Advocates who successfully convinced the federal government that Chicago allows City Council members to illegally block affordable housing say they have given up seeking help from President Donald Trump’s administration.
Instead, 10 housing groups say they will try to negotiate an agreement with City Hall directly in hopes of bringing more affordable units to majority-white neighborhoods, including several on the Far North Side.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sided with the groups in late 2023 after the advocates filed a civil rights complaint alleging that low-income housing was blocked in some areas of the city by alderpersons who used veto power to kill rental projects with affordable units.
Those HUD findings were disclosed by the Sun-Times during Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration, though the initial complaint was filed in November 2018 by the Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance and nine other groups.
The complaint traced the origins of the aldermanic veto to the 1930s, when it was used by council members who represented white neighborhoods. Their constituents saw racially integrated public housing as “the end of their neighborhoods,” according to the complaint.
“This has been decades and decades in the making. The local-level control over land use and zoning has quite literally reshaped our city and decided who lives where,” Patricia Fron, executive director of Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance, said in an interview. “We’re hoping this mayor and this administration gets it.”
A City Hall spokesperson declined to comment. The city, HUD and the groups were still in discussions over an agreement as recently as May.
At issue is a longtime Chicago practice of allowing “aldermanic prerogative” — a veto that effectively kept affordable housing from being built on the city’s Northwest Side and other areas of the city.
The complaint by the groups said City Council members have “unfettered power over zoning, land use, city lots and public financing in order to decide where, if and how affordable housing is built in their wards.”
The complaint said the aldermanic veto dated back to the 1930s when City Council members from white neighborhoods responded to constituents who opposed racially integrated public housing.
At Northwest Side community meetings in recent years, some neighbors in Edison Park, Jefferson Park and elsewhere have expressed concerns about public housing being located in their communities, though affordable housing and public housing are separate programs.
The city requires a certain number of low-income units in any new rental housing development. Developers often work with alderpersons to plan new housing and the politician’s support is almost certainly critical to any project’s success.
HUD officials got involved because they said they believed low-income residents were being shut out of certain neighborhoods and that is a violation of their civil rights.
“The city’s use of the local veto despite understanding its effects raises concerns about the city’s compliance” with federal law, a HUD official wrote City Hall lawyers in late 2023.
There’s no official indication that the aldermanic prerogative case has been closed, but Fron said that the groups fear the Trump administration has little interest in civil rights enforcement. She also noted the lengthy amount of time since the complaint was filed.
Efforts were made by HUD, the complainants and the city to come to an agreement even before the agency fully investigated and ruled that city practices were discriminatory.
HUD officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The federal housing agency has called out Chicago in the past for violating the civil rights of its own residents.
In May of 2023, Mayor Lori Lightfoot signed a binding agreement with HUD promising that Chicago would reform its policies on zoning and land use that consistently placed polluting businesses in low-income communities on the South and West Sides.
That agreement is the basis for a proposed ordinance that aims to ease the practice of placing the same environmentally overburdened communities with even more sources of pollution that threatens public health.