(WTTW News)

When it comes to paying off that debt, Black and Latino graduates are struggling. Nearly half of Black students owe an average of 12.5% more than they borrowed, according to the Education Data Initiative.

(WTTW News)
,

One in 20 tap water samples taken from thousands of Chicagoans found lead levels at or above federal limits, according to a recent analysis by the Guardian. It also found that nine of the top 10 ZIP codes with the largest percentages of high test results were in neighborhoods with majority Black and Latino residents.

Two people cross LaSalle Street. (Provided: City of Chicago)

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she was determined to chart a “bright and lasting” future for LaSalle Street between Washington Street and Jackson Boulevard, an area of the city she said had been permanently altered by the shifts triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

(WTTW News)

On Saturday, Oct. 8, activists, scholars, artists and journalists are convening at the Logan Center for the Arts in moderated discussions centered on the themes of injustice explored in Richard Wright’s 1940 novel “Native Son.”

A rendering of the planned Chicago Fire Club practice facility on former Chicago Housing Authority land. (Courtesy of Chicago Department of Planning and Development.)
,

The Chicago Fire’s plan is set to transform the vacant Near West Side property into practice soccer fields and a training and administrative building. The empty land was part of the massive CHA complex known as the Addams-Brooks-Loomis-Abbott homes. 

(WTTW News)
,

Estimates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicate that the rates of traffic-related deaths are the highest they’ve been in 20 years. An analysis by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine suggests Latino and Black Americans are disproportionately affected by vehicular fatalities. 

(WTTW News)

According to the Equal Justice Initiative, 86% of American churches have no significant racial diversity. The Pew Research Center reports that 57% of churchgoers attend a predominantly White congregation.

An image featured in the exhibit “Handmaidens for Travelers: The Pullman Company Maids.” (Credit: Newberry Library)

The exhibit highlights both the benefits and challenges they experienced while traveling as Black women during the Jim Crow era.

(WTTW News)

The abandonment and neglect that has undermines the economies of many Chicago and Cook County neighborhoods is very much man-made, according to a new study.

The under-construction affordable housing project at 2602-38 N. Emmett St. in Logan Square. (Credit: Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp.)

“This brings our city one step closer towards ensuring that every Chicagoan can live in a walkable, affordable community that is connected to transit and all of its benefits,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

A residential street in Wicker Park in Chicago. (WTTW News)

Many of the barriers erected by elected officials and civic leaders beginning in the 1930s to keep Black Chicagoans, Latino Chicagoans and White Chicagoans from living, working and playing in the same neighborhoods remain unchanged nearly a century later, according to a new study.

The under-construction affordable housing project at 2602-38 N. Emmett St. in Logan Square. (Credit: Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp.)

A proposal crafted by Housing Commissioner Marisa Novara is designed to bolster the city’s policy to encourage transit-oriented development by boosting incentives and increasing pedestrian safety while increasing the amount of affordable housing being built near train stations and along bus lines.

The Lucy Gonzalez Parsons apartments opened in May 2022 near the Logan Square Blue Line station. (WTTW News)
,

The Lucy Gonzalez Parsons apartments opened in May near the Logan Square Blue Line station. The seven-story complex, which features retail space and 100 affordable units. In Pilsen, the Pilsen Housing Cooperative offers a blueprint for community-led affordable housing. 

(Patrick Leger, special to ProPublica)
,

More than 30,000 people wait for homes from the Chicago Housing Authority. Meanwhile, a site that’s gone undeveloped for two decades is set to become a Chicago Fire practice facility.

When thousands of families were forced to move out of the ABLA Homes public housing complex two decades ago, leaders promised they would be able to come back to new housing. Now, after building less than a third of the promised new units, officials are moving to redevelop the largest plot of empty land at ABLA — but not for housing.

The under-construction affordable housing project at 2602-38 N. Emmett St. in Logan Square. (Credit: Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp.)

Efforts to rethink the policy and spur development on the South and West sides while preventing long-time residents from being displaced from the Northwest Side are starting to pay off, symbolized by the grand opening set for Friday of an apartment complex near the CTA Blue Line Logan Square station, Housing Commissioner Marisa Novara told WTTW News. 

(WTTW News)

The Internet Equity Initiative is analyzing data from the U.S. Census and city of Chicago Data Portal which shows 80% of Chicago households are online, but there are deep disparities between neighborhoods. In some neighborhoods, especially on the South and West sides, nearly 40% of the neighborhood doesn’t have internet.