HUD Finds Discrimination in Chicago’s Public Housing Development

In a letter reported on by the Chicago Sun-Times earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) detailed the findings of a recent probe into the city’s affordable housing development practices. According to the Sun-Times, HUD found that the city has wrongly denied the development of new affordable housing through the tool of "aldermanic prerogative." A hotly contested reality for all Chicagoans, aldermanic prerogative effectively enables alderpeople to veto affordable development in their ward. This is particularly problematic in the city’s majority-white wards, where, the letter apparently reads, "new affordable housing is rarely, if ever, constructed."

The HUD investigation was initiated in response to a complaint filed by a coalition of affordable housing advocacy organizations in 2018. The complaint contextualized aldermanic prerogative within the city’s history of housing segregation and the resulting current day "discriminatory treatments," according to a 2018 Sun-Times story.

In 2021, Chicago’s Department of Housing published the results of a racial equity impact study that revealed that less than 20 percent of all Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) units are in majority-white neighborhoods, even though 30 percent of the city’s tracts are majority white. Fifty percent of all LIHTC units allocated since 2000 are in majority Black neighborhoods, though only 35 percent of all city tracts have majority Black populations, according to the report. The Department of Housing responded to this study by changing its qualified allocation plan to encourage developers to submit proposals for LIHTC developments in those areas that have excluded people of color, says a 2021 NBC Chicago report. Those proposals, however, would still be subject to aldermanic prerogative.

Last year, the Sun-Times reported on another HUD letter that found that Chicago was violating civil rights by relocating polluting businesses from white, north side neighborhoods to majority–Black and Latino neighborhoods. The city could have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in federal housing assistance, but it reached a settlement with HUD after agreeing to take remediative actions, according to the National Resources Defense Council.  

This new letter says that HUD seeks an "informal resolution" with the city, according to the Sun-Times. Mayor Brandon Johnson has yet to respond.  

Related reading:

Are Private Partnerships the Best Way to Rebuild Public Housing?

A New Generation of Politicians Is Showing That When It Comes to Housing, the Personal Is Political

Top image: Chicago skyline. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images