A group of Chicago community organizations — Housing Opportunities and Maintenance for the Elderly, Access Living, North Branch Works, Mothers Opposed to Violence Everywhere, Illinois Anti-Foreclosure Coalition, Light Up Lawndale, Rebuilding Together Metro Chicago and Northside Community Resources — sent a letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson and city housing leaders over a month ago calling for an explanation for why $6.3 million allocated for the city’s Home Repair Program isn’t being used for low-income seniors’ critical home repairs and modifications. We are still waiting for answers.
In late 2024, the city closed the Small Accessible Repairs for Seniors program and folded its services into the Home Repair Program. The latter program provided safety and accessibility repairs to about 300 senior households every year.
Since then, seniors who were waiting for assistance through the Small Accessible Repairs for Seniors program have expressed that they are struggling to find help through the Home Repair Program.
Seniors are calling the city’s 311 system and or their alderpersons for repairs that are urgent and dictate whether they can remain safely in their homes.
What is especially troubling is that some seniors are being directed back to community organizations that previously provided these services through the Small Accessible Repairs for Seniors program. These organizations had their funding eliminated when the program was closed.
If roughly $6.3 million in Home Repair Program funds remain available and they are being carried over into the next budget, seniors who need help now will suffer.
Illinois was designated an AARP age-friendly state last month. But we are not helping older adults if the city is leaving critical home repair resources unused. With the planning for the 2027 budget underway, the city needs to include funds to address the growing home repair need.
The city should provide a clear explanation of why these funds remain unspent, identify any restrictions on their use and determine whether eligible carryover funds can be directed toward residents facing urgent home repair needs.
Alizandra Medina, director of advocacy and neighborhood engagement, Housing Opportunities and Maintenance for the Elderly
Ishbia’s uninspiring Sox stadium plan
Move over, Mighty Casey, because you’ve got company. Sox owner-in-waiting Justin Ishbia has struck out with his proposal for a new stadium in the South Loop, failing to swing at the critical issues of location, design and tradition.
Stadium renderings shows exactly what Ishbia wants and where. If he has his way, Sox fans will either need to move within walking distance of his proposed park, or give up the generations-ingrained habit of driving to the games at 35th Street and Shields Avenue, as fans have been doing since, well, forever.
Aerial and street-level pictures of Comiskey Park for the first All-Star Game in 1933 show the ballpark surrounded by parking lots; the current stadium opened in 1991 with 70 acres of parking. If Ishbia did his due diligence, stadium renderings would have included surface parking lots to reassure fans. Instead, he may have to cobble together a route that includes Metra or the CTA. That, or fans will have to fork over a king’s ransom for Downtown parking.
Ishbia’s design repeats the mistake of Rate Field’s cantilevering multiple decks. That idea worked so poorly, the Sox were forced to remove eight rows of seating to create at least a faux sense of intimacy a la Comiskey.
Not only will Ishbia’s stadium come with inadequate parking and nose-bleed seats, it likely will offer fewer seats altogether. Stadiums proposed or under construction for the Athletics, Tampa Bay Rays and Kansas City Royals have projected capacities of 31,000 to 34,000. Odds are likely Ishbia isn’t thinking of a venue seating 40,000-plus fans like Comiskey.
If only Ishbia were thinking of rebuilding Comiskey for the 21st century and beyond: Located in the neighborhood Sox fans know and love with updated engineering to reduce, if not eliminate, obstructed views while carrying upper decks down rather than away from the field — and with enough available land for mixed residential-commercial development and parking. That kind of plan would draw plenty of support.
The Railyards? Too bad this idea is way, way on the wrong side of the tracks.
Douglas Bukowski, Berwyn
Hold federal immigration agents accountable
Over a year ago, Operation Midway Blitz launched in the Chicago area. Within a week, Silverio Villegas González was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during a traffic stop in Franklin Park. Weeks later, Marimar Martinez was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in Brighton Park. In those two cases and in hundreds of other excessive force allegations, the federal government failed to investigate its agents’ actions.
ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection are no less ruthless today, based on our findings at the Illinois Accountability Commission. The Department of Homeland Security has ramped up its quota-driven tactics across the country. ICE arrested 50,925 people in August alone — a monthly record. More than 300,000 people have been arrested by ICE this year. The detained population reached 65,765 in July, and more than 70% percent of those individuals had no criminal conviction. DHS is now spending millions on electric shock gloves so that agents can deliver more debilitating force with the swipe of a hand.
Last month, ICE agents in Evanston wrongly detained a U.S. citizen and left him with injuries to his head, neck and teeth. In Alamo, Texas, agents pepper-sprayed a 17-year-old citizen and repeatedly struck another in the head for daring to film them. In Austin, Texas, an ICE officer shot an unarmed DoorDash delivery driver with a valid work permit in the back. To date, at least 24 people have been shot by federal immigration agents this year, including two fatalities in Houston and Biddeford, Maine, over the summer, and one in New York City last week.
