Dispatches from Chicago's south side.
Sims talks more about Orland Square Mall shooting https://t.co/xihfOpHtG2— Rich Miller (@capitolfax) January 28, 2019
I believe Chicago’s current experience to be rather unique and particularly perplexing. To understand this one has to take a historical viewpoint. Like many other major cities in the U.S., Chicago did improve its economy during the 1990s, and had a resulting population increase and crime rate decrease. However, the economic gains of the decade did little to change the physical and social structure of the city. Areas that had already been doing well, like the North Side, were doing better. Other areas that had been on the cusp of change but needed that last little bit of catalyst, like the West Loop or South Loop, started to improve. But for the most part, Chicago’s legacy as one of the most segregated cities in America remained intact.As we want to bring the communities of "The Sixth Ward" back into prominence here's something to consider:
But starting in the last decade, shifts began to occur in Chicago’s socioeconomic dynamic. The Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation, an ambitious plan to dismantle the public housing high-rises and create new public housing and mixed income communities, began in earnest in 1999. The high-rise projects that many were familiar with – Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens, Cabrini-Green – all came down. Thousands of public housing families were given a choice: they could receive new homes in new developments, or they could receive vouchers and select housing where they liked. Unfortunately for the CHA, the pace of new development construction did not meet the pace of dismantling, so most tenants opted for the vouchers and selected the voucher option.
This changed the dynamics in many Chicago neighborhoods. Former public housing residents generally moved to areas closest to where they came from, on the South and West sides of the city. They moved into working-class neighborhoods like Austin, Auburn-Gresham and Roseland. This caused neighborhood allegiances to shift, and caused strife in communities dealing with the influx. This in turn led to more black middle class flight from those working-class neighborhoods. And then the economic collapse of the late 2000s. And that’s how we get to the spike in murders and shootings in Chicago today.
The formula seems pretty clear to me. In Chicago’s case, public housing resident dispersion (in a notoriously segregated city), plus middle class black flight, plus economic distress, equals a higher murder rate. In other cities with rising murder rates, you could take out the public housing variable but the rest is constant.
To me this is fundamentally a problem of isolation. The inner-city inhabitants of our Rust Belt cities have become the “left behind”, and have been so for at least three generations. Just yesterday I saw an article on Atlantic Cities about a study that suggests that poor, inner-city residents may care more deeply about urban neighborhoods because they have fewer relocation options available to them. Is it any coincidence that so many of the Rust Belt’s major cities – Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis, among others – lead the way on segregation indices?
A last point about middle class black flight. Thousands of blacks are doing now what millions of other Americans did before them – move to the suburbs when they had the means. Unfortunately, they may be moving to live out yesterday’s dreams. Recent studies have shown that there is an emerging and possibly enduring trend of city populations growing at rates faster than that of suburban areas, in contrast to the typical city-decline, suburban-growth meme of the last 60 years. If this truly is the case, I fear that the black middle class that is currently moving to the edge of metro areas will find themselves stuck in declining areas, just as cities complete their turnaround. If this continues, blacks will find themselves perpetuating the cycle of isolation that has limited their economic fortunes since the 1960s.The whole article is worth a thorough read.
[VIDEO] Ald. Sawyer was on FOX Chicago to talk about a commuter tax in our city:Chicagoans were talking about making commuters pay Thursday night. No one likes to pay more city taxes, but some folks are paying none at all - suburbanites who come into Chicago to work.Do you agree with this?
They drive on Chicago's roads, walk on Chicago's sidewalks, drink Chicago's water and then leave.
Chicago's facing a huge budget deficit and at least one alderman is wondering whether it's time to force suburbanites to pay extra, if they work downtown.
Alderman Roderick Sawyer (6th) suggested the idea of a commuter tax after Mayor Emanuel released his budget to City Council on Wednesday.
