A few articles about affordable housing in Chicago and its suburbs
Affordable housing tends to be a controversial issue - at least in communities that aren't majority black and poor. And public housing... Oh Boy.
It shouldn't be. It's no coincidence that, here in Chicago, as average rents have gone up, so did the number of homeless residents. And it is becoming harder of people who work a lot of low-wage jobs in the city to actually live in the city, especially near places where they work. Especially in neighborhoods that are relatively safe. And many families that lived in a community for decades are finding it harder to stay in these communities.
But affordable housing is controversial, in no small part because when you say "affordable housing," a lot of people assume it's public housing, and that it's going to be a bunch of black gangbangers from the South Side (and while people who oppose affordable housing may say this isn't about race, there is often a racial component to this. Compared the way people feel about, say, a poor white family living in a trailer and a poor black family living in an apartment. A poor guy with a rifle is seen as declasse. A poor black guy with a gun is seen as dangerous).
So it was interesting to write about an affordable housing development that included units for public housing residents that's planned for a neighborhood where most of the population is anything but black, a neighborhood that has seen some gentrification. So far, there hasn't been any controversy. Even my article didn't seem to stir up anything.
(By the way, one of the things I get into in the article is just how many people are currently on the public housing waiting lists. Hint - it's a lot. And many of them don't exactly fit the stereotypical image of a public housing resident)
Meanwhile, out in the pretty well-off North Shore suburb of Wilmette, the Village Council was considering its own affordable housing development. Wilmette is a pretty wealthy, overwhelmingly white suburb (though, as I've written before, it has poor and even homeless families, too). So I watched with great interest as Wilmette Life reporter kaffyr live-tweeted the council meeting. Surely, we'll have a bunch of people talking about density, and property values, and concerns about crime, and the whole thing would get defeated.
But Wilmette pleasantly surprised me. You can read Kathy's article for more details, but the short of it is that supporters outnumbered the opponents - and the development got approved.
A week later, I was covering another meeting in the City of Chicago. It was about the one form of affordable housing that usually gets easily approved - affordable housing for seniors. But, to my surprise, the proposal faced some pretty vocal opposition. And here is a twist - the development was coming into a majority-black neighborhood, and every single person that spoke out against it was black.
(And that, ladies and gentlefolks, is one of the reasons why I said that there was "often" a racial component).
The article kind of goes into why that happened, but a lot of the stuff got cut for space, so let me give you a little context. Calumet Heights was one of the several South Side neighborhoods that started out as a working-class neighborhood, became more middle-class over time and, when black people started moving in, most of them were middle-class as well. So aside from the color of the skin, the neighborhood hasn't changed that much at all. And it stayed that way for a few generation. But something started changing in the late 90s-early 2000s. A lot of long-time businesses closed, and the children and grandchildren of the first black couples that moved int the neighborhood didn't want to leave in the neighborhood. Many houses that were supposed to be passed down to the next generation got rented out to families with no connection to the communities, even families with (Gasp!) Section 8 Housing Choice vouchers.
There was an unmistakable thread running through many of the opponents' arguments. Worry about what will happen to their neighborhood. Worry that everything they worked so hard to build will go down the drain. Worry that Calumet Heights is already not as safe as it used to be, and what if this makes things worse? And anger that, instead of doing something that will help bring more economic vitality to the neighborhood, Alderman Michelle Harris (8th) was bringing in this huge, blocky thing that wouldn't help them, because they certainly have enough money to never need affordable housing.
The other side of this, of course, is what the supporters talked about - that seniors live on fixed income, and that as they get older, they may not be able to take care of their houses. Shouldn't they be able to live in the community where they spent most of their lives?
Affordable housing shouldn't be controversial - but it is.
And, sometimes, it's not for a reason you'd think.
It shouldn't be. It's no coincidence that, here in Chicago, as average rents have gone up, so did the number of homeless residents. And it is becoming harder of people who work a lot of low-wage jobs in the city to actually live in the city, especially near places where they work. Especially in neighborhoods that are relatively safe. And many families that lived in a community for decades are finding it harder to stay in these communities.
But affordable housing is controversial, in no small part because when you say "affordable housing," a lot of people assume it's public housing, and that it's going to be a bunch of black gangbangers from the South Side (and while people who oppose affordable housing may say this isn't about race, there is often a racial component to this. Compared the way people feel about, say, a poor white family living in a trailer and a poor black family living in an apartment. A poor guy with a rifle is seen as declasse. A poor black guy with a gun is seen as dangerous).
So it was interesting to write about an affordable housing development that included units for public housing residents that's planned for a neighborhood where most of the population is anything but black, a neighborhood that has seen some gentrification. So far, there hasn't been any controversy. Even my article didn't seem to stir up anything.
(By the way, one of the things I get into in the article is just how many people are currently on the public housing waiting lists. Hint - it's a lot. And many of them don't exactly fit the stereotypical image of a public housing resident)
Meanwhile, out in the pretty well-off North Shore suburb of Wilmette, the Village Council was considering its own affordable housing development. Wilmette is a pretty wealthy, overwhelmingly white suburb (though, as I've written before, it has poor and even homeless families, too). So I watched with great interest as Wilmette Life reporter kaffyr live-tweeted the council meeting. Surely, we'll have a bunch of people talking about density, and property values, and concerns about crime, and the whole thing would get defeated.
But Wilmette pleasantly surprised me. You can read Kathy's article for more details, but the short of it is that supporters outnumbered the opponents - and the development got approved.
A week later, I was covering another meeting in the City of Chicago. It was about the one form of affordable housing that usually gets easily approved - affordable housing for seniors. But, to my surprise, the proposal faced some pretty vocal opposition. And here is a twist - the development was coming into a majority-black neighborhood, and every single person that spoke out against it was black.
(And that, ladies and gentlefolks, is one of the reasons why I said that there was "often" a racial component).
The article kind of goes into why that happened, but a lot of the stuff got cut for space, so let me give you a little context. Calumet Heights was one of the several South Side neighborhoods that started out as a working-class neighborhood, became more middle-class over time and, when black people started moving in, most of them were middle-class as well. So aside from the color of the skin, the neighborhood hasn't changed that much at all. And it stayed that way for a few generation. But something started changing in the late 90s-early 2000s. A lot of long-time businesses closed, and the children and grandchildren of the first black couples that moved int the neighborhood didn't want to leave in the neighborhood. Many houses that were supposed to be passed down to the next generation got rented out to families with no connection to the communities, even families with (Gasp!) Section 8 Housing Choice vouchers.
There was an unmistakable thread running through many of the opponents' arguments. Worry about what will happen to their neighborhood. Worry that everything they worked so hard to build will go down the drain. Worry that Calumet Heights is already not as safe as it used to be, and what if this makes things worse? And anger that, instead of doing something that will help bring more economic vitality to the neighborhood, Alderman Michelle Harris (8th) was bringing in this huge, blocky thing that wouldn't help them, because they certainly have enough money to never need affordable housing.
The other side of this, of course, is what the supporters talked about - that seniors live on fixed income, and that as they get older, they may not be able to take care of their houses. Shouldn't they be able to live in the community where they spent most of their lives?
Affordable housing shouldn't be controversial - but it is.
And, sometimes, it's not for a reason you'd think.