A package of city subsidies and tax credits to build a 90-unit, six-story affordable housing complex designed to help senior veterans stay off Chicago’s streets is one step away from final approval.

The City Council’s Finance Committee unanimously endorsed the package (O2019-8065) to help A Safe Haven Foundation, a Lawndale-based nonprofit for veterans with substance use disorders at risk of homlessness, build the complex near Roosevelt Road and Sacramento Avenue.

Seventy-five of the units would be designated for veterans who qualify for federal rental assistance, while the other units will be leased to those earning less than 60 percent of the area median income. Two of the complex’s units would have one bedroom, while the rest would be studios, Housing Department Financial Analyst Barbara Taylor told aldermen.

Ald. Leslie Hairston (5) said she was concerned that the units, which come fully furnished and with their own kitchens, were too small.

“We’re not putting our best foot forward,” Hairston said.

The complex would include common spaces including a gazebo, computer room and a lounge, officials said.

Ald. Jason Ervin, whose 28th Ward is home to the the project site, said the development would breathe new life into North Lawndale and  the area across from Douglas Park.

“This area has long been vacant,” Ervin said. “This is an enhancement.”

The package set for final approval Wednesday includes $11 million in low-income housing tax credits from the Illinois Housing Development Authority; $1.7 from the city’s Low-Income Housing Trust Fund and approximately $403,000 in Illinois Affordable Housing Tax Credits.

“I fully 100 percent support this,” Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38) said.

The proposal also includes a $4.5 million loan from the Midwest Tax-Increment Financing District, which covers nearly 2,000 acres in North Lawndale and East Garfield Park. That loan is to be paid back during the next 42 years, records show.

In addition, Home Depot will donate $500,000 toward the project and Commonwealth Edison will contribute $133,600 to the development, records show.

In October, the City Council agreed to sell the foundation seven city-owned parcels for the development for $1 per parcel. The properties were appraised at $875,000, records show.

Ald. Walter Burnett (27) said there are too many homeless veterans in Chicago.

“A lot of them just need a leg up to help them get started,” Burnett said, adding that he expected some of the residents to use the complex as temporary housing and move on to bigger apartments.

Burnett said the $21.2 million development would also spur economic activity on the West Side.

“I think it is a great thing,” Burnett said.

Leaders of the Cook County Forest Preserves District will be forced to make “major cuts” to popular programs and ecological restoration efforts if the system doesn’t get an infusion of cash next year, they told members of the county’s Board of Commissioners last week.

Aldermen are set to green light a package of city subsidies and tax credits to build a 90-unit, six-story affordable housing complex designed to help senior veterans stay off Chicago’s streets.

With two weeks of dawn-to dusk budget hearings behind them, aldermen are no closer to filling the city’s massive budget gap, nor to resolving several disputes that bubbled to the surface during the marathon sessions.

If former State Rep. Luis Arroyo  — who resigned after being charged with corruption — helps pick his own replacement, the Illinois House of Representatives may not seat that person, House Speaker Michael Madigan warned Monday.

By Cassie Walker Burke, Chalkbeat Chicago

Enrollment in Chicago Public Schools has shrunk further, down 1.7% this school year from the previous year. In all, the district lost 6,158 students, according to numbers released Friday.

The district’s final student tally for 2019-20 is 355,156. Click here to see enrollment numbers by school. 

But the year-over-year declines slowed considerably compared to past years, when annual drops topped 10,000 or more. The district credited higher numbers of students enrolling in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten.

The city still holds on to the title of the nation’s third largest school system, behind New York City and Los Angeles and ahead of Miami Dade, which also saw its student population decline this fall to 347,069.

Student enrollment counts are important, because they determine how much money the district gets from the state, and how much individual schools get from the district. At the school level, per-student funding determines how many teachers a principal can hire, whether or not there are librarians and arts teachers, and how many programs are offered.



The figures reflect enrollment as of Sept. 30, the 20th day of school. That’s the official school census day throughout the state.

By race, the district saw 2% decrease in the largest student demographic — Latino students — but larger declines in the number of black students, continuing a decades-long trend. Black students dropped 3.5% from the year prior and a full 30% from a decade ago. Meanwhile, the number of white and Asian students inched up slightly.

Overall, the new enrollment figures show slight changes in the racial demographics of the district: Chicago Public Schools is now 47% Latino, 36% black, 11% white, and 4% Asian.

Chicago isn’t the only district shrinking. Statewide, Illinois schools lost 17,010 pupils — roughly 1% of enrollment — in the past year. The new statewide student tally is 1,984,519, according to new data from the Illinois Report Card. To blame are a declining birth rate, a slowdown in immigration, and population declines overall.

In Chicago, when schools gain students from the previous year, they get more money from the district in the form of mid-year adjustments. This year, those mid-year adjustments will total $13 million, the district said Friday.

When schools lose students, they don’t immediately lose funding, but they can lose it the following school year.

“While there are signs of encouragement,” said Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson, “we are fully committed to supporting school communities that are struggling with enrollment by providing additional resources through equity grants and a budgeting approach that promotes stability.”

The district announced in the spring a small school grant program that will disburse $31 million among 219 elementary and high schools with struggling enrollment.

