Mayor’s $1.25 billion affordable housing plan approved

TIF-guy returns. [View this email in your browser]( [READER Logo]( Daily Reader | April 23, 2024 After much debate, the City Council recently passed an ordinance agreeing to go along with Mayor Johnson’s plan to let several TIF districts expire and use the money to pay for housing and economic development programs intended to benefit the poor. As the old guy who’s spent the better part of 30 years fighting this scam, I should be happy, but all I do is cry (to quote [the 5th Dimension](. Okay, I’m not really crying. I’m just a little uncertain about how I feel about this. Part of my uncertainty stems from the lack of specificity in the mayor’s plans. He hasn’t told us which TIF districts he’ll close or exactly how he’ll spend the money. So, this being Chicago, we could wind up with no districts closed and the property taxes going to the same old somebodies that somebody sent. That aforementioned lack of specificity is what’s known as the transparency objection to the TIF program. In fact, if the mainstreams criticize TIFs, it’s generally because the program “lacks transparency”. Chicagoans are supposed to love transparency—even though hardly anyone pays attention to anything the city does. And each mayor promises to be the city’s most transparent mayor: a promise that generally gets broken within a few months, if not weeks, in office. Another reason to criticize Chicago’s TIF program is that it favors the rich even though it’s supposed to help the poor. Meaning it does the exact opposite of what it’s intended to do. Or, as Mitchell Armentrout [recently wrote for the Sun-Times]( . . . “Critics have long contended the system exacerbates inequality because areas with higher property values often release the most benefit [from TIFs].” Got to admit that sentence made me smile. Critics? Which critics? Has Richard Roeper suddenly started writing TIF exposés? Has Leor Galil? Or Mike Sula? Or Michiko Kakutani? Or . . . Okay, I’ll stop with the wisecracks. In this case, “critics” does not mean writers who review movies, music, food, or books. No, it’s mainstream-speak for that ragtag assortment of gadfly outsiders who are generally of no significance in the total scheme of things around here. So they usually get ignored. Even if they got it right. And just to be clear. TIFs absolutely positively favor wealthier neighborhoods—especially gentrifying ones. That’s why in the old days the state more or less tried to limit TIFs to communities that truly needed them. The state changed the law in the 1990s so that pretty much any neighborhood—no matter how rich—can jump aboard this gravy train. I believed they called that change. TIF reform. Yet another reason never to use the word “reform" in context with anything in Illinois. Mayor Johnson cited this inequity in his proposal to close some of the as of yet unspecified TIFs. That in itself is progress. Mayors Daley and Rahm pretended the inequity didn’t exist. Candidate Lightfoot said it outraged her (and then she was elected and spent four years looking the other way). Now we have a mayor and 30 alderpeople who sided with the “critics.” You might say that we, the critics, outlasted Mayors Daley and Rahm. And that makes me as happy as a groovy old song by the 5th Dimension. [Logo with text: The Ben Joravsky Show. Features man wearing a cap and headphones, and Chicago flag stars.]( 🎙 [Listen to The Ben Joravsky Show]( 🎙 ◈ [First Lie Wins]( by Ashley Elston: an ingenious thriller in which a woman assumes a secret identity to fool a man into marrying her, only to discover that the man may be up to the same trick. ◈ [Zachary Lee]( interviews Minhal Baig about her latest movie, We Grown Now. ◈ [Ben Joravsky]( (from 1987): the first TIF story. ◈ Block Club Chicago reporter [Rachel Hinton]( on Percival Everett’s book James. ◈ Roosevelt University associate professor and Slate contributor [David Faris]( on Biden and Trump. ◈ Journalists [Robert Herguth and Abdon Pallasch]( on their new limited-episode podcast The Rebel Kind. [a group of people doing tricks on ropes in a large room with balloons and people]( [Suburban circus extravaganza]( Triton Troupers celebrate 51 years of all-ages acts. by [Kimzyn Campbell]( | [Read more]( → [a woman sitting on a chair in front of a trailer]( [‘Unstuck’ is a genre-shattering evening of live work]( SITE/less hosts five artists who work outside of traditional disciplines. by [JT Newman]( | [Read more]( → [a man on a stage singing and holding a cigarette]( [Spies like us]( Destroy All Evidence! starts strong, but lacks comic tension. by [Jack Helbig]( | [Read more]( → [March on the DNC plans Chicago’s ‘largest mobilization for Palestine’]( Groups from around the country plan to take their demands to the United Center this August “with or without” a permit. by [Shawn Mulcahy]( | [Read more]( → [LIONS, MUSIC, AND THE BEST OF CHICAGO!]( Get the latest issue of the Chicago Reader Thursday, April 18, 2024 [READ ONLINE: VOL. 53, NO. 14]( [VIEW/DOWNLOAD ISSUE (PDF)]( [Become a member of the Chicago Reader.]( [Facebook icon]( [Instagram icon]( [Twitter icon]( [Website icon]( [YouTube icon]( [LinkedIn icon]( [Logo] You received this email because you signed up for newsletters from the Chicago Reader. 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