SSW 03.04.21 - Housing Issue

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give them advice and we give them guidance, THE HOUSING ISSUE “We but ultimately, it's their decision, it's their housing, tenants form unions to cope with the crisis

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, photographers, artists, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.

Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor

Volume 8, Issue 4 Jacqueline Serrato Martha Bayne

Senior Editors

Politics Editor Education Editors Literature Editor

Christian Belanger Christopher Good Rachel Kim Emeline Posner Adam Przybyl Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Jim Daley Ashvini Kartik-Narayan Michelle Anderson Davon Clark

Contributing Editors

Mira Chauhan Joshua Falk Lucia Geng Matt Moore Francisco Ramírez Pinedo Robin Vaughan Jocelyn Vega Tammy Xu

Staff Writers

AV Benford Kiran Misra Jade Yan

Data Editor

Jasmine Mithani

Director of Fact Checking: Tammy Xu Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Susan Chun, Maria Maynez, Elizabeth Winkler, Lucy Ritzmann, Kate Gallagher, Matt Moore, Malvika Jolly, Charmaine Runes, Ebony Ellis, Katie Bart

Last year we couldn’t publish our annual Housing Issue due to the uncertainty of COVID-19, but this year we found it appropriate to bring back the special issue and look at housing through the pandemic lens.

On January 25, the City of Chicago entered phase 1b of its vaccination plan. The same day, South Side Weekly launched its opensource Twitter bot, created by Bea Malsky and Charmaine Runes, which visualizes relative concentrations of COVID-19 deaths next to fully vaccinated residents to date. Note that this data represents where fully vaccinated Chicagoans live, not where they work or where they received the vaccine—so far suggesting a glaring disparity in both deaths and immunization along race and income.

Predominantly Black and Latinx ZIP codes continue to bear the brunt of COVID-19 fatalities, yet these communities have the lowest rates of complete vaccination in Chicago. Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady acknowledged that the majority of Chicagoans who were vaccinated are white. City officials said they plan to address this by focusing on fifteen predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods where many essential workers reside and by improving upon its demographic data collection.

Our daily tracker pulls data directly from the Chicago Data Portal.

The first map illustrates the number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 residents in each ZIP code, while the second map shows the percent of residents in each ZIP code who have received a complete dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, which currently means that they have received two doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

These maps do not tell the whole story of the city’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout, but we hope they encourage people to ask questions about who has access to vaccines and who ultimately receives them— and whether lack of access is a reflection of the phased rollout, community access to medical care, vaccine hesitancy, or Chicago’s systemic inequality and racism.

Visuals Editor Mell Montezuma Deputy Visuals Editors Shane Tolentino HaleyTweedell Photo Editor Keeley Parenteau Staff Photographers: milo bosh, Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators: Mell Montezuma, Shane Tolentino Layout Editors

Haley Tweedell Davon Clark

Webmaster Managing Director

Pat Sier Jason Schumer

South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637

Photo essay gerri fernández..........................................6 no safety net

Barred from federal stimulus and living paycheck to paycheck, undocumented tenants rely on community groups—but both are running out of options woojae julia song and alexandra arriaga, city bureau...................................8 inside chicago's silent housing crisis

Experts say an eviction avalanche is coming. But thousands of Chicago renters have already been pushed to the brink of the housing cliff justin agrelo, natalie frazier, malik jackson and woojae julia song, city bureau.........................................................12 4 ways to stem the housing crisis

Renters are still struggling almost a year after the pandemic began, but there are actions residents and lawmakers can take to minimize the pain justin agrelo, city bureau.......................18 resources for renters

Where to find housing support during the COVID-19 pandemic justin agrelo, city bureau......................20 How more than 73,000 Illinois homes lost electric service during COVID-19 alex ruppenthal........................................21 who counts?

A federally mandated count of people sleeping outdoors and in shelters could cause trauma—and misses many charmaine runes.......................................26 the displacement of chinatown’s low-income residents is aggravated by covid-19

The bot will post updated maps every evening at https://twitter.com/ChiVaxBot.

For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com

Cover Illustration by Lily Cozzens

resisting eviction

lights out

The Weekly is produced by a mostly all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to:

and we try to build up their own feelings of power.” noah tesfaye................................................3

Data from the Chinese American Service League shows an exodus to the South and West yilun cheng................................................28 cha lags on section 8 tenancy approvals

CORRECTION: A STORY ON PAGE NINE OF THE JANUARY 20 ISSUE (“LEARNING IN LOCKDOWN”) INCORRECTLY STATED TWENTY INCARCERATED STUDENTS WERE ENROLLED IN NORTH PARK UNIVERSITY’S “BLACK FAITH MATTERS” CORRESPONDENCE CLASS. IN FACT, SEVENTY STUDENTS ENROLLED. THE WEEKLY REGRETS THIS ERROR.

