Aldermen must be prepared to take “bold action” and spend “millions” more to subsidize and finance affordable housing in Chicago to combat rising inequality and instability, a nonprofit coalition told aldermen Wednesday.

While the city is on track to meet its affordable goals for 2018, Chicago Rehab Network Director of Public Policy Rachel Johnston told a sparsely attended session of the City Council’s Housing and Real Estate Committee that the city should triple the number of affordable rental units subsidized from 2,500 to 7,500.

“We need to start talking about displacement,” Johnston said, urging the aldermen to boost the city’s contribution to the Chicago Low Income Housing Trust Fund.

Attendance: Chairman Joe Moore (49); Walter Burnett (27); Ariel Reboyras (31); Deb Mell (33); James Cappleman (46)

Past coverage:

• With affordable housing in spotlight, city says it has spent $27 million on 3,556 units in 2018


• As mayor focuses on affordable housing, aldermen, housing advocates propose limiting aldermanic prerogative


• Aldercast: The Truth About Chicago Population Loss

In the first three months of 2018, city funds were used to build 71 new rental units, according to the Chicago Rehab Network, a nonprofit coalition of community groups and nonprofit developers. However, just 44 will be reserved for residents earning between 51 and 80 percent of the area median income, or between $42,300 and $67,700.

Of those new apartments, only 29 were built to comply with the Affordable Requirements Ordinance. The ARO applies to any development of 10 or more units that needs special approval by city officials, is on city-owned land or is subsidized by taxpayer funds. Each project must set aside 10 percent of its units for moderate- or low-income residents.

At least 25 percent of those units must be included in the project in most parts of the city. Developers can opt to pay a fee of up to $225,000 per unit instead of building the remaining affordable units on site.

In all, the city expects to build 180 units in 2018 under the affordable housing ordinance.

The city should earmark more of its general fund — which also pays for police and fire protection, tree trimming and public health programs — for affordable housing, Johnston said. Aldermen have almost complete discretion to spend money in the city’s general fund.

Since 2008 — before the passage of the Affordable Requirements Ordinance — general fund dollars spent on affordable housing has fallen from $32 million to $14 million, a drop of more than 56 percent, according to data compiled by the Chicago Rehab Network.

Ald. Deb Mell (33) said she has been “frustrated” to see families who had lived in her ward for many years get pushed out by rent hikes.

Mell said it has been tough to figure out how to keep that from happening, and wished out loud that she had a “magic wand.”

“We can see how it trickles down to everything,” Mell said.

However, Ald. Walter Burnett (27) rejected suggestions that people are being “forced” to move out of the city.

“People are choosing to move out of the city,” Burnett said.

That may be correct, Ald. Joe Moore (49) responded, but Chicagoans who are moving may feel like they have no choice because they can no longer afford their rent or property taxes.

With the city’s five-year housing planset to expire in December, work has already begun on a plan covering 2019-23, said Anthony Simpkins, the managing deputy commissioner of the housing bureau in the Department of Planning and Development.

An advisory committee made up of 150 members, including developers, investors, nonprofit groups and advocates has met three or four times to start crafting the plan, which is set to be approved by the City Council this fall.

While the current housing plan focused on helping Chicago recover from the Great Recession, the next plan will focus on “displacement and gentrification in some neighborhoods” as well as “low property values, depopulation and the legacy of segregation in many other communities,” Simpkins said.

Chicago police told fellow officers helping the state craft the federal order that will determine the scope and speed of efforts to reform the Chicago Police Department they want more training, better equipment, better communication with the communities they police — as well as more support from elected officials and the press.

Businessman, philanthropist, and Chicago mayoral candidate Willie Wilson dug deep into his wallet Wednesday at the Cook County Building, handing out $100,000 to Chicagoans struggling to pay their property tax bills.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and city officials rolled out the latest grant awardees of the city’s Neighborhood Opportunity Fund on Wednesday, the third since the program launched in 2016. More than $12 million has so far been awarded to small businesses, with an estimated $72 million in developer fees up for grabs.

The number of ambulances available to respond to medical emergencies took center stage, as mayoral candidate Paul Vallas slammed Mayor Rahm Emanuel for neglecting the city’s emergency medical services. Vallas also weighed in on the proposed consent decree designed to reform the Police Department.

With the push for more affordable housing in the spotlight at City Hall as candidates gear up for February’s elections, efforts by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration are on track, according to a new city report.

City officials face a budget gap of $98 million as they begin to craft a spending plan for 2019, according to the city's annual budget forecast released Tuesday.

