Chicago must ensure the availability of 2,000 affordable housing units for people with disabilities and 800 units for hearing and visually-impaired residents, under a $2.25 million settlement advanced Monday by a City Council committee.
Last week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported the cash portion of the settlement with Access Living, an advocacy organization for people with disabilities that receives city grants. At Monday’s Finance Committee meeting, other major elements of the settlement that are likely to prove to be far more complex and costly were disclosed.
Managing Deputy Corporation Counsel John Hendricks said the settlement calls for Chicago to be responsible for “ensuring the availability of 2,000 affordable units that are fully accessible to persons with mobility impairments, and an additional 800 units that are fully accessible to people with hearing and vision impairments, for a total of 2,800 affordable accessible units.”
“The city is required to either identify, build or rehabilitate” those units and make them available to people with disabilities “in its affordable housing stock,” Hendricks said.
“These requirements are spread over a 12-year period to ensure that we have the opportunity to comply with this, given the way that we develop affordable housing. It… requires our use of private developers. We provide gap funding… But we do not own or control any of these units.”
Since the city will not own the affordable units it is committed to building, Hendricks said the settlement requires the city to adopt several new policies.
The first requires affordable housing developers chosen and supported by the city to build, market and maintain those units for people with disabilities.
The second would require those developers to “set up a grievance program” that the city will monitor to provide a forum for people with disabilities “whose needs are not being met in their developments,” Hendricks said.
The city also agreed to inspect the new units during construction, maintain accessibility standards and keep a running list of the new accessible and affordable units in a “comprehensive fashion that has already been under way, but will now become more robust,” Hendricks said.
The $2.25 million settlement does not include still unresolved attorney’s fees that started with a demand for $19 million and will almost certainly end at $9 million or $10 million before the dispute with the law firm representing Access Living is resolved.
“The Law Department recommends this settlement, even though it disputes the merits of this case, in large measure because this is a case [where] we sympathize with the goals,” Hendricks said. “We were able to avoid the kind of draconian settlement that took place in Los Angeles,” which resulted in a $200 million settlement and a promise to build 4,000 units over four years.
Ald. Ray Lopez (15th), one of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s most outspoken City Council critics, said he is “not comfortable with approving a settlement that our Law Department does not fully support.”
“We’re just cutting and running as opposed to fighting. And it sounds like we’re still going to be fighting, even after this” to resolve the demand for legal fees, Lopez said.
Lopez was also rankled by the Johnson administration’s plan to award $2.25 million to an advocacy group that is paid to work with the city to address the needs of people with disabilities.
“Access Living has been a partner to helping us ensure that we are doing exactly what we thought we were doing. To turn around and sue us because we didn’t do it with their help is mind-blowing to me,” Lopez said.
“What’s next? Are the community violence interrupters and the violence prevention people going to sue us as our delegate partners for not reducing violence in neighborhoods? Are the folks that help us with bike lanes and pedestrian safety … that CDOT has as partners, going to sue us because of car crashes? This does not make sense to me because this is someone who works with us on these issues,” said Lopez.
Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) did not join Lopez in voting against the settlement. But he had a pointed question for Hendricks.
“Can we employ ‘no-litigation’ clauses in our contracts with delegate agencies, and are you aware that we’ve ever done so?… Now may be the time to start doing research on that topic,” Hopkins said, asking for a formal opinion.
Hendricks told Hopkins that he made “a good point.” But added, “We are not just giving money to Access Living. We are asking for people who have qualifications to step up and do something, and Access Living has frequently been the most qualified organization to do that.
“Can we make the grant contingent upon no additional litigation? I will look into that.”