How the Chicago Housing Authority stacks up against other housing authorities morley musick............................................30

Tenants Form Unions to Cope with the Crisis

PHOTO BY THOUGHTPOET

The formation of tenant unions across the city is just the first step in a greater project that brings self-determination to tenants.

BY NOAH TESFAYE

A

midst the greatest health crisis in almost a century, in conjunction with one of the biggest economic downturns since the Great Depression, housing insecurity is one of the first and most prominent issues Chicago residents are coming to face. Recent estimates indicate that over 30 million people could face eviction in the U.S. because of the pandemic and the related economic crisis. In a county where over 40% of households are occupied by renters, many Chicago tenants are mobilizing today to meet the needs of one another and to take a stand for liveable conditions for all city residents.

Data from the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing and Loyola University show that potential evictions peaked between May and August, but were not carried out after a state moratorium was passed. Although the eviction moratorium

for COVID-19-related evictions has been extended to February 6, tenants still face forced removal from landlords.

There remain ongoing legislative fights to require just cause for eviction and the end of the rent control ban, and the conditions of the pandemic have made urgent the opportunity to get more people involved with tenant organizing than ever before.

The formation of tenant unions across the city is just the first step in a greater project that brings self-determination to tenants.

At the center of these organizing efforts is the Chicago Tenants Movement (CTM). The organization, which formed this past summer, came to existence out of the Albany Park-based Autonomous Tenants Union (ATU). After organizers in ATU and others in the city began petitioning Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker to freeze rent, they saw potential to build

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

a network for tenant organizing across the city.

“We have all these people who want to get involved in organizing, contacting us who we don't have the capacity to be in touch with,” Jake Marshall, an organizer with ATU, said. “We have 17,000 people signing this petition, many of whom are indicating they want to get involved.

Why don't we take advantage of this kind of group of organizers that came together for this petition and keep meeting and keep thinking about how can we sustain this energy.”

CTM functions as a collection of smaller organizations that help give communities across the city the resources to help organize tenants to build their own unions. Tenants of a particular building or tenants that live in buildings owned by a single landlord can form their own unions to represent their demands. By

building hubs across the city of multiple unions and community organizations, CTM attempts to build out “hyperlocal” organizing efforts that can adapt to the varying conditions tenant live in throughout Chicago.

“When CTM goes in, we don't try to tell the tenants what to do,” Michael Tilly Parks, an organizer in the South Side hub of CTM, said. “We're not coming in and saying that you need to do this, this and this. We give them advice and we give them guidance, but ultimately, it's their decision, it's their housing, and we try to build up their own feelings of power, of both power as the individual and in the collective.”

This can include measures whereby landlords cut utilities, harassment, or other extralegal measures. As a set lighting technician for television shows, Parks spends some of his time with CTM

ORGANIZING

ILLUSTRATION BY JASMIN LIANG

responding to calls to help fix utilities so tenants can remain in their apartments.

“I respond to a lot of illegal lockouts or landlords cutting utilities, and 100% of them that I've responded to are brown and Black people, majorly on the south side, and those that weren't, were on the west side,” Parks said. “After a summer when we were really considering racial justice in the context of police, we also have to, and I think most people do, consider it in all other spheres, the housing sphere especially.”

Parks noted that similar to other trends that can be tracked by race in Chicago, a significant portion of the stronger tenant unions in the city are based on the North Side. However, in recent months, there has been a rise in the formation of tenant unions across the South Side, such as Mac Tenants United and Tenants United (TU) Hyde Park/ Woodlawn. Parks said CTM is working to establish strong relationships with other local organizations throughout the South Side and give them the tenant-related resources to help expand their work to include tenants in their neighborhoods.

At TU Hyde Park/Woodlawn, organizers are helping residents fight illegal lockouts by replacing locks for tenants and building public campaigns of dissent against major property groups like Mac Properties. John Hieronymus,

a founding member of TU and their coordinating committee, noted how hyper-local, community-driven tenant organizing appeals to residents more than non-profit non-governmental organizations that attempt to bring change.

