Block Club Chicago, February 28, 2020: As Citywide Crisis Deepens, Residents Await Lightfoot’s Master Plan On Affordable Housing
To hear Mayor Lori Lightfoot tell it, none of her administration’s efforts to tackle the intractable problems facing Chicago stands a chance of success unless dramatically more Chicagoans have a stable place to live.
But nine months into the mayor’s term, Lightfoot has yet to map out a comprehensive plan to address the need for 119,000 more affordable homes in Chicago, a gap diagnosed by a 2018 study by DePaul University’s Institute for Housing Studies.
Lightfoot said the ultimate aim of her affordable housing policy is to “break up segregation in our city.”
“I want neighborhoods to be diverse — I think that’s an aspiration that we should have as a city,” Lightfoot said. “Now I’m not naïve about the difficulties of going from that aspiration to reality, but that is a goal that we should have as a city. I don’t want us to go into the future continuing to be known as one of the most segregated cities in the country.”
