) proposal, which calls for restructuring the real-estate transfer tax on high-end property sales and imposing a one-time tax on sold properties.
Housing advocates with the BCH coalition need aldermanic support to get a ballot measure approved that would ask Chicago voters if the city should increase the real-estate transfer tax for buyers who purchase residential or commercial properties for more than $1 million. Those funds would be redirected toward efforts to combat homelessness.
The resolution is currently in Chicago’s City Council’s rules committee and, with the City Council’s approval, could become a ballot question in the upcoming February 2023 municipal election.
The resolution was on Tuesday’s agenda for the rules committee, as were two other ballot measures. However, that meeting was canceled hours before the committee was set to meet.
And on Monday, a special meeting for the City Council took place to discuss the BCH proposal.
The meeting was scheduled to start at 9 a.m. but was moved to 11:30 a.m. because there weren’t enough City Council members to discuss the proposal.
That meeting was scheduled by sponsors of the resolution, including Alds: Maria Hadden (49th Ward), Carlos Ramirez Rosa (35th Ward), Daniel La Spata (1st Ward), Matt Martin (47th Ward) and Andre Vasquez (40th Ward).
Hadden said the meeting was a hearing to allow members of the public and City Council members to weigh in on the resolution. She added that they weren’t asking council members to vote on the resolution.
Only 19 City Council members were present at the first meeting, but at least 26 needed to be present to move forward with the meeting.
“There are people who don’t want to have a real estate transfer tax increase for a variety of reasons. So, even though we weren’t asking council members to vote on the issue, there are some people who didn’t want to aid the cause in any way. There were also a bunch of people who said they would come for the hearing because it is our job to show up for City Council meetings,” Hadden told The TRiiBE on Nov. 15, referring to City Council members who weren’t present for the meeting.
At 11:30 a.m on Monday, the meeting started for a second time, but there still weren’t enough City Council members to move forward. This time, 25 members were present—just one person shy of the 26-member requirement for a quorum.
“I’m disgusted, hurt and upset at the 25 other alderpeople that did not show up [and] hid like cowards, because they’d rather do what the mayor [Mayor Lori Lightfoot] tells them to do than do their job. They should be ashamed of themselves,” said April Harris, a grassroots leader of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.