“Most tenants, when they called some of the bigger existing tenant organizations that have been around since the 80s, kind of get a sense that they're really just there to help negotiate to believe in a community rather than actually fighting and organizing to keep them there,” Hieronymus said. “So generally, even though there's a lot of community expertise with how to deal with landlords on an informal basis, on the more public, formal tenant organization, most people's experience with that is very positive.”

Tenant organizing for some groups can be another extension of current campaigns. At Pilsen Alliance (PA), a grassroots organization advocating for affordable housing and immigrants’ rights, they have expanded their efforts in organizing tenant-related work as the pandemic has continued. They’ve connected community members to resources with the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, as well as ATU and CTM, to help reduce the chance residents may leave the city altogether. Beyond mutual aid and rent assistance, PA also

has sought to step in for tenants facing serious circumstances.

On January 23, PA and Mi Villita community organizers gathered outside of 3200 S. Kedzie to protest against the Saint Anthony Hospital development project that residents say could trigger the displacement of families in Little Village and is attempting to evict a group of people currently residing there. Saint Anthony intends to take the occupants to eviction court, despite being unable to demonstrate an eviction order during the moratorium. “The building is zoned for industrial use, and their conversion of part of an industrial building into their personal residence was illegal, unsafe and dangerous,” a spokesperson for Saint Anthony said in a statement.

Moises Moreno, executive director of PA, said the renters they’re working with “are exercising their rights to form a tenant union.”

“We have one building that is kind of our focal point right now because [renters] feel that just having tenant meetings, understanding that the issues that they have are not just their own,” he said. “Half the people in the building are also struggling and afraid about being displaced. And then they feel like this 'Oh, I feel stronger now. I feel I have support. I'm not afraid of retaliation.'”

PA, CTM, TU, the Chicago Union of the Homeless, and other grassroots groups like GoodKids MadCity coorganized a Housing Justice for All press conference in Englewood on January 26 for a tenant who was allegedly assaulted by her landlord. The landlord had also destroyed the tenant's property and apartment windows, the groups said, and they demanded he be removed as the property manager. In building relationships between organizations, organizers can connect tenants to the appropriate resources to first seek safety and then organize themselves.

Unions are seeing success in their efforts. In an ATU-affiliated building in Albany Park, tenants living in a recently sold building were able to stop a 30-day eviction notice and pressured their landlord to negotiate new leases for current without any back-rent being

owed nor anyone being evicted. At the North Spaulding Renters’ Association, which organizes residents in M. Fishman & Co. properties, organizers negotiated a month’s free rent at the start of the pandemic. PA-affiliated residents formed a union this past year and are working to educate members on their rights as renters.

Because eviction courts are holding less frequent hearings due to the pandemic and as the moratorium remains in place, this moment can be a pivotal one with leverage for organizers. Marshall hopes that through the mobilization and organizing of tenants throughout the city, residents can focus primarily on their essential purchases while organizing for rent cancellation.

“If you are in a position where you've lost your job, you've lost your income and you're desperate that normally there's this attitude that you have to sacrifice anything to make rent,” Marshall said.

“And what we're saying here is that at least until the moratorium runs out, you shouldn't be doing that, right? You should be buying food, you should be buying diapers, you should be getting your medicine, and exercising the power you have as a tenant to make a demand of your landlord saying that, ‘look, I don't think it's right, that I should have to be on the hook for back rent during a crisis like this.’”

Anecdotally, Parks noted that amongst CTM organizers, they have a vision to “abolish the tenantlandlord dynamic and make housing a human right.”

Whether it is those fighting against displacement from a big developer, or an apartment complex unionizing to restore their heating, what remains clear is that tenants and organizers are fighting for everyone to have a safe space to call home. Noah Tesfaye is a Bay Area-born journalist, columnist at the Maroon student newspaper, and second-year at U of C studying political science and critical race and ethnic studies.

He last wrote for the Weekly about rapper Blvck Svm.

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

DISPLACEMENT

Resisting Eviction

A building in limbo is housing people during the pandemic, but for how long?

BY GERRI FERNÁNDEZ

T

hirty-second and Kedzie was a place where musicians, vendors, and artists alike came together to learn from, help, and support one another.

After the Azteca Mall small business incubator fell through in 2016, due to a combination of mismanagement and big developers eyeing the land adjacent to the former Washburne Trade School site, the existing tenants kept the largely empty building open to anyone who needed the space.

Band practice rooms, artist work spaces, music and theater lessons, and recording studios were all offered at no charge to community members. It hosted local shows and events to raise money for people in need, like when people fundraised to send aid to Chiapas, Mexico, after a recent earthquake there.

