Two Studies of Chicago TIFs

What a season for critiquing Tax Increment Financing Districts (TIFs) in Chicago!

Two major local universities released meaty reports taking a deep dive into Chicago’s notorious TIF program. The first, “Rethinking Tax Increment Financing in Chicago – Fundings from Soth Chicago and Implication for Equitable Development” from the Institute for Racial Justice at Loyola University was release in April of 2026.

The second, “Chicago’s Tax Increment Financing: Who Paid, Who Gained?” was released by the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago in August.

They are both extensively researched. They are both lavishly published and presented. And both received mountains of appreciative media attention.

And both reports should be dismissed out of hand because they were issued by entities that have received at least $146 million in TIF funding. Spoiler alert – the net net of these weighty studies is that TIFs maybe flawed but they should be retained and even expanded.

Loyola University received $20.4 million in TIF funding from the Devon/Sheridan TIF in 2006. They were authorized to receive $46 million. The amazing Ben Joravsky (who first opened my eyes to the TIF scam) reported on this with a few columns in the Chicago Reader. One revealing piece was titled “Public Funds, Private Windfall” reported:

Trouble is, the TIF’s first big project won’t accomplish any of these goals. Instead, the city plans to give Loyola up to $46 million so the university can renovate four buildings on its lakefront campus: Mundelein Center, Coffey Hall, Piper Hall, and Flanner Hall. None of these four buildings was listed in the report’s survey of deteriorated properties within the TIF district. In fact, the report didn’t rate any of the buildings on the Loyola campus deteriorated, nor did it specify that TIF money should be used to renovate any of the university’s holdings. All four targeted buildings are tax exempt. And what’s more the TIF is earmarked to give Loyola about $2.125 million for the Root Photographers building, at 1131 W. Sheridan, which the school is converting into another tax-exempt university facility. In other words, the city wants to spend property tax dollars to turn tax-creating property into tax-exempt property.

Ben quotes a neighbor who attended one of the dog-and-pony show presentations that always accompany the TIF fright train process “’he city’s taking from the poor and giving to the rich, and bending the law to do it,’ says Bronwyn Elkuss, a Rogers Park resident leading the charge against the TIF. ‘It’s disgusting’.” You got that right.

And then there is the glaring conflict of interest that Claretian Associates, the main co-creator/collaborator of the report with the Institute for Racial Justice, will receive $5.9 million in TIF funding to renovate one property they own on 91^st Street.

The University of Chicago Illinois has received a TIF bounty that dwarfs its northside counterpart. In 1999 the city awarded the University $110 million from the Roosevelt Road/Union Avenue TIF for real estate development and other projects in a 58 acre swath along Halsted Street between Roosevelt Road and 18^th Street. Of that total some $2.5 million was allocated for interest costs – or pure profit to Wall Street. Also, in 2013 the University received $10 million from the Goose Island TIF for its Digital Manufacturing and Digital Innovation Institute.

I think it’s safe to say that the University of Illinois has been a major mover and shaker in the near South Side. First, its construction obliterated much of the working class part of Little Italy and then designing and constructing an entire neighborhood south of its campus some 34 years later.

So, it is no surprise that both reports say that the city should continue to employ TIFs despite all the negatives that each document recounts.

The UIC report says:

TIFs are a “runaway” program that has driven up Chicago property taxes by 14%
TIFs are not needed and bare no connection to economic development
TIFs have showered public money on the Loop area and affluent communities, offering very little to poor or working class communities of color
TIFs “reinforced the city’s historic economic inequities instead of reducing them”
TIFs have little transparency and less accountability

So, what does the redoubtable Great Cities Institute say we should do about this “runaway” program? The action words in this 88 page opus are “Amend. Move. Increase. Overhaul. Create independent. Expand.” Good luck with all that.

The Loyola report says that TIFs are suspect because “immediate benefits to the [South Side] residents are hard to come by with current TIF development.” The report highlights six “equity challenges with TIFs”:

Geographic limitations – TIF districts landlock dollars where they are collected, obviously benefiting wealthy areas and offering nothing to poor areas
Reimbursement structure – Since TIFs pay for things spent, only wealthy organizations or operations can afford to employ them
Deepens inequity between neighborhoods – “Because Chicago is so racially segregated, TIF can actually inequality worse”
Accelerate gentrification – “TIFs can fuel gentrification and push out current residents”
Divert additional tax dollars from other key taxing bodies – “Millions of dollars diverted from other taxing bodies” – really, it is BILLIONS.
Surplus habits – TIF dollars are often used to fill budget holes and “reinforces the idea that these districts are just a ‘slush fund’ for politicians”

With all these terrible outcomes, surely the Loyola program would want to institute some serious racial justice here?

Not so much.

Their suggestions for the city: “Keep TIFs as one tool in the city’s financial toolbox while cementing equitable evaluation into law.” Excuse me while I double over in laughter. Who, exactly, is going “cement” what exactly into law? In my 13 years of following TIFs closely in Chicago, every effort to reform, reign in, or even audit TIFs by the City Council has gone exactly nowhere.

Loyola’s suggest for the state is even worse: “Revise the TIF act to expand allowable uses of TIF funds.” Not to be too paranoid (I am, after all, originally from New York City), but could it be that this is the cover for some coordinated legislative move to make TIFs more useful to the university for some future project?

The TIF Illumination Project has issued the only annual review of all of Chicago’s TIFs from a social justice perspective for the last 13 years. We were not consulted by either research team, although our work is well known to them. No media outlet asked for a comment, although they all know of the TIF Illumination Project. We will hold our 236^th public TIF meeting on October 24 in Maywood. These two reports got extensive media coverage – our 235 public meetings, almost nothing from the major media platforms.

The net impact, I fear, of these two reports and the widespread media coverage is that Chicago’s TIF program is flawed – like the city it serves – but fixable if we do things like amend, move, review, cement, and expand.

To be clear, the TIF Illumination Project called for the abolition of TIFs in October of 2019 as being corrupt, generating inequity, and fundamentally racist. All this has been spelled out over 13 years of annual reports, in the only complete review of all of the TIFs of Illinois (also unreported by local media) and now spelled out in our new book “Abolish TIFs – Get Lower Property Taxes, More Equity & $20 Billion for U.S. Public Schools!” which we are self-publishing.

I am looking for some organization to take over the TIF Illumination Project, as I turned 74 in July. I wonder if the Institute for Racial Justice or the Great Cities Institute might be interested?

Two Studies of Chicago TIFs

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