By Sarah Rothschild | June 6, 2018 | Housing
File under: affordable housing, community development, Gentrification, opportunity gap, Poverty, Segregation
The Chicago region’s homes are under water and it is not due to the annual flooding from the Des Plaines River. Chicago ranks 2nd in the nation for the most homes that owe more money than they’re worth. And the majority of those homes are on the South Side.
By CTU Communications | June 5, 2017 | Housing
File under: affordable housing, homeownership, Poverty, tax policy
Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist Matthew Desmond recently published a piece in the New York Times Magazine outlining how flawed federal tax policies prop up home prices while leaving renters without the help they need to stay in their homes. The biggest culprit is a... 
By CTU Communications | May 4, 2017 | Further Reading
File under: Budget, Homelessness, Poverty, Special Education
This week, we’re reading about the pervasiveness of homelessness in Chicago and the forces that exacerbate it, how the federal health care debate impacts special education, and gun violence in Chicago. 1. Rahm Emanuel postpones briefings on CPS rescue :... By Sarah Rothschild | March 20, 2017 | Housing
File under: disinvestment, Poverty, Racism, Segregation
For people who thought the housing crisis was behind us, a drive through Englewood, North Lawndale or Austin will quickly dispel that rosy notion, as a recent investigative report in the Chicago Reader explains. These communities are among many in Chicago that have... 
By Sarah Rothschild | August 4, 2016 | Justice, Schools
File under: incarceration, Poverty, school counselors, school-to-prison pipeline, Social Workers, state budget
The Illinois prison population has doubled in the last twenty-five years, mostly due to the “war on drugs,” and incarceration rates tend to be concentrated in high-poverty communities. CPS does not have enough social workers or counselors to help students…
By Sarah Rothschild | December 9, 2015 | Housing, Jobs, Justice
File under: Anita Alvarez, community development, disinvestment, incarceration, Jobs, police brutality, Poverty, Racism
Chicago Police Department superintendent Garry McCarthy was fired by Mayor Emanuel last Tuesday, after protesters have been demanding it for months. Back in October, members of the Black Caucus of the city council demanded his replacement because crime is still... 
By Sarah Rothschild | July 10, 2015 | Housing
File under: community development, disinvestment, Poverty, Privatization
The CHA has been sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in cash reserves. On Wednesday, July 8 the secretary of the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) office reiterated this fact at a ribbon cutting ceremony at the former site of the Stateway Gardens public housing development, now re-christened as a mixed-income development called Park Boulevard.
By Carol Caref | June 23, 2015 | Schools
File under: opportunities to learn, Poverty
A Just Chicago makes the case that poverty and achievement (as measured by test scores) go together. A recent study by the Daily Herald and WBEZ confirmed that these correlations on a national level hold up in Chicago also. Despite 12 years of No Child Left Behind... 