The building currently has a donation room, which allows anybody in the community to help themselves to supplies like diapers, food, household items,

winter clothes, and blankets, all of which are brought in by volunteers.

When the pandemic started, work dried up for the musicians, artists, and self-employed people of 32nd and Kedzie, and paying bills became a challenge. So tenants Marcos Hernández, Juan González, Juan Herrera, and Ivan Cruz converted their work areas and studios into living spaces and moved in.

Hernández, a mechanic by trade, worked out of the building since 2017 as a means of income. He also taught other people the skill so they too could make a living.

Prior to the pandemic, the owner of the building, Guillermo Hernandez, passed away. The tenants said they continued paying rent to the Chicago Southwest Development Corporation (CSDC) until their payments were declined, and now they face a possible eviction, which organizers are calling illegal due to the state and nationwide moratorium on residential evictions,

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

currently in effect. A notice of demolition from CSDC was placed on the front gate of the building, giving tenants until November 2, 2020 to vacate the property.

But they’ve stayed put.

Saint Anthony Hospital bought the land, but occupants said in a press conference that representatives have not shown them permits for the demolition of the structure. In the beginning, the tenants tried multiple times to talk to American Demolition, the company contracted for the demolition, but when a crew asked to be let in to look around, the tenants said they started pulling things out of the ceiling, destroying the place and ruining a lot of the handyman work the tenants had done around the building.

People have come by claiming that they are the new owners. But because they can’t produce paperwork or proof of ownership or eviction, they eventually end up leaving when they are not let in.

The developer put barricades up, blocking cars from coming and going, which has prevented the tenants from being able to move for work. Tenants say they have been facing harassment from security guards and cops. They have received death threats and demeaned with comments like, “You guys are homeless,” “You need to go to a shelter,” and, “Yall are squatters.” They say the building has been called a drug and gang house.

The tenants continue to organize eviction defenses at 3200 S. Kedzie and are calling on members of the community for support. Gerri Fernández is a Chicago-based freelance photographer whose photos focus on human and social connections. She last contributed to the La Villita and Pilsen sections of the Weekly’s Best of the South Side 2020.

DISPLACEMENT

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

DISPLACEMENT

No Safety Net

Barred from federal stimulus and living paycheck to paycheck, undocumented tenants rely on community groups— but both are running out of options.

BY WOOJAE JULIA SONG AND ALEXANDRA ARRIAGA, CITY BUREAU The Housing Cliff is a special series about the COVID-19 housing crisis produced by City Bureau, a civic journalism lab based in Chicago.

M

aría Teresa Sánchez has no time to think.

She travels from Pilsen to Bolingbrook and back, nearly thirty miles each way, five days a week, to work in a factory where she makes $12 an hour. She spends hours caring for her husband, managing his dialysis treatment and talking with his doctors. Lately, it’s become so time-consuming that she had to take some days off work, which put a dent in the family’s sole source of income.

On top of that, she’s juggling winter utility bills (the latest month cost $197), a twenty-five-year-old son who’s staying at home with them (he’s on house arrest waiting for a court date) and landlords who want to increase the monthly rent by $300 (they settled on $150).

With the increasingly heavy weight of her responsibilities, in fact, Sánchez said she’d rather not think. “It feels really heavy,” Sánchez said in Spanish. “I tell my husband that sometimes I even feel depressed.”

Eunyoung Jung’s day begins at 6:30 a.m. in Portage Park.

Once she gets ready for work, it’s a rush to wake her six-year-old son and catch a bus every weekday morning. After dropping him off at daycare, Jung (who

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 7, 2021

requested to use a pseudonym to protect her identity) takes another bus to the northwest suburb of Niles. The wholesale fashion store where she works has had a steady stream of customers even during the pandemic, which she said has been a relief.

She and her coworkers get along well, and her manager lets her leave in time to pick up her son. This job allows Jung to pay $750 for rent and $1,000 for daycare each month. In a good month, she has maybe $200 left after paying for groceries and other essential expenses.

“I feel really thankful, truly. I’m so grateful to God,” Jung said in Korean.

“I’ve met a lot of good people at my job.”

This is the delicate balance she’s rebuilt since early November, when she found out that someone at her son’s daycare center might have been exposed to the coronavirus. The center immediately shut down for two weeks.

“I felt really panicked. I had to return to work the next day,” Jung recalled. “The only thing I could think about was that we’d have to find another daycare center.”

Sánchez has made Chicago her home for over twenty years, but she’s originally from Puebla, Mexico. Jung just arrived from Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, a year ago. They’re both undocumented immigrants who have been working and caring for their families during the pandemic with little to no support from the public programs that have kept their documented counterparts afloat.

