Exactly what mixed-income housing do we demand?
The CBA Ordinance, passed as the Woodlawn Housing Preservation Ordinance, is about making sure WORKING FAMILIES can afford to live in the neighborhoods around the Obama Center.
Who will this include? The ordinance is about making sure security guards, teacher aides, lunch ladies, and other working-class households have a chance to stay in our community.
The ordinance says that, on 52 of the City-owned vacant lots, for 30% of new housing units (apartments) developed on those lots, developers have to charge rents affordable to WORKING FAMILIES (families making less than $45,000/year). They can still charge market rate on the other 70% of units.
This DOES NOT concentrate poverty. It DOES give working families a chance to stay in our community. It DOES make possible homes for the 9,900 Woodlawn residents at risk of displacement.
We have a chance to build a diverse community where everyone can afford to live side-by-side. Let’s not let false information divide and conquer us. That will only result in greedy developers grabbing all the land and pushing current residents out. We must come together to make sure the mayor delivers on the Ordinance.
Example of mixed-income development with 30% affordable units and 70% market rate units:
Let’s say that one of the vacant lots that the City sets aside, a luxury developer wants to build a 10-unit building and charge $2500 a month (market rate) for two-bedroom apartments.
The ordinance tells the developer: you can charge $2500/month for seven of the units. But for two of the units, you can only charge up to $900/month; and for one of the units can only charge up to $522/month. Again, the other seven units can still go for $2500/month.
Rally and represent with us this coming Monday after school, 5/23!
The City's housing department is coming to Woodlawn to hold an open house. They'll present their current proposal for setting aside vacant lots the City owns in Woodlawn for affordable housing. Such lots were promised in the CBA ordinance we got passed back in 2020.
Let's show up and demand attention to Woodlawn's gentrification and displacement crisis! Let's show Mayor Lightfoot: We need the biggest lots, on 63rd St towards the Obama Center, for mixed-income housing - not the more-and-more expensive housing being built around us!
At 4:15pm, gather with us to rally across the street from Hyde Park Academy, 6220 S Stony, by the Obama Center's site. Stand with our students and tenant leaders as they speak to the press conference!
Then at 5:30pm, go into the school for the open house, and City reps how you really feel about how few Woodlawn lots they're proposing to set aside now for affordable housing.