The property manager of a troubled South Shore apartment building raided last month by immigration agents helps run a political fund that made campaign contributions to more than a dozen members of the Chicago City Council this year.
The recipients include now-former Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), Mayor Brandon Johnson’s choice to run the Chicago Housing Authority. One of Burnett’s campaign funds accepted a $500 contribution this year from the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance PAC.
The political action committee’s leaders include Corey Oliver of Strength in Management LLC, which oversees the complex at 7500 S. South Shore Drive that was targeted by a deportation operation Sept. 30.
Elections records show other 2025 contributions included:
- $1,500 to Ald. Nicole Lee (11th).
- $1,000 to Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd).
- $500 each to Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), Monique Scott (24th), Bill Conway (34th), Timmy Knudsen (43rd) and Debra Silverstein (50th).
Also receiving money from the PAC:
- Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th), who got $6,000 in 2023.
- Former Ald. George Cardenas, now a Cook County Board of Review commissioner, who was given $1,500.
- Cook County Commissioner Josina Morita, who got $500.
Ald. Greg Mitchell (7th), the City Council member representing the South Side ward that includes the South Shore building, took $500 from the group in 2023.
In addition to campaign contributions from the PAC, Oliver’s company, Strength in Management, gave $300 to U.S. Rep. Danny K. Davis’ campaign fund in 2020. Davis is retiring.
The company is the on-site manager of the 130-unit South Shore Drive complex where Border Patrol agents swept up dozens of occupants late last month. The raid exposed deplorable conditions that residents say they have complained about for years.
The conditions — including bug-infested hallways, feces smeared on walls, elevators not working, piled-up garbage and crime — made the building “unlivable and inhumane,” according to one resident, who said conditions took “a nosedive” after Oliver’s company was hired last year. The owner is Wisconsin resident Trinity Flood.
Oliver says his company is often brought in to manage buildings “already in crisis,” generally as part of a 12-month to 18-month stabilization plan.
“Many of the buildings we manage represent some of the most challenging housing situations in Chicago,” Oliver tells the Chicago Sun-Times in his first public statement since the raid. “Our involvement begins because these properties are in distress — not the other way around.”
It’s unclear whether Oliver’s company or Flood knew in advance about the raid or helped agents navigate the building. The Sun-Times has reported that detailed maps of the building’s layout were left there after the raid, which saw agents slide down ropes from a Blackhawk helicopter and kick down doors.
The Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance PAC is affiliated with an advocacy group of the same name that describes itself as “the voice of the neighborhood housing industry” and that says it speaks “on behalf of small and mid-sized housing providers.”
Its website points to an Oct. 15 Sun-Times report about immigration raids causing stress for Chicago building managers it describes as “a great example of how NBOA’s advocacy ensures that the voice of neighborhood housing is heard in critical public discussions.”
Oliver and other landlords are among contributors to the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance PAC.
Though its government filings list him as co-chairman of the PAC, Oliver no longer has that role but remains on its board and is among a small group of people deciding where to put the PAC’s money, according to the group’s chairman, Aron Bornstein.
“If they’re pro-real estate or pro-development,” then the group might give a politician a check, Bornstein says.
He says that years ago the PAC focused on an eviction moratorium but today is interested in issues ranging from “granny flats” to property taxes.
Bornstein also says the way Oliver has been portrayed by building occupants in news accounts as a bad landlord is “grossly unfair,” describing what’s happened at the South Shore building as “a very complicated situation . . . that predates Corey.”
Building residents have said conditions there got worse after Oliver’s company took over in 2024. A foreclosure case is pending in Cook County circuit court.
A consulting company run by former Rogers Park-area Ald. Joe Moore (49th) was paid $10,000 by the PAC in 2025 as a fund-raising consultant. Moore says Oliver is “but one of several voices on the PAC,” which focuses on politicians who “listen to the industry and are sympathetic to our concerns.”
Burnett says he knows of the PAC through Moore.
“We don’t know them; we know Joe,” says Burnett, who said he’s in a holding pattern on his CHA appointment.