IMMIGRATION

The COVID-19 housing crisis is growing in Chicago. A patchwork of eviction bans and piecemeal financial relief have hardly stemmed the tide of people who have been displaced or forced to take extreme measures to keep a roof over their heads, according to local housing advocates.

For undocumented residents, the limited government safety net of renter protections and modest stimulus checks never even existed. And while some have found a lifeline of support through housing and immigration advocacy organizations, many others haven’t. They end up living in shelters or in unsafe conditions, outside or in hotels, racking up untenable amounts of debt or giving up necessities like food and hospital bills to put money toward rent. After exhausting every other option, some even resort to leaving the U.S. And despite the promise of mass vaccination in 2021, local experts warn that the situation could get worse for this already vulnerable group— especially as service organizations are stretched to the limit and run out of funding sources.

R

aising the rent in January isn’t the first time Sánchez’s landlord has caused her trouble. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged across Chicago, with many tenants unable to pay rent on time or in full, Sánchez’s landlord left her a note last fall. “She said the pandemic doesn’t matter [and] she needs the rent,” Sánchez recalled.

Sánchez didn’t bother to look for government resources, as many are only accessible to U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status.

This housing crisis isn’t a new reality for many Chicagoans, where the minimum wage is far below what families need to afford housing in the city. But undocumented immigrants often face greater barriers to securing housing because landlords can exploit their immigration status.

“When you're an undocumented tenant, there are a lot of different limitations right from the application process,” said Antonio Gutierrez, cofounder of Autonomous Tenants

Union and an undocumented resident.

ATU is an Albany Park-based volunteer group that educates Chicagoans about their rights as renters and trains them to work with their neighbors to collectively gain better housing conditions.

Chicago law guarantees most tenants, regardless of immigration status, with rights such as heat during the winter, timely responses to repair requests and fair notice if a landlord plans to end or not renew a rental agreement.

Although landlords cannot legally discriminate against tenants based on their immigration status, most require records like credit reports, governmentissued IDs and move-in or security deposit fees for a formal lease, said Gutierrez.

This forces undocumented renters to rent through informal alternatives like unwritten, month-to-month leases that landlords can simply end by issuing a thirty-day notice. Additionally, federal rules prohibit undocumented residents from accessing subsidized housing and public housing programs, which already have lengthy waitlists, unless they’re in mixed-status families.

City law also has a small but significant loophole: it doesn’t protect tenants living in an owner-occupied property that has six or fewer units.

When Jung shared the news about her son’s daycare center with her landlords, who lived in the single-unit house where she rented a room, they demanded that she and her son leave to quarantine for fourteen days.

“They looked at us as if we were pests,” Jung said. “They wouldn’t even let us near them.”

Not knowing how to respond, Jung hastily booked a room at a nearby motel.

She spent roughly $2,000 on housing that month: $1,000 on rent and $1,000 on motel costs. She and her son received negative test results. Upon returning to the house after two weeks, Jung saw that her things had been cleared from the refrigerator. Her landlords told her to move out within thirty days.

The COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis have strained undocumented immigrants’ housing situations. An estimated one in three

undocumented workers lost their jobs in the early months of the pandemic, and some landlords have used their knowledge of tenants’ immigration status against them, Gutierrez said. “It's very frustrating to hear that landlords are threatening their tenants with calling ICE or immigration, or doing illegal lockouts if they don't pay the rent.”

One ATU-supported tenant union, made entirely of immigrant renters, unionized in June 2020 after everyone in the building received a thirty-day eviction notice. Now, four of seven households have moved out since starting the difficult negotiation process last September.

With mounting emotional and financial pressures of facing eviction, Gutierrez said, two undocumented residents who lived in the building for thirteen years decided to leave the U.S. forever.

Fear of retaliation from landlords has forced some undocumented renters into “nasty” and illegally negligent conditions, according to Leone Bicchieri, executive director of Working Family Solidarity.

“The last few years with Trump as president, I’ve noticed a difference in how scared undocumented people are to defend their workplace and housing rights,” he said.

J

ung left Korea a little over a year ago after her now-estranged husband confessed that he owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from a mortgage she’d known nothing about.

She felt she needed to take herself and her son far away from him to get a fresh start.

After months of searching in a pandemic economy, Jung found her current job last July. She loves the flexibility and relationships she has made through the job, but even though she works nearly full-time, money is really tight.

“Once I pay for rent, transportation and the daycare center, we barely get to eat,” she said.

