Progress Illinois

The 11 tax increment financing, or TIF, districts in the 4th Ward took $5.6 million in property taxes from those living within the boundaries in 2011, the CivicLab revealed at TIF town hall meeting Monday night.

Four of those districts fall nearly 100 percent inside of the ward and had extracted about $42 million from property taxpayers since the start of the TIF program back in 1986 through 2011, said Tom Tresser, co-founder of the CivicLab and leader of the of volunteer-based TIF Illumination Project.

Monday’s TIF town hall was the CivicLab’s eighth community meeting. Tresser and other “TIF illuminators” are holding meetings across the city in an effort to raise awareness about Chicago’s economic development program. The CivicLab's project sets out to find what wards are TIF "winners" or "losers."

Craig Coleman, a 10-year resident of the 4th Ward, said Monday night was the first time he heard exactly how much property tax dollars local residents had kicked into the program. He raised concerns about the TIF program’s lack of accountability and transparency.

“I think it’s money off the books that should be put back on the books,” Coleman said in remarks after the meeting, held at Room 43 in Kenwood. “How do you change it, and does your alderman control this or ... who controls the law to change this? When it’s time for the mayoral elections, does it get swept under the rug like everything else?”

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By the end of June 2014, more than two acres of vacant land in Chicago’s South Side Englewood neighborhood will be transformed into an affordable housing development with services for veterans and their families.

Gov. Pat Quinn and Ald. JoAnn Thompson (16th) announced the new housing facility, called Hope Manor II, at a breaking ground ceremony today.

“As people of America, we have a profound debt of gratitude to the men and women who answer the call to duty and volunteer for our military, they are our heroes and always will be,” said Quinn.

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The same week Chicago Public Schools (CPS) announced it will close a record-breaking number of schools at the end of the school year, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) released a report revealing increased instances of homelessness and poverty amongst Illinois’ students.

Nearly half of Illinois’ approximately 2 million students qualify as low income, increasing from 37.9 percent to 49 percent since 2008, according to the ISBE.

“Research tells us that children in areas of concentrated poverty often experience higher levels of stress and can exhibit more severe behavioral and emotional problems than children overall,” the report reads. "These difficulties often impact a child’s likelihood of success in school, leading to lower achievement scores and higher dropout rates."

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