Politics
Mayoral Candidate Matt Brewer on Housing, Public Safety and Chicago’s Business Community
Chicago residents will vote for who they want to be mayor in less than a year, and the pool of candidates is already crowded.
Attorney and former Chicago Housing Authority board chair Matt Brewer recently threw his hat in the ring, running on a pro-business and affordability-focused campaign. A mayoral bid, however, is Brewer’s first go at running for elected office.
The South Side native is not a career politician but comes with a diverse resume. He’s a co-owner of the iconic Wiener’s Circle and co-owns the city’s first Black-owned marijuana dispensary alongside his brother and mom.
Brewer joined “Chicago Tonight” to discuss why he wants to add “mayor of Chicago” to his resume. Here’s what he had to say about his candidacy and the issues that matter most to Chicagoans.
On how his diverse background informs his leadership skills:
Brewer grew up in the Grand Crossing neighborhood and attended Stanford University, Yale Law School and Harvard Business School before returning to the Windy City to practice law and pursue entrepreneurial endeavors.
“The next mayor will step into a seat that no other mayor has stepped into where we have a fully elected school board for the first time ever, less direct control over transportation, we have a fully empowered and independent City Council that’s passed budgets around, instead of with, the mayor, and all these agencies like CHA and others who’ve become a lot more independent as well. Fractured relationships in City Council, fractured relationships in Springfield. The next mayor can’t step in and put all those genies back in the bottle. We have a new day of governance, a new day of leadership. We now need a mayor for this particular moment who can wear lots of different hats, speak different languages to different people to bring everyone together around a shared vision. … Lawyer, entrepreneur, small business owner, (in) government and nonprofit (sectors), are the hats that I wear that I think prepare me for this new phase of leadership in our city.”
Brewer served as the CHA’s board chair for a little more than a year before Mayor Brandon Johnson removed him from the top role in April following a public spat. The move came soon after the CHA board, including Brewer, voted to hire Keith Pettigrew as the agency’s CEO despite objections from the mayor. Johnson maintains Brewer acted illegally and outside of the purview of his authority.
“I did spend the last year of my life running the Housing Authority. It’s a $1.4 billion budget, 135,000 residents in our city, and it’s very connected to how our city operates in terms of housing, transportation and safety. I like to say I come from the outside, but I have knowledge of the inside. So I’m not walking in trying to figure out how to turn the lights on.”
On housing:
Chicago is in the midst of a housing shortage and affordable housing crisis, and more than 58,000 people experienced homelessness across the city in 2024, according to the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness.
“Housing is at the intersection of everything. … It touches public safety, it touches transportation, it touches on economic mobility. Meaning: Can someone born here have an opportunity to get outside of that pocket and get more access and more opportunity? And so part of the answer to that question starts with City Hall and a vision at City Hall on the fifth floor that coordinates with CHA, that coordinates with DPD, the Department of Housing, that coordinates with public and private partnerships to look at all the land we have in our city. There’s an opportunity to increase affordable housing, market rate housing and a bunch of other community assets. They all have to work together and be done in a way that’s considerate of transportation and public safety and all the other factors.”
On Chicago’s business community:
Johnson has a strained relationship with Chicago’s business community following two controversial decisions — the first being his corporate head tax, which City Council rejected, and then championing the phaseout of tipped minimum wage. In a campaign video, Brewer said: “We can be a city that’s affordable to live and a great place to do business.”
“We have to move Chicago forward without leaving people behind. On the moving Chicago forward piece, we’re talking about growth; we’re talking about bringing in new businesses, creating new jobs, jobs for the future, a place where businesses can operate, grow, attract new businesses. … When we create a Chicago that generates more revenue, we can address a lot of the issues that we struggle with in our budget right now, and we raise the tide for everyone. It’s not a community or business (question). The answer is both.”
On public safety:
“You get the highest return on investment from prevention. Intervention’s important, and then enforcement. Partnership and credibility are important. … We need a place where people feel safe. You go into South and West Side pockets, people don’t feel safe. You go into Gold Coast or other neighborhoods on the North Side, people still don’t feel safe regardless of what we see in the numbers. We need a world where people feel safe and we can actually start to address some of the root causes.”
On his political ideology and philosophy:
“I am not a politician. I am a person who loves Chicago and a professional, and so I don’t fit neatly into the political boxes. I’m running to improve Chicago.”