During the first months of the pandemic and before Jung had found a job, she struggled to make ends meet.

Neither the first or second round of federal relief checks were provided to undocumented immigrants like Jung and Sánchez despite ample evidence that

they tend to work in so-called “essential” industries such as delivery and taxi services, or industries that have struggled financially, such as restaurants.

“That was really a slap in the face to the communities who are working so desperately hard just to get by,” said Glo Choi, an organizer at HANA Center, an organization that supports Korean, Latinx and other immigrant communities mostly in Albany Park and the northwest suburbs.

For undocumented immigrants like Jung and Sánchez, who are in such a tenuous situation economically, the pandemic pales in comparison to their struggles to make rent and put food on the table. Worries about contracting COVID-19 come second to having the money necessary to survive in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant.

“I’m not afraid of the coronavirus, really. If I get it, I guess the worst that would happen is that I die,” said Jung.

The thought of having to stay home and miss work hours for both Jung and Sánchez has been their biggest concern throughout the pandemic.

When Sánchez caught pneumonia around the same time that her husband had COVID-19 last year, it meant she had to miss a month off work. Seeing the bills pile up was more worrisome to her than anything else, she said.

In Chicago, COVID-19 assistance programs were open to all Chicago residents, in accordance with the Welcoming City ordinance that ensures city agencies do not discriminate based on immigration status. However, demand far outpaced the supply—funds from the city departments of housing and family and support services quickly dried up with thousands of households denied. Because the city doesn’t track program applicants’ immigration status, it’s unclear how many undocumented immigrants were able to access the limited COVID-19 relief funds, according to a Chicago Department of Housing spokesperson.

A few programs specifically supported immigrants. Through private donations, the city and The Resurrection Project announced the Chicago Resiliency Fund, which has distributed $1,000 each

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

IMMIGRATION

to 6,383 applicants who were excluded from federal stimulus aid. The Illinois Department of Human Services funded a similar program in partnership with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, where 8,900 applicants each received $1,500.

This left grassroots immigrant advocacy groups like Working Family Solidarity and HANA Center to fill in the gaps in local government services for vulnerable communities—something they’ve been doing for years, even decades.

But the current crisis has dwarfed previous problems. “Seeing how our community was affected by [the pandemic] was really heartbreaking because people didn't know what to do,” says Choi.

Sheltering in place without a support network, Jung said she felt depressed and

deeply isolated. But since contacting HANA Center through an ad in a local Korean newspaper, she’s found support through the check-in calls, a small community grant and food packages that she received.

Housing sits at the very top of many undocumented people’s financial priorities. “It's the end of the month, you've gotta pay your bills. And what people would do is, they would borrow money from other people just to pay rent,” said Choi. “They're paying for rent, but they're going into debt everywhere else.”

Sánchez said Working Family Solidarity provided her with a couple of checks for $500 while she was sick at home and unable to work. “I paid the rent, I paid bills. Thank God, because of

Leone, the gas and electric were paid and I didn’t get into debt,” Sánchez said.

Outside of their role in ATU, Gutierrez also works as an organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportation (OCAD), an undocumented immigrant-led organization that fights deportations and the criminalization of immigrants and people of color. Much like HANA Center and other grassroots immigrant advocacy groups, OCAD has raised and distributed thousands of dollars in mutual aid funds since last spring. Undocumented families and individuals can request up to $300 from OCAD’s fund every month, and Gutierrez estimated that at least 40% of recipients use it toward rent.

“People feel a lot of anxiety,” Gutierrez said. “I have seen situations

where individuals would rather give whatever amount we give them to their landlord in rent, instead of using that money to get food.”

However, the stress of the pandemic continues and has pushed even these nimble immigrant advocacy groups to the brink.

Since the pandemic began in midMarch, demand for HANA Center’s services has grown so quickly that the nonprofit needed to expand employment counseling and offer multiple COVID-19 assistance programs in partnership with the state, including direct cash and housing assistance grants. Throughout the pandemic, HANA Center and ATU have created informational posts for social media, hosted Zoom events and fielded calls from community members.

ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN HERRERA FOR CITY BUREAU

Eunyoung has been here a year, María more than twenty, but both of these undocumented mothers are living paycheck to paycheck on the edge of the housing cliff.

