Mayor Brandon Johnson’s much-touted “green social housing” plan was supposed to be a lifeline for struggling neighborhoods, but instead it reads like a giveaway to developers and a bailout for affluent districts while poor Black communities wait in the cold. Critics on the City Council note the plan is mostly market-rate housing — 70 percent market, 30 percent affordable — which by design will gravitate to higher-rent neighborhoods where the math works, not the South and West Side wards that need help now.
That reality isn’t abstract to people who live in those neighborhoods; Alderman Pat Dowell bluntly warned the tool “is not going to work in Fuller Park” and acknowledged it could take a decade before the revolving fund even begins to trickle into the most disinvested areas. Promises that sound good in a press conference don’t pay rent or stop daily violence on blocks where people are already struggling to survive.
Meanwhile, residents on the South and West Sides are furious that their city hall keeps talking about equity while pouring political capital into programs that leave them behind — and they’re also seeing resources diverted to an ongoing migrant resettlement effort that has strained budgets and local services. Many Black Chicagoans tell reporters they feel overlooked and rightly furious when the rhetoric of inclusion doesn’t translate into immediate, concrete relief for their schools, public safety, and housing needs.
If that weren’t enough, Mayor Johnson’s financial fixes have been the kind of short-term gimmicks that punish job creators and threaten long-term stability: a proposed head tax, hikes on business leases, borrowing to cover operations, and plans that pushed S&P to warn about Chicago’s fiscal outlook. Punishing business and making hiring more expensive is a cruel irony when the city says it wants to rebuild neighborhoods and bring jobs back to Black communities that desperately need economic opportunity.
Johnson even promised to correct historic environmental injustices, but community activists say his ordinance is weak and the city has slow-walked commitments that could have protected frontline neighborhoods from toxic industries for years. Voters shouldn’t be soothed by ceremonial gestures named after the mayor’s ancestors — real justice means enforceable protections and immediate investment where people breathe the worst air and pay the steepest price.
The political fallout is real: polling shows widespread dissatisfaction, and the mayor’s approval ratings have cratered as crime, taxes, and failures to deliver tangible help top voters’ lists. Conservatives who care about these communities should be loud in holding leaders accountable — we need policies that prioritize public safety, cut burdensome taxes, attract employers, and put money and power back into the hands of families, churches, and small businesses that actually build thriving neighborhoods.
