The Obama Presidential Center is set to draw tourists and attention to Chicago’s South Side — but that’s not all it’s bringing.
Residents of Woodlawn, South Shore and other nearby neighborhoods came together Tuesday to highlight concerns about housing costs and displacement — issues they’ve been talking about since the Obama Center was announced.
The city, they said, must do more to protect longtime residents.
“Residents, seniors, young people have fought, have worked to develop policy, have worked to give alternatives to displacement,” said Shannon Bennett, a member of the Community Benefits Agreement Coalition, which organized the news conference along with Southside Together. “One of the considerations that we must talk about here is how do we make sure that this whole city understands this is everybody’s fight?”
The CBA Coalition wants the city to expand affordable housing protections, provide property tax relief for longtime homeowners, enact rent control measures, create a landlord registry to hold property owners accountable for building conditions and enforce housing standards more aggressively. Organizers also called on local alderpersons and the Obama Foundation to support policies preventing displacement and allowing residents who have been pushed out to return.
Stevie Early, a lifelong South Shore resident, said a dramatic rent increase forced her to leave her home after years of poor maintenance.
Problems in her building weren’t being fixed — like a broken lock on a security gate and persistent mildew in the hallway. Then, once Obama Center construction began, her building had a new owner — and her rent went up.
“What we got was a lease saying you have to pay $2,450 a month to stay in your home,” Early said. “My home that they had let fall into disrepair, my home that they had decided wasn’t worth caring for. So we had to move … our beautiful Black beach neighborhood was no longer ours to enjoy.”
Bennett said Early’s experience echoes stories heard across the South Side.
“That’s how displacement starts,” Bennett said. “Rent increases, high taxes, and then people can’t afford to live where they have grown up, where they have family ties, where they have generational investment.”
Affordable housing advocates argued that policy solutions already exist but have not received support from local officials. They cited “rent control,” which would cap how much a landlord can increase prices.
Chinella Robinson, another South Shore resident, described facing similar challenges after she began looking for her home. After a year in her apartment, Robinson said her landlord increased the rent and demanded that she pay six months of rent up front.
“We stayed there for a year. When it was time to renew our lease, they increased the rent $500, so they wanted $2,300 a month, and then they also wanted us to pay another six months up front to stay, and that wasn’t right,” Robinson said.
Robinson said she and her family attempted to remain in South Shore but faced difficulties because by then, homes were marketed based on proximity to the Obama Center.
Organizers warned that neighborhoods such as South Shore and Woodlawn could follow the path many Chicago neighborhoods have faced after the development of new projects.
“If you know the history of Chicago, Lincoln Park was a working-class Puerto Rican neighborhood,” Bennett said. “Woodlawn could end up like that, South Shore.”
Robinson urged other Chicagoans to pay attention to how the city is responding to the concerns of residents impacted by the Obama Center. What is happening in her community, she said, could happen anywhere in Chicago.
“I would ask them to join us,” Robinson said. “I would ask them to seek out organizations in their community and find out if the same thing is happening, because this is not isolated to the South Side. This is a citywide thing where we are being pushed out because the city has other plans for certain neighborhoods.”
Despite their concerns, organizers stressed they are not opposed to investment in their communities — they just want development to include protections so existing residents benefit from neighborhood growth.
“We are saying yes to Obama and no to displacement,” Bennett said. “This is about us staying here as long as we want to, and we deserve to be here.”
Southside Together will host a CBA Summit surrounding the opening of the Obama Center and the future of the neighborhood on June 27 at Bryn Mawr Community Church.