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

IMMIGRATION

To keep up with demand, HANA Center hired temporary contractors to work nights and weekends, said Jeonghwa Yi Boyle, director of immigration, housing and legal services. She estimates that the organization’s hotline received an average of 150 housing-related calls, texts and emails a week between August and December when the organization administered housing assistance programs that covered rent, utilities and mortgage payments for low-income immigrants. A majority of the 238 people who HANA assisted through housing programs were undocumented residents, according to Yi Boyle, and she worries that funding for such programs is drying up. “I feel like the entire state is wrapping up the COVID-19 emergency programs right now,” she said.

Bureaucratic rules sometimes bar qualifying undocumented immigrants from accessing help. Rules may exclude applicants who can’t prove they need housing aid because they’ve cobbled rent together by going into other types of debt; who can’t list their home address because they’re in illegal living situations; or whose landlords refuse to accept the grant money to cover their rent.

Choi and his family, who are undocumented, said his mother experienced the latter when her landlord wouldn’t agree to receive an assistance grant as her rent. Without her landlord’s written agreement, she couldn’t apply for the program. In other cases, some renters use their limited funds to pay rent instead of utility bills, then can’t qualify for rental assistance. “It's so backwards,” Choi said.

While Choi’s mother found relief through other programs, Yi Boyle worries for residents who are less connected to organizations in the community, who may not even know where to look for help. Even when government benefits are available to non-citizens, like local rent-assistance programs, Choi said undocumented residents hesitate to complete long applications for fear they will be rejected or face consequences for using government benefits because of the Trump administration’s legacy of anti-immigrant policies. Often they’re too afraid to receive “the very benefits that they deserve and that they are 100% eligible for,” he said.

W

hile the recent news of COVID-19 vaccines has brought hope to some, the situation for undocumented immigrants in need of housing is unlikely to change soon. This recession has been the “most unequal in modern U.S. history,” and economists say low-income households and people of color will be the slowest to recover. For those who avoided eviction despite not paying rent, the bills will come due once the eviction bans are lifted, and housing experts predict an “eviction avalanche.”

Joe Biden’s proposed stimulus plan promises an additional $1,400 to those who were eligible for the last round of $600 relief checks, plus all mixed-status households. But no undocumented residents themselves will receive direct federal aid.

While eviction bans and relief programs have made a difference, Gutierrez said, these temporary programs offer individual solutions to a collective problem. Instead of addressing why housing should be a human right in the U.S., the conversation becomes, “If you can apply for this, you should be able to, and if you didn't get it, then that's too bad, you're still on your own,” Gutierrez said.

At the end of the day, Choi said the government must provide stronger, broader relief measures and extend citizenship to everyone in the country.

A few proposed laws may protect tenants or limit the harm caused by evictions. If Chicago passes a “just cause for eviction” law, which exists in other large cities, landlords must give a reason for evicting a tenant or deciding not to renew a lease and provide moving assistance if the landlord evicts a tenant for a reason that isn’t the tenant’s fault.

A proposed state bill would seal some tenants’ eviction records.

But with the future of those laws unclear, undocumented immigrants are finding ways to organize and defend themselves against eviction together.

The Chicago Tenants Movement, a coalition of housing justice advocates that includes ATU, formed this summer to advocate for policy changes, to refer

renters to assistance programs and to help tenants organize with their neighbors.

They encourage renters to solve shared problems like maintenance issues, rising rents, and no-cause evictions as a group, rather than alone. During the pandemic, ATU members have stopped evictions of undocumented residents and others while connecting hundreds of people to online resources and leading the growing tenant-organizing movement nationwide with demands like rent cancellation and long-term rent control.

Gutierrez said that although many people learned about tenant organizing for the first time in 2020, ATU has been building a safety net for vulnerable tenants—especially Spanish-speaking immigrants—since 2016.

The group takes special care to work through the power dynamics between tenants and organizers along the lines of language, race and class. “We have seen in the last couple of years a huge shift in individuals understanding the power of collective organizing, and these union formations start becoming more of an understood action,” Gutierrez said.

T

he federal moratorium on evictions is approaching at the end of March, and as of press time, the state moratorium ends Feb. 6. As policies fail to prevent people from falling into housing instability during the pandemic, more people are seeking support through community organizations and with each other, and despite the difficulties, immigrants like Jung and Sánchez are determined to stay.

Sánchez and her husband have lived in Pilsen for twenty years; it’s where they first met, and it’s where they raised their son, a graffiti artist, who has a tattoo of the neighborhood name. They’ve lived in a two-bedroom apartment above a restaurant for nearly four years.

“We don’t want to leave, but without a way, we might have to,” Sánchez said.

“The rent here is too expensive. There are two-bedroom apartments that go up to $1,500 or $2,000.”

