When the city and Chicago Housing Authority demolished distressed high-rise public housing developments under the Plan for Transformation, they promised to fill the land with housing for many Chicagoans.
Twenty years later, there are still 130 acres of vacant land and buildings at several CHA redevelopment sites. Many factors have contributed to the unacceptably slow pace of redevelopment, and the city’s proposed housing and economic development bond presents a path to address some of the financial causes for delays.
The bond will support existing programs, but it also creates proactive funding sources, such as a new initiative to finance and operate mixed-income affordable rental housing. The proposed social housing revolving fund will allow the city to create more housing by offering loans at more favorable rates than private investors. Under this program, the city can capture ongoing operating revenue from completed developments, which can be reinvested for more affordable housing.
In a system where upfront costs determine the number of affordable units in proposed developments, or whether they’re built at all, flexible funding sources are promising.
We need housing across the entire city, and this initiative can both help fuel new construction and ease competition for existing resources. However, some communities have been waiting far longer than others.
Even though this initiative creates a regenerative funding source, the city will still need to consider the potential profitability of proposed developments. This program will likely prioritize housing in areas where market rents are high enough to cover construction and operating costs, not housing that requires the deepest subsidies.
The social housing revolving fund represents an innovative, bold approach to a larger conversation about what this administration can do to support development for all communities. Hopefully, this initiative, and the overall bond plan, will mean the city will direct funding for housing to areas like the CHA redevelopment sites and communities that would most benefit from overdue investment.
Innovative ideas are within the city’s reach and should be used to address the longstanding vacancies on CHA-owned land. This proposal demonstrates what we are capable of when we take bold action. Let it be a call to action and a catalyst for more conversations about how we invest in the public good.
Ashley Meeder, staff counsel, Impact for Equity
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Don’t waste time with recall referendum effort
The effort to put a binding referendum on the November ballot to recall Mayor Brandon Johnson is the biggest waste of time Chicago politics has seen in a long time. There is already a mechanism to recall the mayor and all the other elected officials every four years. These are called elections.
This effort seems to solely exist to make the mayor look bad (he is excellent at that without any help). The real solution is getting Chicagoans to pay attention to issues between elections, pressure their aldermanic representatives for real change and put more effort into reviewing and choosing candidates in the mayoral elections every four years.
Don Anderson, Oak Park
Pass child tax credit
How long must families wait? It’s been nearly two months since the U.S. House passed a bipartisan expansion of the child tax credit and sent it to the Senate. Estimates are this bill will benefit 16 million children in families with low incomes, including 5.8 million kids under 6.
You would think that in an election year, Congress would be eager to pass a tax cut for families (and small businesses). But a few senators are blocking it for political gain. Families should not have to wait months for Congress to pass something that is popular and necessary.
It is time for senators to show us their hands. If the bill passes, families win. If it fails, senators can explain to voters why they chose to keep children in poverty. I urge our senators to demand an immediate vote and vote “yes” on the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act.
Jessica Hooper, New Lenox
Abortion should be ‘left with the people’
Regarding former President Donald Trump saying abortion limits should be left to states, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America is based on the conviction that all human life matters and is worthy of protection, and that conviction was a backdrop for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White’s dissenting opinion with the Roe v. Wade decision granting abortion rights.
White was appointed to the court by President John F. Kennedy. To tell the hard truth of abortion, as a Roe dissenter, Justice White wisely opined: “In a sensitive area such as this, involving as it does issues over which reasonable men may easily and heatedly differ, I cannot accept the Court’s exercise of its clear power of choice by interposing a constitutional barrier to state efforts to protect human life and by investing mothers and doctors with the constitutionally protected right to exterminate it. This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs. It is my view, therefore, that the Texas statute is not constitutionally infirm because it denies abortion to those who seek to serve only their convenience, rather than to protect their life or health.”
Justice White desired a robust functioning democracy that activates voters and their state legislators. This is simple common sense.
Jesse Prince, retired circuit court judge, Orland Park