Amid a district-wide expansion of preschool for 4-year-olds, the district reported 1,421 more 4-year-olds to total 14,300, offsetting a similar-sized drop in the number of 3-year-olds. As part of its universal pre-K expansion, the district has reduced the number of half-day classroom slots for 3-year-olds in lieu of expanding the number of full-day seats for 4-year-olds.

The number of students enrolled in charters declined slightly, from 54,569 last year to 53,415 this fall. Similarly, the number of high schoolers enrolled in alternative or “options” schools also dipped, from 2,317 last year to 2,176, the district said Friday.

Chicago closed 50 schools in 2013 because of low enrollment, then district leaders agreed to a moratorium on school closings for five years. Once the moratorium lifted, the district announced a plan to shutter 4 high schools in Englewood and open a new $85 million high school to replace them. The new high school, Englewood STEM, opened this fall with an inaugural freshman class of 414.

National statistics tend to lag behind local ones, but public school enrollment was still growing, albeit slowly, according to the most recent data from the National Center on Education Statistics.

Here’s how the five largest districts in the country stack up: New York City schools latest public count was 1,126,501 for last school year, followed by Los Angeles Unified (557,560 for K-12). Chicago comes in third, followed by Miami Dade at fourth (347,069), and Clark County, Nevada, at fifth (320,703 for K-12).

Some districts include pre-K in their tallies, while others don’t. Chicago includes pre-K in its final numbers.

A national search is underway for the next superintendent of the Chicago Police Department — but it won’t be former Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck.

Beck made his Chicago debut Friday at City Hall, alongside Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the man he will replace on an interim basis in January, CPD Supt. Eddie Johnson.

Beck took himself out of the running for permanently taking the $260,044-a-year job, telling reporters that he had asked his wife and the “answer was no.”

Beck promised to “stick to his word” and not seek to stay on permanently, but would instead try to make Chicago a safer city.

“This is a great opportunity for me to make a difference in a big city that I think is a beautiful city that has so much opportunity for progress,” Beck said. “I didn’t take this to fill a resume or to make money or any of that. I took this because this is my calling. This is what I do.”

Lightfoot said the permanent superintendent may well be chosen from within the CPD’s ranks.

“We have great talent in our department,” Lightfoot said.

While former Mayor Rahm Emanuel went around the Police Board to tap Johnson to take the reins of the Chicago Police Department in 2015, Lightfoot said she would follow the rules.

Chicago Police Board President Ghian Foreman — who served as the board’s No. 2 when Lightfoot was president — said the nationwide search would begin immediately. The board is charged with selecting three finalists, and submitting them to the mayor to make a final pick.

Lightfoot said Beck was the “perfect interim selection for what Chicago needs at this moment.”

Lightfoot has appointed three members of the nine-member board: Paula Wolff, John P. O’Malley Jr. and Matthew C. Crowl. Wolff and O’Malley were first appointed by Emanuel.

Lightfoot cast Beck as a leader in the mold of Johnson — a patrol officer who rose to the highest rank after decades of service. Beck, who became a police officer in 1977, became LAPD chief in in 2009 and retired in June 2018.

“This department can be the change,” Beck said. “This department can be the glue that binds the city together, and not the powder that tears it apart.”

Beck called Johnson a friend several times during the half-hour news conference, and said he would continue his legacy and rely on his expertise.

Johnson returned the compliment, lauding Beck as a standup law enforcement officer.

Ald. Carlos Ramirez Rosa (35) tweeted that Beck assured aldermen he would not apply for the permanent job. Ramirez Rosa said he would not support Beck as a permanent chief, citing his record in Los Angeles.

Lightfoot vowed to pick “the best person for the foreseeable future,” Lightfoot said in an interview with the Sun-Times Friday.

The next superintendent of the Chicago Police Department must have experience running a “big and complicated” organization who can “motivate the troops” and “understands the value of constitutional policing.”

Two Wall Street credit rating agencies gave the tentative agreement between the city and the Chicago Teachers Union their stamps of approval, while a third warned that the deal “will widen a structural gap” facing the Chicago Public Schools.

Cook County Democratic Party Chair Toni Preckwinkle acknowledged Friday she can not stop former State Rep. Luis Arroyo — who resigned after being charged with corruption — from leading the process that will pick his own replacement.

Aldermen on Thursday grilled Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s housing and planning appointees on how they plan to implement a centralized plan to build more affordable housing, while also asserting their individual power to call the shots in their own wards.

Police Supt. Eddie Johnson will end his 31-year career with the Chicago Police Department at the end of the year, but the probe into what happened before — and after — he was discovered asleep in his running car just after midnight Oct. 17 will continue, the city’s watchdog said Thursday.

Some local Democratic Party leaders are vowing to boycott a meeting scheduled to fill a Northwest Side state house vacancy if ousted former State Rep. Luis Arroyo (D-Chicago) has any part in choosing his own successor.

Thirty-five pedestrians have been killed on Chicago’s streets so far this year — through Oct. 31 according to data compiled by the Chicago Department of Transportation.

Chicago Board of Elections Commissioners Executive Director Lance Gough had a surprise for aldermen as he appeared for the annual budget hearing for the agency charged with running Chicago’s elections.

Three aldermen renewed their push on Thursday to hike the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021 and end exceptions for tipped workers like restaurant servers.