After seven years in the field and doing over 79 presentations all over the city, and after talking to activists, academics, and reporters all over the USA – we have reached the conclusion that TIFs are corrupting and racist and must be abolished. See our reasoning and sign the online petition…
There is a LOT of talk about racial justice and equity going on around town these days.
Candidate Lori Lightfoot ran on themes of justice and delivering real resources to long neglected Black and Brown communities.Once elected she even created a new office – the position of Chief Equity Officer.
But how to MEASURE the call for equity and any new initiative being pushed by Mayor Lightfoot?
How about this one: The mayor is making a lot of noise about Invest Southwest, a new initiative focusing on boosting investment in ten communities on the west and south sides. She is promising to invest around $250 million in TIF dollars (from the Department of Planning) in this program (along with re-directed city funds and hopes of private investment).How does this initiative measure up?
Those communities take up around 27,588 acres.
On the other hand, there are the two “super-TIFs” created in April 2019 to subsidize the Lincoln Yards development and the 78 Project – two mega projects in affluent and White parts of the City. Those two projects are getting $2.4 BILLION in TIF dollars! And yet they take up around 303 acres.
The two projects in Whiteville are getting TEN TIMES the TIF subsidies that the entire ten communities in Invest Southwest are getting – which is about 100 TIMES larger in size.
NO ONE lives inside the Whiteville projects right now.488,881 people live in the targeted Invest Southwest communities (two are Latino, the rest Black). That’s 18.4% of the total Chicago population (2012 numbers).
So two projects in White and affluent parts of Chicago that will contain luxury housing and retail comprising about 1% of the land of the targeted Black and Brown communities and which contain ZERO residents will get 1,000% of the subsidies offered to 488,000+ Black and Brown residents.
Equity Grade = F.
Gazette Chicago covered the launch of the campaign at the University of Chicago’s “Future of Chicago” lecture on October 16, 2019-> See https://tinyurl.com/Gazette-Abolish-TIFs-coverage. The Gazette then editorialized to abolish TIFs in the strongest language, “We join with them. We are fed up with developers lining up at the TIF trough to help with their glass and concrete towers. We are also tired of aldermen (several of them currently or formerly from this community) whining about how much we need TIFs to jump-start developments city-wide. The majority of the dollars funnel into the Loop and downtown district and other affluent communities such as West Loop and Fulton Market. Meanwhile, under-served and under-developed communities get crumbs, and the tax dollars that should have stayed locally in schools, libraries, and parks get directed elsewhere.” (see https://tinyurl.com/Gazette-End-TIFs-Editorial).
