The $31.5 million program has enough funding to send just 5,000 Chicago families $500 per month for 12 months, officials said.

The program, which is expected to include 5,000 Chicago households, will study whether a universal basic income could reduce poverty in the city. Applications will close at 11:59 p.m. May 13.

A lottery will determine which Chicagoans suffering from the economic catastrophe unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic will get $500 per month for a year as part of an effort to study whether a universal basic income could reduce poverty in the city.

The Chicago City Council approved Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $16.7 billion budget on Wednesday with the backing of progressive members who celebrated the spending plan’s focus on affordable housing, mental health, violence prevention, youth job programs and help for unhoused Chicagoans.

The violent shootout and the lack of felony charges appeared to exacerbate the increasing pressure on Mayor Lightfoot and members of the Chicago City Council to reduce violent crime which has soared to levels last seen in the 1990s.

The growing share of city property taxes sent to tax increment finance districts has fueled a perennial argument over whether the districts actually spur redevelopment and eradicate blight or serve to exacerbate growing inequality in Chicago.

Chicago’s homeless population would receive significant funding and support from the city under Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s budget proposal. As part of our “Firsthand: Living in Poverty” series, we take a look at how that money would be allocated.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has unveiled her budget plan for 2022, a plan that one alderman called a “Christmas list” of progressive spending items. We break it all down with four Chicago reporters.

Before the pandemic, Chicago finance officials projected that the city would eliminate its longstanding imbalance between revenues and expenditures and reach structural balance in 2023. In all, the pandemic cost the city $1.7 billion, complicating those efforts.

A look at the city’s past, present and fiscal future with the outgoing city budget director who is stepping down after six years.

The $8.2 billion spending plan doesn’t contain nearly as much pain for city taxpayers as last year’s budget, but grocery shopping could get a bit more expensive.

Have decades of budgetary tricks and rising pension costs made bankruptcy inevitable for the city of Chicago as well as its public school system? We debate the issue.

With the city's finances in a dire state and Mayor Rahm Emanuel looking to borrow billions, “Chicago Tonight” sits down with the head of the City Council's independent budget office, Ben Winick.

Joel Weisman and his panel of guests discuss the guilty plea of Dennis Hastert in a mysterious hush-money case, reports of a federal investigation surrounding Cook County Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, the mayor's budget that sailed through City Council, and other top stories of the week.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's record $588 million property tax hike sailed through the City Council today with only 15 aldermen voting against it. The hike is the centerpiece of Emanuel's bad news budget that imposes additional taxes and fees. We speak with a panel of aldermen about the budget and how they voted.

"I'm not going to allow Springfield's dysfunction to become Chicago's dysfunction," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said during an extended interview before Wednesday's City Council vote on his proposed budget that includes a nearly $600 million property tax hike.