Politics

Key City Panel OKs Plan Designed to Stop Gentrification Sparked by Obama Presidential Center

A key Chicago City Council committee advanced a proposal Wednesday designed to protect some longtime residents and homeowners in South Shore from gentrification sparked by the under-construction Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park.

The unanimous vote by the City Council’s Housing and Real Estate Committee means a yearslong fight to prevent longtime residents from being pushed out of South Shore is one step away from victory. A final vote by the full City Council is set for Thursday.

The proposal, authored by Ald. Desmon Yancy (5th Ward), was designed to expand protections against supercharged gentrification approved five years ago by the City Council for Woodlawn to parts of South Shore.

City data shows that rents in South Shore have risen more than 43% in recent years and home prices have jumped 130%, according to the office of Mayor Brandon Johnson, who backs the proposal.

That is evidence that the city should have moved much more quickly and much more forcefully to stop longtime residents from being pushed out of the area surrounding the $615 million Obama Presidential Center, Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) said.

“We didn’t do this right the first time,” Taylor said.

The Obama Presidential Center is scheduled to open in the spring, nearly 10 years after former President Barack Obama left office.

“If we don’t keep an eye on South Shore, we will lose it,” Ald. Lamont Robinson (4th Ward) said. “And if we don’t keep our eye on South Shore, we will lose Bronzeville.”

The Jackson Park Housing Pilot Program does not include the part of South Shore that is in Ald. Gregory Mitchell’s 7th Ward, limiting the protections to the area between 60th Street to the north, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to the west, South Chicago Avenue to the southwest, 71st Street to the south, and DuSable Lake Shore Drive to the east.

Mitchell opposed the proposal, and a majority of the City Council refused to even consider Yancy’s original measure, which included Mitchell’s 7th Ward, stalling the measure’s passage for more than two years.

With a majority of the City Council unwilling to vote to buck the tradition that calls on them to mind their own business and defer to the colleague whose ward it impacts, Yancy had no choice but to bow to the power of aldermanic prerogative, the decades-old tradition of giving alderpeople the final say over controversial issues in their wards, and limit the measure to his ward, which also includes Hyde Park.

“This doesn’t solve every problem,” Yancy said during Wednesday’s hearing, adding that it will nevertheless allow longtime South Shore residents, many of whom are Black, to start building generational wealth.

The pilot program would require new homes and apartments built on 30 city-owned lots to be set aside for low- and-moderate income Chicagoans. Residents of South Shore who have already been forced to leave the neighborhood would get the first chance to rent the newly built affordable apartments, according to the proposal.

The program also directs the city’s Department of Housing to raise $3 million in private funds from philanthropies to create a property tax debt relief program. Residents of South Shore, Englewood and the Lower West Side who are behind on their property taxes can apply for grants of $5,000.

In addition, landlords must give tenants additional notice before their leases expire, with residents who have lived in the apartment for at least a year getting 120 days’ notice before being forced to move, with those who have lived in the apartment for at least three years getting 180 days’ notice, according to the proposal.

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

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