The Chicago City Council passed the Jackson Park Housing Pilot Ordinance on Thursday, and residents and community organizers gathered at Parkside Community Academy in Jackson Park two days later to celebrate the win. The auditorium of the elementary school was the site of the Obama Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) Forum on Sept. 27.
The ordinance is part of a decade-long campaign by the Obama Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) Coalition and the community advocacy organization Southside Together to prevent displacement in South Side neighborhoods surrounding the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center.
“This was a huge win. The CBA includes policies that will stop our displacement from this neighborhood and it was hard enough for Black people to get in this neighborhood,” Tanisha Wembley, a resident of South Shore, said on stage during the forum. “Developers want people with money, and are trying their best to reduce the amount of people of color in the South Shore area to as little as possible.”
The bill, co-sponsored by Alds. Desmon Yancy (5th Ward), Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) and William Hall (6th Ward), reserves city-owned lots for affordable housing, creates a property tax debt relief grant pilot program, supports the rehabilitation of vacant properties with a preference for local developers and affordability requirements, expands the Fair Notice Ordinance to give renters an earlier warning before landlords decide not to renew a lease or evict a tenant, and creates a tenant opportunity-to-purchase program, according to a fact sheet from the Mayor’s Office
Mayor Brandon Johnson, who attended Saturday’s forum, spoke with pride about the ordinance passing under his leadership.
“This was a campaign promise. It was a promise made. It was a promise that we welcome the development in Chicago, but we also must protect our residents in the face of it, and we have to do everything in our power to ensure that it includes Black Chicago in particular, that has overwhelmingly held the brunt of gentrification and disinvestment,” Johnson told attendees.
Although the overall theme of the meeting was to acknowledge the approved ordinance, the Jackson Park Housing Pilot only covers the area bounded by 60th Street to the north, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive to the west, South Chicago Avenue to the southwest, 71st Street to the south, and South DuSable Lake Shore Drive to the east, encompassing portions of the 5th, 6th and 20th wards.
Residents said their fight for housing protections for all of South Shore continues. The full goal is to ensure protections by making additions — such as an Office of Tenant Advocate and a rental registry — to be agencies established by the city.
During the forum, members of the South Shore Tenants’ Union, formerly the CKO Tenant Union, spoke about hazardous conditions in their apartment buildings. Residents told stories of their power and gas being shut off, a broken building elevator, water damage and rising rents.
“This is a big step, and I am very grateful, but we are not done yet. There are still gaps that leave many of my neighbors, especially renters in 8th Ward, unprotected,” Obama CBA Coalition member LaShawn Etheridge said. “We need policies like the Office of Tenant Advocate that will provide an emergency hotline, emergency housing assistance and make sure building inspections happen. We need policies like a rental registry that will track landlords, hold them accountable for code violations and make it easier to identify management companies that constantly switch up to dodge responsibility. These policies are not extra. They are essential.”
Marla Blanton, one of the leaders of the South Shore Tenants’ Union, pointed out that while Chicago has many laws on the books that are meant to protect renters, they are rarely enforced, which makes tangible protections like an Office of Tenant Advocate and a rental registry more essential to create protections for renters.
“The policies of the community benefits agreement, or CBA, have a value to be transformative,” said Aaliyah Travis, a member of the South Shore Tenants’ Union. “They’re not just words; they’re lifelines for tenants who have been ignored, displaced and disrespected.”
Alds. Yancy and Taylor were both present during the forum and stressed how difficult it is to be a progressive alder and to get such policies passed.
“One of the downsides about being a progressive is we don’t win a lot, but today we’re going to celebrate this win,” Yancy said as he amped up the crowd with a chant. “We want to create stability here in South Shore because, while this is a historically Black community, the history isn’t that long, it’s deep, but it’s not that long, and we’ve got these amazing assets that we want to make sure continue to allow us to tell the story of the South Shore.”
Taylor said that housing issues are created and are a matter of the priorities of lawmakers.
“I always use this phrase: Just say you hate poor people. That’s all, ’cause it ain’t nothing else,” Taylor said during the forum. “Y’all give billionaires tax breaks…Y’all give a lot of people [who don’t need it] tax breaks. Give the people a tax break.”
Taylor added that there are multiple fights that should be taken to state lawmakers to create property tax freezes to further prevent displacement. “Y’all love telling the Chicago aldermen, ‘it’s election time we gone replace y’all.’ Replace them negroes in the state, too, then.”
While waiting for the bus to take her back home after the day’s forum, Woodlawn resident Evelyn Watts said she loved how the CBA coalition is fighting for those who grew up in the community and that such meetings keep her informed.
“It’s letting the seniors know, when you invite us here, that you all are our future, and we can see our future through you all,” Watts, a senior, said about the Obama CBA Coalition and Southside Together. “I’ve been to one of these meetings, but I didn’t understand what it’s about. Now I know that it’s about trying to keep our people who grew up in this neighborhood, so they can stay in the neighborhood or come back and afford to have one of the places that’s being built now. So that sounds good.”
Southside Together is hosting a meeting about the displacement impacts of the planned multibillion-dollar quantum park on Saturday, Oct. 4 at the South Shore Library from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, anchored by Silicon Valley tech startup PsiQuantum, has received zoning change approval by the City Council without community input and without considering possible harms, according to organizers.
A previous version of this story had the incorrect date for the meeting about the quantum facility.
