Hang on to those two-flats, Chicago, or our city will favor only the wealthy

A recent Sun-Times article by Fran Spielman, about a plan by Chicago’s new housing commissioner to solve the affordable housing crisis, notes many good ideas offered by new and old alderman.

What’s missing, though, is any discussion of how to preserve existing affordable housing and stop the displacement of families.

What is Chicago’s plan for preserving our naturally occurring affordable housing, such as the two-flat and four-flat iconic buildings — family units with two and three bedrooms — that make up most of our city neighborhoods?

What is the city’s plan for preserving affordable housing on the North and Northwest sides, where gentrification is displacing longtime residents who cannot afford the higher cost of housing? As the city invests and rebuilds on the South and West sides, what is the plan to preserve affordable housing there?

As low-income families are forced by gentrification to move into neighborhoods already saturated with low-income residents, we will continue to feed the cycle of segregation.

Until Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the city’s new housing commissioner come up with a plan, working families will continue to be displaced and Chicago will be known as a city for the wealthy!

Diane Limas
Board President, Communities United
Albany Park

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Ask the angels at the gates of Heaven about guns

The recent mass shooting in Virginia Beach has once again raised the issue of guns, even if only for a moment in a country where violence seems to have become normalized.

I recently saw a cartoon that had two angels at the gate of Heaven. One said to the other, “They keep sending us their thoughts and prayers...and their kids.”

While we see the daily political reality show played out in Washington, we must demand again that America have the uncomfortable conversation about guns and common-sense gun laws.

Every candidate running for president must be forced to address it.

We must acknowledge America’s love affair with guns, which has bought into the National Rifle Association’s propaganda that having a gun makes one safer, though every study proves that isn’t true.

America has more than 300 million guns, more than any other country, and because of that we lead in gun deaths, more than 30,000 a year. And although mass shootings get the most attention, they are not the main cause of gun deaths. Homicides and suicides still lead this tragic reality.

Although the NRA continues to fight against the studies and research that are necessary to effectively deal with lowering gun violence, what little research that has been done tells us common-sense gun laws do in fact lower gun deaths.

For 20 years I have been trying to get the federal government to “Title Guns Like Cars,” to just have gun owners be held as responsible as car owners. To make each gun owner/buyer hold a title for the gun and transfer that title when selling or giving the gun to another person so that someone is always responsible for it.

I know it seems hopeless to address this gun crisis because of those who hide behind the 2nd Amendment, and because the NRA seeks to buy and control elected officials. Perhaps it also will never become a priority as long as the victims of are primarily black and brown. But sooner or later, we must have the courage to do more than release press statements and offer prayers and thoughts.

As Americans, we must divorce ourselves from this love affair with guns. Americans are dying, our children are dying, our future is dying.

So let’s either create laws to stop this carnage, or just shut up and continue to let our mothers cry and funeral directors become rich.

Rev. Michael L. Pfleger