More than 16,450 Chicago Public Schools students were homeless last year, half of them concentrated in ten South and West Side wards, underscoring the need for a “dedicated revenue stream” to combat the problem.
Homeless advocates and their City Council allies are shining the light on the intransigent problem of student homelessness to keep the heat on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to raise Chicago’s real estate transfer tax to reduce homelessness and bankroll affordable housing.
Lightfoot campaigned on a promise to impose a graduated real estate transfer tax to reduce homelessness by 45 percent and chip away at a 120,000-unit shortage of affordable units now driving Chicago’s precipitous population decline.
But the $838 million shortfall she claims to have inherited has apparently altered the new mayor’s game plan.
She now wants to raise the transfer tax on homes sold for over $500,000 while providing untold “relief” to the owners of homes sold for under that amount.
If the Illinois General Assembly grants the mayor’s request, Lightfoot apparently plans to use some of the money to reduce the shortfall and some to honor her campaign promise.
“We are committed to addressing homelessness and housing instability and putting real resources toward these problems,” the mayor said during last week’s budget address.
That’s not good enough for Julie Dworkin, policy director for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
Dworkin pointed to the 16,451 students who experienced homelessness during the 2018--2019 school year. That’s 4.5 percent of last year’s total student enrollment of 361,314.
Nearly 90 percent of those homeless students are “doubled-up” or sharing housing with relatives and friends, often moving from place to place.
The South Side’s 20th Ward had the highest concentration of homeless students at 1,078. That was followed by the 24th (1,028); 28th (976); 27th (865); 8th (829); 3rd (783); 34th (743); 6th (688); 16th (658) and 21st (602).
The downtown’s 42nd Ward had the highest percentage of homeless of its total population of CPS students at 18.6 percent.
“We hear stories about kids sleeping in apartments with ten or fifteen other people. They’re sleeping in a living room where people are up all night watching television. They can barely sleep. It’s hard for them to ever get their homework done or concentrate. It’s extremely difficult for kids to learn in that environment,” Dworkin said.
“They end up having more emotional problems and health problems. A lot of them…don’t even have a key to the place where they’re living. They’re just sitting outside waiting for someone to come home.”
Dworkin acknowledged that the $838 million shortfall is the largest in recent history. She said she’s “ready to have a conversation about what is realistic” under those dire circumstances.
But she was unequivocal and uncompromising about the need for a funding source “legally dedicated to homelessness” at an amount “significant enough to address the scale of the problem.”
“Los Angeles has now created two dedicated funding streams that are gonna generate $5 billion in ten years. In San Francisco, they just created a dedicated funding stream that’s gonna generate $250 million-to-$300 million-a-year. Even smaller cities are putting real significant resources toward this problem,” Dworkin said.
“We have over 16,000 children in the Chicago Public Schools. Over 86,000 people homelessness in Chicago. We need a significant, dedicated resource. This particular tax is the perfect one.”
On Thursday, Dworkin will be joined at a City Hall news conference by Aldermen Jeanette Taylor (20th), Walter Burnett (27th) and Carrie Austin (34th).
Housing Commissioner Marisa Novara could not be reached for comment.
Last month, Novara bemoaned the shortfall that will make it difficult for Lightfoot to deliver on her campaign promise.
“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 told 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.”
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