Homeless protest tax-funded condos.

• Author: Ervin, Mike
• Position: Chicago, IL

Chicago

Looking out the window of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, you can see an abandoned warehouse being rehabbed into government-subsidized housing. The trouble is, the units will be posh condominiums, most of which will sell for more than $100,000. For an estimated 60,000 people who are homeless this winter in Chicago, the irony is brutal.

What makes it even worse is that on the very next block sits the old and crumbling St. James Hotel, single-room-occupancy residences where the poorest people in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood live. Neighborhood organizations, developers, and banks had a plan to restore the St. James and retain its niche as a home for very low-income people. All the groups needed was some city funding.

But Mayor Richard Daley's administration rejected the plan. Yet the city saw fit to give a $2 million subsidy to the developer of the condos - money that does not have to be paid back. Under the "tax-increment financing" scheme, city hall gives private developers incentives to undertake projects.

The theory is that the city will recoup the money later through higher property taxes. Says John Donahue, director of the homeless coalition, "We have a chance to show in a positive way what a mixed-income community can be and to create a model for other cities." But the developer has refused the coalition's demand that 20...