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The proposed Jackson Park Housing Pilot ordinance that’s before the Chicago City Council’s Housing and Real Estate committee today — and possibly up for vote during tomorrow’s full council meeting — makes a clear declaration to Black Chicagoans: We want you here, and we want to make it easier for you to be here.
For years, South Shore residents have expressed both pride and concern over the near-final Obama Presidential Center, a project that has sworn to spur economic development and civic activity for communities like Woodlawn and South Shore — neighborhoods that the city divested from for decades after the neighborhoods became majority Black in the 1960s.
But this Obama Presidential Center development, meant to benefit the people who live here, cannot come without assurances. The people who have lived in these communities for decades deserve to benefit from the center, not be displaced by it.
The Woodlawn community mobilized to place thoughtful controls on rampant development and protect its longtime residents from displacement, and successfully got the Woodlawn Housing Preservation Ordinance passed in City Council in 2020.
The proposed Jackson Park Housing Pilot ordinance for South Shore will be introduced in the council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate today and potentially voted on by City Council on Thursday. It will aid South Shore residents against rising property taxes, make it easier for residents to stay in our homes, and protect us from shady landlords who care more about the market than our livelihoods.
For more than a decade, South Shore has been the eviction capital of the city. Seniors have been squeezed by housing costs due to rising property taxes and fixed incomes. Single-family homeowners and condo associations can’t keep up with repair costs, mortgage payments, and taxes. And investors, speculators, and other ghouls looking to profit from our struggle are swooping in to buy the neighborhood.
A Zillow analysis released in late 2022 showed that in the final quarter of that year, 32% of homes in South Shore were purchased by investors. Last month, New City Property Management paid $26.5 million for a 239-unit building on South Shore Drive. These trends are the exact kinds of economic development that the Obama Presidential Center promised, but they cut us out.
These are challenges that reverberate around the city for Black, brown, and white residents alike. If Chicago alders are serious about protecting their own, they’d stand up in support of policies that help working people live and thrive in their neighborhoods. Dollars for homeowners who’ve fallen behind on property tax payments, loans for local developers and prospective buyers to rehab properties that have fallen vacant, set asides for affordable housing development on vacant lots, and tenant empowerment and protections against precarity, are the kind of good faith policies that city government should be investing in citywide to relieve strain on everyday Chicagoans.
This week, the City Council will have the opportunity to move Chicago in the direction of a city that supports its residents and doesn’t turn a blind eye to market forces that terrorize them. Passing the Jackson Park Housing Pilot ordinance is another good step that lets us know: We want you here, and we want to make it easier for you to stay here.