But many left despite having good jobs in the city. Although the census data does not indicate where those who left Chicago ended up, the new population figures show that Matteson recorded the largest numerical increase in blacks of any city in the Chicago area.Then there's also this:
Statistics obtained by the Chicago News Cooperative reveal rising income levels in parts of Matteson and other south suburbs where the black population grew rapidly in the last decade, suggesting that high wage earners factored prominently in the movement from the city to the southern periphery of Cook County.
The trend of blacks’ leaving Chicago in the past decade apparently included all economic levels, said Alec Brownlow, a geography professor at DePaul University. Spiking foreclosure rates in South Side and West Side neighborhoods increased the already high number of vacant and abandoned homes, making those areas less popular with middle-income blacks, Mr. Brownlow said.
“I would imagine that the wave of out-migrants displaced by the teardown of public housing units is supplementing the middle classes moved by the foreclosure crisis,” he said.
But whatever their income level, the newcomers say they feel more at ease after leaving the city. James Turner, an engineer at the University of Chicago, said he and his wife moved to Newbury Estates in 2005 because “there is too much chaos” in Englewood, where they used to live. Mr. Turner, 58, recalled his old neighborhood as he worked in the front yard of his 3,000-square-foot home.Foreclosures and concerns over safety to name a couple I've been able to excerpt. What if some of the ills they hoped to escape came out to Matteson with these individuals?
“You can’t trust the city,” Mr. Turner said. “You can’t trust it to have peace unless you are somewhere on the North Side, next to the lake. Maybe Rahm Emanuel can do something and put the police where they should be.”
Suburban Cook County experienced the biggest drop in sales tax revenue during the second quarter relative to the six collar counties, according to a study released Wednesday.Interesting news, suburban Cook County struggling with this sales tax, but the city is faring much better!
Sales tax revenue plummeted 14.4% during the April-June period from a year ago, based on a study conducted by the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University. That followed a 12.1% drop in the first quarter and compares with a regional average of an 11.8% slump. Suburban Cook County excludes Chicago and Evanston.
The second-quarter drop marked the poorest quarterly performance in Cook County sales tax receipts since the unpopular tax increase took effect in July 2008. Retailers across the area also have contended with the worst recession in decades, which has led consumers to rein in their spending.
...
The city of Chicago fared better than the rest of Cook County, posting a 9.6% drop in sales tax revenue in the second quarter. That's after an 8.6% decline in the first quarter for the city vs. a 12.1% drop for the suburban county.
The report attributed the relative outperformance of Chicago, in part, to the addition of new big-box stores, which helped improve the quantity and price-competitiveness of the city’s retail sector and reduced the drain of retail dollars to neighboring communities.
Dolton mayoral hopeful Riley Rogers gets first crack at breaking up what's left of the late Mayor William Shaw's administration.Important here, because Ronnie Lewis was once a teacher and an assistant principal at our very own Harlan High School.
Rogers is set to square off with Shaw's handpicked successor, Mayor Ronnie Lewis, in Tuesday's Democratic primary.
So far, the primary showdown has been a slugfest.
In December, Rogers supporter Elliott R. Kozel was arrested and charged with punching Dolton inspector general Robert Shaw, the late mayor's twin brother.
Since then, Rogers claims Lewis's campaigners and Dolton employees have systematically removed his campaign signs from all over the city.
Another important note. Until now I haven't seen anything about a possible successor to Mayor Shaw, temporary or otherwise until I saw this article. Longtime village trustee Ronnie Lewis is serving as acting mayor until the spring election.Mr. Lewis was an Assistant Principal at Harlan Community Academy High School.
Sheriff Mark Curran said Thursday the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois have shown little interest in cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Curran said he was doing his part to stop "the terror inflicted by many of these illegal aliens." However, he said he and his office does not tolerate any discrimination based on race or ethnicity or condone racial profiling.
Mayor Richard Daley said immigrants were an important part of Chicago, and that anti-immigrant groups overstate the amount of crime committed by undocumented immigrants.
Bad news dude. All those kids you were going to bus out to Winnetka to illustrate the disparity in school funding by making them miss the first day of the 08-09 school year?OUCH!!!