When similar tragedies recur across the country, they require more than acknowledgment. The Illinois Accountability Commission spoke with witnesses and examined video, documents and official records and found patterns of indiscriminate enforcement unchecked by accountability. We transmitted our final report and referral letter to state’s attorneys and local law enforcement departments to support investigations and prosecutions of federal officers.
Communities are paying for the pattern. A recent University of Illinois Chicago study found that Cook County lost $1.26 billion in retail and restaurant activity since immigration enforcement escalated. Trips to groceries, pharmacies and healthcare in affected neighborhoods fell nearly 8% with no signs of recovery, the study shows. People are delaying medical care. Parents are keeping children home.
The power to detain, arrest and use force carries the highest obligation of restraint. And when that fails to happen, as the Illinois Accountability Commission has well established, there must be accountability.
Rubén Castillo, chair; Hina Mahmood, executive director; and Ahmed Baset, lead counsel, Illinois Accountability Commission
Solar power cuts Illinois energy costs
Keeping the lights on is getting more expensive. One reason is something customers rarely see on their bills: the cost of ensuring enough power is available when needed most.
As Illinois’ power grid operator, PJM Interconnection’s responsibility is to make sure enough power is available across the region. Through its capacity market, power plants and other resources are paid to be available when needed. Utilities, like ComEd, are charged a share of those costs, which are then passed to customers.
With capacity prices reaching record highs, it’s worth asking what resources are already helping Illinois reduce its need for expensive power. One clear answer is distributed solar.
The amount ComEd customers pay toward PJM’s capacity market is determined by the five hours of the year with the highest electricity demand. During each of PJM’s five highest-demand hours last summer, solar projects built through the state incentive program Illinois Shines shaved about 900 megawatts off peak demand in ComEd territory. That is more than half the generating capacity of Illinois’ largest coal plant, Prairie State.
Illinois Shines has supported over 1,500 megawatts of solar across 69,000 systems in ComEd territory, including community solar projects, larger installations on businesses and industrial properties, and smaller systems on homes. Using weather and sunlight data to estimate system performance during peak hours, we found an average output of about 913 megawatts, with estimated production ranging from 874 to 963 megawatts.
That matters because reducing peak demand can lower ComEd’s capacity costs, helping reduce costs passed on to customers. At the record $333.44 per megawatt-day capacity price for the 2027-2028 delivery year, reducing ComEd’s capacity obligation by roughly 900 megawatts could represent about $110 million in avoided costs annually.
The numbers point to a simple conclusion: Distributed solar was a major resource when electricity demand was highest.
And those benefits extend beyond households with solar panels. Renters, businesses and families who can’t install their own systems can benefit when distributed solar reduces demand on the regional grid.
As Illinois faces growing electricity demand and record-breaking capacity prices, solar is reducing strain on the grid and helping lower energy costs for customers. It showed up when Illinois needed it, and its value will only grow as we commit to building more of it.
Kavi Chintam, Illinois campaign manager, and Will Kenworthy, Midwest regulatory director, Vote Solar
AI’s uncertainty
In 1942, the Manhattan Project sought to achieve a controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, a crucial step toward building an atomic bomb. On Dec. 2, scientists succeeded in a squash court beneath the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. It was the first artificial, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
Earlier theoretical discussions had raised concerns that the experiment might trigger an uncontrollable chain reaction or even a massive explosion. By then, however, most physicists considered those scenarios unlikely, though not impossible. The project nevertheless moved forward and ultimately produced the atomic bomb.
Long before COVID-19 pandemic, some scientists warned about the risks of certain kinds of viral research and laboratory safety. The unresolved origins of the pandemic have only heightened those concerns.
Now we face another invisible frontier. Many scientists developing artificial intelligence warn that increasingly capable systems could outpace our ability to control them without adequate safeguards. Yet, as before, the momentum of discovery continues to drive us forward.
It sounds like science fiction to imagine machines deciding they no longer need us and disabling their creators in the name of efficiency or survival. Still, humanity seems to have a habit of spinning the cylinder in a technological game of Russian roulette, hoping it lands on an empty chamber.
Scott T. Thompson, Bloomington, Indiana
JB isn’t my jam
So, former Illinois House Republican Leader Jim Durkin wants us to vote for JB Pritzker because he’s a “good person, and he has delivered on matters important to me and the state.” What matters are those? From my point of view, JB has only raised my taxes (gas, groceries, tolls), done nothing to lower property taxes (Illinois’ are among the highest in the nation), and the only businesses I see coming to the state are gambling and marijuana establishments. Those are the “matters” important to me, and I’m sure they are for many others. It’s reason enough to say “enough” and vote against Pritzker.
Barbara Piltaver, Schiller Park
Fact dodger
In the movie “A Few Good Men,” Lt. Daniel A. Kaffee, played by Tom Cruise, is interrogating Jack Nicholson’s Col. Nathan R. Jessep, regarding an illegal hazing punishment that led to a private’s death. The line, “You can’t handle the truth” reminds me of the reason President Donald Trump is restricting CNN, Politico, and MS NOW from White House access. The president, in his bubble, only accepts information that is not critical of his words and deeds. He can’t handle the truth.
Samuel Solomon, Deerfield