Is 8 lots for affordable housing enough? Our response to Lightfoot!
The City says: We are offering 8 lots with 30% affordable housing now. Later we will do a phase 2 where an additional 14 lots will be offered with 30% affordable. We are meeting our commitments under the Woodlawn Housing Ordinance. This plan is the right balance between all the different voices in the community.
We say: 8 lots is not enough! The 30 or so vacant City lots on 63rd St east of Cottage Grove Ave are a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make sure that working families don’t get pushed out of the neighborhood.
A promise about a Phase 2 is not legally binding; they can change their mind at any time. Also, an election coming up; if a different Mayor is elected they will not have to honor a Phase 2 commitment.
City vacant lots are a precious resource to make sure that there is 30% affordable housing. We see what is being put up on the private lots: $800,000 homes! $2000/month rents! We need to require 30% affordable housing on all the lots on 63rd east of cottage grove because that’s the most desirable land and where you can create the most units.
They say: We can’t set aside more lots because there isn’t enough money to build affordable housing on more lots. Low-income housing tax credits are one of the main ways that affordable housing gets built and there is only so much of those going around. We can’t set aside lots for affordable housing and then have them sit vacant because we can’t afford to build affordable housing on them.
We say: First of all, when the Mayor and the City make something a priority they find the money. Furthermore, there are other funding sources besides the Low Income Housing Tax Credits, for example: the Illinois Housing Development Authority Funds, HUD’s National Housing Trust Fund, next year the Woodlawn TIF will expire and a new one could be created which could fund affordable housing development, the University of Chicago could be directly funding affordable housing like we are calling for with the CBA Reparations Campaign. The money is there, it just needs to be prioritized.
They say: Asking for all the lots on 63rd Street will result in another Robert Taylor Homes. You are bringing back the projects: concentrated poverty.
We say: We are calling for 30% to be set aside for affordable housing. That still means that 70% will be market rate. Affordable housing for working people includes people who still have to come up with around $1000/month for rent.
We are saying that you SHOULD be able to find a 2 bedroom for $1000/month in woodlawn, there SHOULD NOT only be $2000/month 2 bedroom apartments. We see what’s coming up on the private land, its all super unaffordable. There are more private lots than City lots. It is impossible to build concentrated poverty because all the private lots are going market rate and there are more private lots than anything else. We just want to make sure that low income and working people still have a place they can afford in our community. And we should not be using precious City resources like city owned land to subsidize luxury housing development. These lots should all require 30% affordable housing.