Johnson Vows to Try Again to Hike Taxes on Sales of Million-Dollar Homes to Fight Homelessness


Mayor Brandon Johnson said Monday he would try again to convince Chicago voters to give the Chicago City Council the power to hike taxes on the sales of properties worth $1 million or more to fight homelessness.

Speaking at a town hall about the state of Chicago hosted by WTTW and community organization My Block, My Hood, My City, Johnson blasted “corporations” and the “ultra rich” for the failure of the ballot measure known as Bring Chicago Home, which was rejected by 53% of Chicago voters in March.

“The interests of the ultra rich confused as well as baited voters into believing that that revenue would go somewhere other than what we had purposed it for,” Johnson said. “Here’s what I’m asking the people in Chicago: At the point of which we go for this revenue again, let’s not allow the interests of the corporations as well as the ultra rich to dictate what working people deserve in this city. We have to pass Bring Chicago Home.”

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Johnson was joined on the panel by My Block, My Hood, My City founder and CEO Jahmal Cole; Great Cities Institute Director Teresa Córdova; Northwestern University professor and crime study expert Andrew Papachristos; Collins Academy High School Principal LaKenya Sanders-Sharpe; and Collins Academy student Damarion Spann.

The next election in Chicago will take place in March 2026, when voters pick Democratic and Republican nominees for statewide and county offices, with the general election set for November 2026. The next municipal election in Chicago is scheduled to take place in February 2027.

“Every issue that we are facing in this city requires investment,” Johnson said. “It’s got to come from somewhere. What I’m offering as mayor of the city of Chicago, it has to come from the ultra rich and these large corporations. Working people in this city have balanced the budget for decades. I’m saying there’s a better pathway for to respond to these crises, if we speak together as working people, demanding that the ultra rich in this city, in this state, finally paid their fair share in taxes.”

The ballot measure could have generated approximately $100 million annually by hiking taxes on the amount of real estate sales of more than $1 million. Nearly 94% of all properties sold in Chicago have a final purchase price of less than $1 million, officials said.

The defeat ended a years-long campaign by advocates for the unhoused in Chicago to create dedicated city funding to house the city’s most vulnerable residents. Since then, the number of Chicagoans living in city shelters or on city streets has increased significantly, with more than 18,800 living on the streets or in shelters, with tens of thousands more living “doubled up” with friends or relatives, according to estimates.

The number of Chicagoans living in city shelters or on city streets tripled between January 2023 and January 2024, an increase driven largely by the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants from the southern border, all of whom are in the country legally after requesting asylum.

A coalition of real estate and development groups campaigned vigorously against the measure, which they contended could cause the city’s already-struggling commercial real estate market to collapse amid the shift to remote work.

Johnson accused the opponents of Bring Chicago Home of capitalizing on the divisions exposed by the migrant crisis, which strained the city’s social safety net, worsened the city’s financial condition and exacerbated tension between Chicago’s Black and Latino communities.

“They used the migrant crisis to undermine the interests of working people,” Johnson said.

Johnson forcefully defended his response to the migrant crisis, but acknowledged it was deeply painful for many Black Chicagoans to see the city spend hundreds of millions of dollars to care for the newest Chicagoans, many of them Latino, while many Black Chicagoans have lived in neighborhoods that have suffered from disinvestment for decades — with no end in sight.

Johnson vowed to continue investing in South and West Side neighborhoods, and helping those who come to Chicago to start a new life.

“There’s enough room for all of us,” Johnson said.

Many of the questions posed to Johnson and the other panelists came from South and West Side residents focused on the disparity that South and West Side residents feel in comparison with those who live downtown and on the North Side — from the effectiveness of police and the quality of grocery stores and hospitals, to the ability to get help from a city agency when confronted with a nuisance.

Johnson acknowledged many of those problems have deep roots in Chicago’s history, which has been defined by systemic racism and segregation.

“There’s not a one single answer that can overcome the years of disinvestment,” Johnson said. “There just isn’t."

Johnson celebrated Chicago’s resistance during the first weeks of the second Trump administration and accused the president of wanting to “work outside the constraints of the constitution,” only to be stopped or to reverse course because of intense criticism.

“I’m a baseball guy,” Johnson said. “The president continues to balk, which is an illegal deceptive move that a pitcher can make, that they shouldn’t do. We have to call him out for his balk. And at some point, we have to get him off that freaking mound.”

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]


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