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Mayor Lori Lightfoot used her annual budget address Monday to announce she’d dedicate $3 million from the city’s multi-year “Chicago Recovery Plan” budget — a mix of federal and bond funding announced last year -– to create an affordable housing initiative that uses small homes to house people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford a stable place to live.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Built next to her house?
Who is paying the taxes?
The bigger question is what neighborhoods are going to want transient housing?
All the available real estate for tiny home communities are on the far west/south sides. Can you imagine the outcries from minority alderpeople when these get build in their neighborhoods? Are the tent communities in the West Loop (mostly white people) going to take up tiny housing in Lawndale?
These aren’t meant to be permanent residences. Having the same people continuously cycling through tiny homes doesn’t solve the homeless problem.
You can buy a garden shed kit at Menards for a few hundred bucks, not much different than these. How much you wanna bet SEIU, and every other city union will want in on this project and will be building garden sheds for 100K each or more. The plumbers union will demand each get a water line and sewer line, the electricians will demand 100 ampere service entry to each garden shed, we’ll see a satellite dish on top of each one too. Oh and the garbage company will want each to have three garbage cans, those will occupy the… Read more »
I just looked at Garden Sheds at Menards and the cheapest was $550 and was just thin metal over a frame. Not really livable. You could pay around $6,500 and have something better but, of course, there will be other costs.
They’re like the small cabins in the Cook County Forest Preserve for camping.
The dirty little secret about tiny homes is that few owners live in them full-time and year round. They’re too small and they require a concerted effort to live in them. Even single wides and 5th wheel rv’s have more room. For example, storage. There’s hardly any storage. The bums who live in these things will store all their crap all over the place and the ‘outdoor’ area will be filled with junk and crates and crap. These tiny home communities will be indistinguishable from homeless camps. Secondly, they are unlivable for two or more people. Tiny House Hunters on… Read more »
My son and I visited a tiny home ‘community’ in Eastern Tennessee this past summer which is also sited next to the manufacturer of the homes. Some of them were done up very nicely with the added attraction of decks and patios. I could live in one myself but the idea of trying to carry on with another person, whether spouse or child, just seems ridiculous.
Spot on debtsor,
If you visit George Washington’s home in Arlington, Virginia, the kitchen (and outhouse) were separate buildings — and he would have been considered well off for his time.
In the Depression these would have been called Hoovervilles. Would these be called Bidenvilles, Pritzkervilles, or Lightfootvilles?
Wow, looks just like the primitive wood shanties the ditch digging peasants from Europe lived in when they came to dig the canals across the prairie in the 1800’s. 180 years and we’ve gone full circle.
Or just plunk down some mobile homes? Oh, sorry, that wouldn’t be eco-equity friendly award winning design enough
How bout housing them in under used school buildings which Chicago has plenty already on hand.
yea, exactly….or remodel any one of the 10s of thousands of city abandoned homes, or rezone all the empty retail storefronts for housing, etc,etc, or just plain old lower prop taxes. But none of these programs are about solving housing in an affordable way. Instead they’re all about launching some eco-equity /virtue signalling friendly bs program for a lot of politico-lib press types to stare at themself in the mirror. Meanwhile pappas is announcing another 55,000 cc properties going on the scavenger sale even with all the fed covid housing $ aid….pathetic https://www.cookcountytreasurer.com/newsarticle.aspx?articleid=1611
And look out— the gigantic tsunami that’s going to hit home owners, especially low income home owners is just getting going as mortgage rates skyrocket to +7……WOW, if you got a variable rate mortgage your toast!!! and any fed covid “free stuff” housing $ giveaways is going to be a drop in the bucket……look out, its going to be a foreclosure city/ homeless/ train wreck as the debt from all the “free stuff” comes due in the form of fed high interest rates for years & years
Chicago housing is relatively cheap compared to virtually every other big city. Its cheap because taxes are high and the population is mostly declining. Rents have increased, as they have everywhere, as inflation and increased demand from illegal immigrants competing with natives for the cheapest apartments available. I don’t know much how much cheaper they expect housing to get in Chicago relative to other cities. Do they believe Chicago should be like E. St. Louis, Danville or Rockford prices? Maybe, but look at the years of blight that occurred to have declining prices. These people want cheap housing in a… Read more »
Cannot do. Those empty schools are being turned into luxury condos for the underpaid teachers at CPS. Taxpayers will of course foot the bill for remodeling and upkeep.
Hmm, I sense “under representated, Marginalized, at risk, and BIPOC voters.”
Do the designers of that future mini-hovel realize that there are heavy snowfalls in Chicago, and that there’s a reason that their inverted roof design is currently found NOWHERE in this climate region? Duh!
You beat me to it, thats the first flaw I noticed.
BD Lori would fit nicely into that place. Lead by example Lightweight.