We’ve studied the optics of the failed Bring Chicago Home measure — the way it was presented to the public — and crucial mistakes made by the supporting coalition in that regard.
Here’s what we found about the proposal to raise revenue to create more affordable housing:
The key problem was that instead of being billed as a progressive or graduated tax, Bring Chicago Home was presented in flyers and by its advocates as simply dividing high-value from inexpensive (less than $1 million) housing.
This binary framing suggested an assault on prosperous property owners and opened the way for a number of largely specious opposition arguments, such as the dubious claim it would interfere with the “intergenerational creation of wealth.”
Rather than using terms such as “graduated” or “progressive,” supporters found it easier to emphasize the binary aspect of the tax, but this created an aura of divisiveness.
Advocates of Bring Chicago Home also failed to clarify the measure was a one-time tax, levied only at the time of the sale. Many people confused it with the annual property tax levy.
The proposal also provoked concern among homeowners that in the long run, their own property would fall into the over $1 million category, and a glance at Zillow listings shows that in some neighborhoods, homes priced at over $1 million are not uncommon. A more sophisticated measure with a series of inflation-adjusted price thresholds would have been preferable for long-term fairness, but perhaps seemed too hard to explain.
It was also a mistake to include commercial as well as residential real estate in the measure. The dynamics of the two markets are distinct, and commercial real estate is currently moving sluggishly in Chicago, so the measure heightened fears of further stagnation in that market and contributed to the strong opposition among those with business ties.
Finally, the Bring Chicago Home measure was extremely vague as to what would be done with the resulting revenue, how it was to be managed and distributed, and exactly what form the promised housing would take.
There was mention in the supporting material of a “community board,” but this phrase does not have positive associations for all Chicago voters. The public may well be suspicious of “experts” and “elites,” but they do not therefore trust “community boards” to make decisions that affect their homes and neighborhoods. Many voters remained dubious that affordable and equitably distributed housing would actually be produced with the revenues to be raised by the measure.
Because supporters of the measure had encouraged a “binary” understanding of the proposed tax and failed to specify carefully how resulting revenue would be used, a majority of Chicago primary voters came to believe their interests aligned with those of owners of $1million properties and commercial real estate.
In the future, advocates of progressive measures have to meet the challenge of reaching a wide range of voters and recognizing the complexity of public opinion.
Roberta Garner is an emerita professor of sociology at DePaul University. Larry Bennett is an emeritus professor of political science at DePaul. Michael Bennett is an emeritus professor of sociology at DePaul.
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