It’s been more than two years since Mayor Daley squelched an attempt by activists to force the city to build more low-income housing, pressuring several aldermen into dropping their support for the Balanced Development Act. But the activists are back, badgering aldermen to give affordable housing another go.
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In the last go-round the Balanced Development Coalition, a citywide group of housing activists, proposed that the city require developers to set aside 25 percent of all new development or rehabbed housing units for those with low and moderate incomes. Led in the City Council by Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle, the group attracted supporters including unions, senior citizens, and church leaders, among them Cardinal Francis George. But it didn’t have the support of the one man who really counted. Mayor Daley steadfastly opposed the set-asides, saying they would stifle development. Coalition members counter that similar set-asides have passed in prospering cities such as Boston; Portland, Oregon; and Austin, Texas.
On the eve of this year’s mayoral election Daley attempted to appease activists by proposing his own set-aside ordinance, suggesting that developers who receive city subsidies or zoning variances set aside 10 percent of their units for affordable housing. The problem is Daley’s definition of affordable. In the case of multibedroom housing, he wants it to mean “affordable to families making 100 percent of the area’s median income,” which is $75,000. But this figure includes wealthy suburbs like Lake Forest, Winnetka, and Oak Brook. The median income in Chicago is only $46,888 a year.
The city has picked a strange place to build a bus shelter: in the garden of the Fellger Playlot Park, on the northwest corner of Damen and Belmont.
Park District officials didn’t return my call for comment. But according to Brian Steele, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, the city allowed Decaux to put the shelter in the park because that’s the only way to leave enough room on the sidewalk to let a wheelchair pass, as it’s required to do. This isn’t the only location where the city has approved the installation of a shelter on park space, Steele says. Decaux has also put one in a slice of Hamlin Park, just south of the playlot.