They just missed the first day of classes at New Trier.
So not only are they going to be behind in terms of funding, they're already behind in terms of learning. Again.
Cook County leads the nation as the county with the highest number of whites -- meaning those not Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian or Native Hawaiian -- moving out, according to recently released U.S. Census figures.
More than half of all U.S. counties experienced a decline in white populations since 2000, helping fuel a rise in the number of communities in which minorities are now the majority, the census data showed.
In terms of percentage, though, Cook County lost only about 1.1 percent of its white population, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
Brookings said the numbers of whites leaving Cook County can't be characterized as "white flight" because minorities are also seeking out the suburbs as the place for better schools and more affordable housing.
In both the city and suburbs, more whites are moving out than moving in, said Kenneth Johnson, a demographer who worked for 30 years at Loyola University Chicago. More whites also are dying in Cook County than being born here, he said.
"It's partially because a lot of the people of childbearing age leave Chicago or Cook County for the other suburbs," he said. "It's also because the white population in Cook County is older, so they have a fairly high mortality."
Blacks are also leaving Cook County, with a 1.3 percent annual decrease, according to the data as interpreted by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. But the county still has 1.4 million blacks, the highest of any U.S. county.
While the greater Chicago area grew by 4.5 percent between 2000 and 2007, Cook County was the only regional county to decline in population, with a 1.7 percent decrease, the agency's statistics said. The Latino population grew regionally by almost 340,000, or more than 24 percent, between 2000 and 2007, the agency noted.
Via Newsalert!
RTA head Stephen Schlickman says transit budgets are being strained by rising fuels costs, and aging buses, rail cars and infrastructure.
SCHLICKMAN: As a system deteriorates it becomes more expensive to operate. They are having to do much more maintenance on a regular basis to keep their buses and rail vehicles operating.
Schlickman says the legislative battles in Springfield are making it very difficult to get funding.
SCHLICKMAN: The best we can do is to continue to tell the legislature that the system is deteriorating, that it is less reliable every day.
Schlickman says the region’s transit systems have two options if they can’t balance their budgets. They can increase revenue, possibly by raising fares. Or, they can cut costs, and may have to cut service despite higher demand.
Cook County Board President Todd Stroger finally kept his date Monday with taxpayers in the northwest suburbs, where some officials had threatened to secede from the county in anger over a sales tax increase he championed.Almost reminds me of the story where there was a movement to secede from Fulton County Georgia. That's the county of the city of Atlanta. Go read the whole Tribune article.
Stroger and his staff were met with a combination of laughs and groans as they stood before about 200 northwest suburban politicians and residents to defend the $426 million tax hike.
Many in the audience listened politely, but they were there to show their anger.
"We are now starting to feel that we are now starting to get gouged," said state Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine), who introduced legislation that would make it easier for Palatine to secede from the county. "Do you really understand the competitive disadvantage you're putting the northwest suburbs to?"
The secession movement in Palatine was a long shot at best, but it illustrated a belief by some suburbanites that Stroger wasn't serving them and didn't understand the economic harm a sales tax creates in border towns where shoppers can cross into another county for lower rates.
At Monday's meeting at Harper College, the crowd applauded when Nancy Golemba, 48, of Inverness, said, "I think Cook County represents the residents of Chicago."
"I feel totally disenfranchised," said Jeff Milstein, a jewelry store owner from Schaumburg. "I don't trust you guys."
Stroger, who remained unflappable, said "people don't trust politicians . . . and that's they way this job works."
He also said people near a county or state line sometimes get pinched by a sales tax increase.
"To be honest with you, that's part of being in a large government," he said. "There are going to be areas that are harder hit than others."
In addition to worries that shoppers will look elsewhere, leaders in Palatine have questioned the value of what they get for being in Cook County. They note they have their own police, animal control and health departments, and that they plow most of their own roads. Stroger Hospital, they say, is used mostly by Chicago residents.
At the gathering, the crowd was shown a video outlining county services.
