In its Sept. 14 editorial “Tent cities don’t belong in Chicago’s parks,” the Tribune Editorial Board overlooks a crucial aspect of the debate and misses a valuable opportunity to offer genuine support for Chicago’s unsheltered population. The editorial’s central premise — that tents do not belong in parks — is one largely shared by the people living in them. However, the board proposes a nonstarter of a solution by advocating for the displacement of encampment residents.
The piece focuses on the Northwest Side and its encampments but fails to acknowledge the root cause of the issue. It conspicuously fails to mention that this part of the city lacks affordable housing and emergency shelter options precisely due to aldermanic prerogative, the long-standing unwritten rule that has allowed council members to block the very housing — deeply affordable, public and permanent supportive housing — that is needed.
Furthermore, during the last several accelerated moving events on the Northwest Side, no local housing options were offered to encampment residents who have lived, worked and grown up in those neighborhoods. Displacing unsheltered encampment residents does nothing but disrupt already chaotic lives, scattering the very people outreach workers are trying to stabilize with intensive case management.
The practice of “sweeping” encampments is dehumanizing and does nothing to solve the deeply affordable housing crisis in Northwest Side communities.
Instead of advocating for displacement, the Tribune Editorial Board should demand that aldermen work to create more deeply affordable options in their communities, especially on the Far Northwest Side. Every community in Chicago needs to build deeply affordable housing and emergency shelters for our neighbors who are struggling with unaffordable rents, job loss and disabling conditions. Many of these communities have a century-long history of discriminatory housing practices, which have contributed to the increasing number of unhoused people.
— Monica Dillon, NWS Outreach Volunteers, Chicago
Compassion is lacking
“Chicagoans should not have to wonder whether their neighborhood park is safe or whether their kids can play ball,” the Tribune Editorial Board writes. Of course. But nowhere in the editorial is there the tiniest compassion for people who have no place to live — no mention of how horribly rough it must be to feel you have no option but to live in a tent, with precious little shelter from the elements.
Aren’t people who are unhoused Chicagoans, too? Or are they just “other”? Without compassion, how can we come up with a true, humane solution that works for all Chicagoans?
— Diane O’Neill, Chicago
Where do unhoused go?
I read the editorial board’s comments about tent cities in public parks with interest. It is great to have beautiful city parks.
But where are the unhoused supposed to live? There is not enough room in the shelters, not enough affordable housing and not nearly enough mental health care. I imagine most would prefer to have stable, safe housing, get a job and get the needed support to rejoin society.
What are the unhoused supposed to do?
— Madeleine Pachay, Villa Park
Reasonable to wonder
I appreciated Sunday’s editorial and the cartoon in particular, a clever take on Georges Seurat’s most famous painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” In the painting, Seurat depicts all social classes of Parisians in the late 19th century escaping city life for a few moments to enjoy the park. Indeed, the basic concept of a public park hasn’t changed much in 140 years. It is a shared space for recreation and for the community to gather.
But whether it is in parks in Ald. Samantha Nugent’s 39th Ward or wards along the city’s most prized asset — its lakefront — homeless encampments are visible and numerous. Another dangerous fire this summer in Legion Park, in Nugent’s ward, prompted the Chicago Park District to enforce its rules and prohibit camping in that exact location, but according to Block Club, tent camping will be allowed in other areas of the park.
Excuse me while I find a wall to bang my head against.
Middle- and working-class Chicagoans pay a lot of money in taxes to live here, and it is reasonable to wonder what we are getting for it. While city leadership crows about lower crime rates, it doesn’t feel like we are living in an orderly or safe environment when people are living, defecating and setting fires in public spaces — the very spaces that we all prize as city dwellers.
If I want to see a safe and vibrant public park, I shouldn’t have to go to an art museum.
— Michele Steele, Chicago
‘Affordable’ housing?
The recent letters praising affordable housing (Sept. 10) read like lobbyist talking points, not reality. They ask us to believe that sprinkling a few “affordable” units into luxury towers somehow transforms the project into a community benefit. It doesn’t. It’s a smokescreen for profit.
Take the Old Town Canvas project. Out of 349 units, nearly 280 will be luxury apartments. That’s the 80/20 rule — 20% “affordable” and 80% unaffordable. Four out of five units will raise rents, change the character of Old Town and push out the very families this project pretends to help.
And even the so-called affordable units are misnamed. They’re pegged to a regional area median income covering Cook and the collar counties. By folding in suburban wealth, the formula inflates rents far above what working families in Chicago can actually pay. The lobby calls that affordable. Neighbors know it isn’t.
The truth is simple: Old Town Canvas is not designed for the people who live here. It’s designed for investors and a few property owners who want pedestal parking decks and massive towers that overwhelm the streets around them.
Until Chicago demands projects where affordability means real, attainable housing, the dreamland spun by the affordable housing lobby will keep destroying real neighborhoods.
— Tim Carew, Chicago
A law that respects all
Perhaps there is a better way to legalize accessory dwelling units in Chicago than to pass the unpopular proposals by Ald. Bennett Lawson and Ald. Marty Quinn.
The key objections to ADUs, also known as coach houses or granny flats, are the influx of cars and increased density they bring into neighborhoods. Some areas of the city with their downtown cultures and more reliable city transit can readily handle these pressures. Outlying parts of the city that identify with suburban atmospheres and available street parking would be thrown out of whack if additional housing units were to be squeezed into their blocks with no parking requirements.
So why write a one-size-fits-all ordinance that benefits some neighborhoods while ripping apart others? Isn’t the whole concept of the city’s zoning supposed to be to plan for orderly development that preserves community culture and character in all 77 of its neighborhoods? Isn’t that what gives Chicago its biggest strength, making it the most livable big city in America?
To make the ADU ordinance fair for everyone, the aldermen could link approvals to car ownership numbers. Any of the 50 wards with higher-than-average numbers of vehicles could opt out of adding dwelling units without also adding parking requirements.
Instead, the City Council should increase badly needed affordable housing numbers with other initiatives because, after all, isn’t that the point? Instead of continuing to promote the conversion of mostly undesirable basement apartments at market rates, it could segue to adding innovative missing middle housing designs. Filling the gap between downtown skyscrapers and single-family homes with clustered duplexes, triplexes, stacked fourplexes, townhouses and cottage colonies, these could share lots at a lower cost while still providing off-street parking where needed.
We could also preserve the very valuable existing stock of two- and three-flats that have been rapidly disappearing from much of the city, but are a dime a dozen in many of the dense suburban neighborhoods that are fighting ADUs. By incentivizing homeowners to live in one unit and rent out the others, we could encourage people to expand upon these naturally occurring ADUs while building generational wealth.
Surely Chicago’s great minds can come up with other out-of-the-box initiatives to write an ADU law that is effective in adding to the city’s housing stock while at the same time respecting the cultures of all its diverse neighborhoods.
— Elizabeth Mina, Chicago
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