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson retracted a report accusing Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration of failing to enforce the city’s base wage ordinance and shortchanging the employees of city contractors of nearly $292,000 over three years.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan pledged Friday afternoon that the seventh time would be the charm in the decades long effort to reform the Chicago Police Department.

A certain group of 2016 political junkies might have one lasting image of Election Day — the New York Times needle’s shift from blue to deep red as early results came in, with Hillary Clinton’s chances of victory moving from 85 percent to her resounding electoral college defeat to President Donald Trump.



The seemingly unexpected shift of fate prompted a rash of headlines from CNN, Forbes and the Washington Post wondering whether political polling was on life support.

It’s not.

“I definitely think 2016 was not a banner year for polling, said Melissa Bell, the director of research for Global Strategy Group. “I think that’s obvious. We got it wrong. But I think that I’m really proud of the industry — especially my firm — in that we’ve been able to take an honest, reflective look at the work that was one, where mistakes were made, and corrections have been made moving forward.”

Bell and her former Benenson Strategies Group colleague Liz Dunne, now the North American lead on Uber’s research and insights team, sat down to talk about the future of polling on The Daily Line’s podcast, The Aldercast.

The Aldercast: Pollsters Demystify the Biz, Share What Went Wrong in 2016

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Part of the problem is a public misperception about what polls are meant to do; how they are read; and how pollsters, campaigns and the media communicate uncertainty. Here are five things we learned about the art and science of polling in our latest show:

• Garbage in, garbage out — Polls are doomed to fail without a solid knowledge of what the electorate will look like. That calculus changed after 2016 and as pollsters consider a potential blue wave in midterm elections. “If you don’t have a vision or some confidence about what Election Day is going to look like, or early vote or primaries, you’re sort of starting off on the wrong foot and then everything else you put behind it doesn’t really matter,” Dunne said.


• Polls shouldn’t tell the candidate what they want to hear — Pollsters want to deliver clear numbers, for better or worse. “A good pollster tells you what people like about you, what they like about your message, what you stand for and they also let you know what your vulnerabilities are, because you need to prepare,” Bell said. “It’s just connecting candidates where the already are, positions that they already have, stuff about them that’s already true.”  


• Live telephone is still best practice, but online polling is emerging — “Things are changing, technology is changing. Right now the gold standard is still live interview telephone polling,” Bell says. “Five years from now, will the answer I give you be different to that question? Probably.” The trick with online polls is ensuring the person on the other side matches the right person in the voter file, they say.  


• Be wary of TV focus groups — Focus groups can be a critical tool for campaigns to dive deep on issues, hear candidly from voters and reframe a candidate’s goals — but take the ones you see on television with a grain of salt. When done right, qualitative focus groups can be “a really important tool to bring everybody home,” Dunne says. But Bell warns – “if they’re on TV and people know that everything that they’re saying is now being broadcast to whatever size audience, we don’t actually know if what they’re saying is really what they think or value or if they’re giving you a socially desirable response, perhaps curating the discussion.”  
  


• Look out for women —  A 2018 trend to watch is more female candidates. A record number of women, for example, are running for the U.S. House and 28 women ran for statewide executive or U.S. congressional offices in the Illinois primary. But Dunne says we shouldn’t necessarily assume female candidates will get a 1 or 2 percentage point bump by dint of being a woman. “I think about how I voted at 22, 23 – ’Who’s the most Irish name on here and where are the women?’” Dunne says, but reflecting on her work for EMILY’s List, she notes, “folks aren’t voting — we don’t, nor should we, nor do voters think they’re voting for a candidate because they are a women. This is not being women candidate for a woman’s sake… they represent change.” More women are winning, Bell says because more women are running and are “great candidates that both men and women are voting for.”  
  

Before breaking for their traditional August recess, aldermen introduced dozens of proposals on a some of the most controversial issues facing the city.

A veteran of Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios’ office — and his political organization — filed to challenge first-term Ald. Milly Santiago, who won the 31st Ward seat by defeating another Berrios ally, while the battle for the 25th Ward seat could feature a rematch from 2015. The Chicago Public Schools got good news from another ratings agency, one day after passing its budget.

Twenty-eight immigrant children separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border are still being held in Chicago shelters, according to the nonprofit organization housing the children.

Comm. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-7) iced his months-old proposal for a revenue forecasting commission on Wednesday in the face of opposition from his usual allies on the board — as well as typical opponents.

The City Council cracked down Wednesday on the Chicago nonprofit organization holding children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.