Blame Your Alderperson For Gentrification

Is there any issue eroding Chicago’s identity right now more than gentrification? It’s a heartbreak we all know — newer and wealthier people enter, prices rise and the weight of increased housing value and additional taxes push the original character of the neighborhood out.

It happened in Lincoln Park. It happened in Lakeview. It’s happening in Bridgeport, Pilsen and Logan Square. 

Gentrification seems to be attacking the soul of the working class which once defined Chicago. While the increased community investment and public safety are welcomed by many— members of the community often become unable to afford their home. Why does this happen? Supply and demand.  

As of right now, there’s a greater demand for housing than supply. When demand exceeds supply, prices go up due to buyer competition. Further, a larger portion of new developments are so-called luxury apartments, offering added conveniences to the renter and raising rent in return.

As such, anti-gentrification efforts often focus on suppressing new developments and resistance to the newer, wealthier demographic in a neighborhood. This is folly. Newcomers aren’t solely responsible for neighborhoods becoming harder to live in after they arrive — the blame belongs with the local government, who in an alleged effort to preserve a neighborhood’s character end up making gentrification worse.

In short, blame your alderperson. 

Many alderpeople in Chicago have a long tradition of blocking the building of dense housing units in the city, decreasing the supply as demand increases, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

This is because Chicago follows a tradition known as aldermanic prerogative.

In essence, alderpeople in the city act as both legislators in city council, and executives over their own ward. Any new building or zoning change requires the local alderperson’s permission. Further, the alderperson has a very strong influence on zoning laws in their ward, dictating what type of building can be built in a specific area. 

Alderpeople also have large powers to upzone or downzone lots within their wards. determining how densely developers are permitted to construct. 

Developers want to build affordable homes, and people want to live in affordable homes.  Alderpeople are the ones who prevent the building of affordable homes, contributing to the  shortening supply of affordable homes.  

The U.S. Department of Housing recently investigated this phenomenon. Their report indicted alderpeople of majority white wards for using aldermanic prerogative to block affordable housing as a method of preventing minorities from moving into their ward, according to WTTW.

Consider the example of Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), who represents the largely white Lincoln Park and Old Town neighborhoods. Just last year, he blocked developers from turning a 50 foot lot with two small buildings in Lincoln Park into a large, multi-use, 5-story residential building.  The amount of housing that could have been built would go a long way to increasing affordability in the Lincoln Park area, but alleged community backlash convinced him to block it. 

While racially-motivated politics are despicable, blocking affordable housing in gentrifying areas is not limited to white alderpeople.  Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), of a gentrifying ward where over half the population is Hispanic, attempted to downzone a massive swath of properties in 2017. These plans were blocked in part due to community backlash, but he still downzoned several lots along North Milwaukee Avenue in 2020.

To Ramirez-Rosa’s credit, he’s encouraged certain upzoning and affordable housing projects in other parts of his ward, and there’s no way to definitively prove his decisions to block affordable development were racially motivated. But the affordable housing Ramirez-Rosa has championed is still too little, and those extra properties he downzoned could’ve gone a long way towards maintaining affordability in a gentrifying area.

Many other alderpeople argue against density, claiming it may end up raising rents. The city of Minneapolis, however, shows otherwise, as the city spent the last 15 years densifying and building new housing. As a result, rent has risen much slower than in other cities, according to Pew Research. Chicago cannot say the same.

Alderpeople have near total control over what happens in their wards. So why suppress developers instead of working with them to ensure new housing is affordable?

What this example shows us is that alderpeople are still beholden to their constituents — as long as constituents are making enough noise.

To help solve the affordable housing crisis in Chicago, call or write your local alderperson and tell them to fight for more dense affordable housing in your ward. The more we force them to listen, the more we can afford to stay in our communities.  

For those who live around the Lake Shore Campus, Ald. Maria Hadden (49th)  can be reached at 773-338-5796, and Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th) can be reached at 773-784-5277.

Alderpeople who block affordable housing say new development will change the character of a neighborhood, and of course developers should be sensitive to this possibility. That said, neighborhoods like Pilsen or Lincoln Park are defined more by their residents than the types of housing within them. Which hurts a neighborhood’s character more — an increase in density, or the loss of the communities it once held?