A prime mayoral aide Friday bemoaned the funds disaster that can make it powerful for Mayor Lori Lightfoot to make use of an elevated actual property switch tax to scale back homelessness and bankroll inexpensive housing.
Housing Commissioner Marisa Novara helped draft Lightfoot’s housing platform whereas serving as a vp of the Metropolitan Planning Council and overseeing a research on the $4.Four billion “cost of segregation” in Chicago.
It known as for a graduated actual property switch tax to “create a dedicated revenue stream” to scale back homelessness by 45 % and start to chip away at a 120,000-unit scarcity of inexpensive items now driving Chicago’s inhabitants decline.
Lightfoot nonetheless plans to ask the Illinois General Assembly to empower Chicago to boost its actual property switch tax however needs to make use of the projected $120 million a yr in new income to shut a $1 billion-plus funds shortfall.
That has Novara going again to the drafting board to search out different methods to resolve the gentrification/inexpensive housing disaster that was a driving drive behind the election of six aldermen backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
“I share the concerns of the folks pushing for this. … This is an issue that I come to with a lot of history on, and a lot of passion for. And it’s painful to me to be in the realities of our fiscal situation,” Novara informed the Chicago Sun-Times.
“We’re really clear on our commitment to addressing homelessness. To providing more resources for affordable housing. But it’s really early for us to figure out exactly how. We’re still getting our arms around the fiscal challenge we’re in.”
Rachel Johnston, a senior staffer for the Chicago Rehab Network, has urged town to dedicate “a portion” of its annual common obligation bond income to resolve the inexpensive housing disaster.
Novara threw chilly water on that concept. She argued town already has “revenue bonds that go unused each year because they don’t generate enough money for affordable deals to work. They need more cash.”
She’s “engaged on methods to decrease these prices, maybe by in search of legislative approval for a New York-style tax abatement for builders who construct inexpensive items.
For years, the unwritten rule often called “aldermanic prerogative” has allowed Chicago aldermen to regulate native zoning to maintain inexpensive housing out of their wards.
Lightfoot has issued an government order that stripped aldermen of their unbridled management over licensing and allowing. She has promised to do the identical for his or her management over zoning, however that can require a City Council vote that’s sure to be contentious.
On Friday, Novara argued there isn’t any turning again if Chicago ever hopes to remove its inexpensive housing disaster.
“Either we believe that every community needs to contribute to the city’s affordable housing needs or we believe it’s optional,” she mentioned.
“If we believe it’s optional, then we are saying we’re fine with perpetuating the segregation that we’ve created. That’s not what this mayor ran on. It’s not what she won on decisively in all 50 wards. We need to chart a very different path.”
How will that be executed?
“You set up a system in which people can’t say no to affordable housing for reasons that aren’t based on fact,” Novara mentioned.
During her City Council affirmation listening to, aldermen urged Novara to do the little issues that chip away on the inexpensive housing scarcity. She’s engaged on it.
“This is what I like to call ‘small density.’ We’re making it easier, we’re making it legal — for people to actually use their coach houses for a rental unit or legalize their basement or their attic,” Novara mentioned.
The so-called “tiny houses” instructed by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel may very well be a part of the answer, too.
Novara mentioned town is in search of methods to “creatively deal with the necessity for items and methods to get at affordability that don’t contain ready in line for…