When Sánchez first moved to the U.S. and to Chicago, she didn’t think life would be so difficult. At the time

she already had four children and was pregnant with her youngest son. One of her children has been deported.

“The situation is critical, being an immigrant,” she said. “You think it’s going to be ‘pura vida’ but it’s not. If you don’t work, you don’t eat, you don’t pay rent, and where would you live?”

After a year of being forced to move repeatedly and navigate a new country during a pandemic, Jung has found small moments of peace for herself and her son.

She found a new daycare and now rents a room in a different house where they have more privacy. Jung enjoys long bus rides to H Mart in Niles and appreciates how bus drivers lower the platform for riders with physical disabilities and children like her son. And while her son naps, she observes the diverse group of Chicagoans who ride with her.

“Honestly, we take the bus to kill time. I can look out the window and have some moments to myself,” Jung said.

When the pandemic ends, Jung said she really wants to make friends and find a babysitter to help take care of her son. Her parents and younger brother, with whom she’s close, have asked her to return to Korea multiple times.

“I think about them a lot. So much, so much,” she said. “They tell me it’s not too late to come back, but I have no intention of leaving, not yet.” Access the full series online, learn more and get involved at citybureau.org.

Woojae Julia Song is a multimedia storyteller and was recently a reporting fellow with City Bureau. Her work focuses on how people navigate migration, and you can find some of it on woojaesong.com. This is her first piece for the Weekly.

Alex Arriaga is a journalist currently completing a residency with City Bureau.

Her reporting focuses on how immigrant communities in Chicago build power and participate in democracy. She grew up in West Lawn, moved around a lot, and now lives in Pilsen. She was neighborhood captain for West Lawn in Best of the South Side 2020.

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

RENTERS

Inside Chicago's Silent Housing Crisis

Experts say an eviction avalanche is coming. But thousands of Chicago renters have already been pushed to the brink of the housing cliff.

BY JUSTIN AGRELO, NATALIE FRAZIER, MALIK JACKSON, AND WOOJAE JULIA SONG, CITY BUREAU

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

ILLUSTRATION BY RAZIEL PUMA FOR CITY BUREAU

RENTERS The Housing Cliff is a special series about the COVID-19 housing crisis produced by City Bureau, a civic journalism lab based in Chicago.

A

ndre Wallace* has wanted to move for months. The West Garfield Park apartment he shares with his partner and their two small children is falling apart. The young couple didn’t even have a usable kitchen the first two months of living there. Water pours from the ceiling whenever it rains, causing debris to fall into the apartment.

The bathwater sometimes runs brown— when it runs at all.

Wallace has struggled to get his landlord to fix anything. He’s been tempted to report the egregious building code violations to the city, especially in his bouts of frustration with the place.

But he’s always chosen to cut the owners some slack—exchanging idle threats for empty promises.

“He kept saying ‘work with me, work with me.’ And I'm young, so I'm working with him,” Wallace said about his landlord. “And nothing.”

After his ceiling began caving in and a bad stumble down the building’s crumbling porch nearly put him out of work, Wallace decided enough was enough. It was time to move. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Wallace’s hours were cut at the Mercedes Benz dealership where he’s been working for years. Then his partner lost her job at Dunkin’ Donuts—both a direct result of the pandemic’s impact on Chicago’s economy where thousands of jobs have disappeared, at least 3,200 businesses have permanently shuttered and lower-income households like Wallace’s were hit hardest.

When the beginning of May rolled around, the young couple knew they wouldn’t be able to make their rent. “We was nervous,” Wallace remembers. “But then again, I've bypassed calling the city and reporting so much, I'm like maybe the landlord will work with us.”

Two months later, on July 10, 2020, Wallace’s landlord filed to evict the young family. It wasn’t until Wallace received a letter from City Bureau reporters in October that he learned of it.

Wallace was among over 1,500 Chicagoans who were hit with a residential eviction filing after the shelter-in-place was implemented on March 21, 2020. Despite the statewide ban on evictions, landlords are still filing paperwork to oust renters who pose “a direct threat to the health and safety of other tenants” or “an immediate and severe risk to property.” Wallace and at least six other people we spoke with for this project say they believe they were hit with a filing because they owed rent, not because of health and safety concerns.

For months, housing advocates have warned of a looming eviction crisis where as many as thirty-one percent of Illinois residents could be evicted once local, state, and federal protections expire. But while the moratorium has reduced eviction filings by seventy-seven percent, it hasn’t stopped landlords from forcing tenants out through more aggressive means such as illegal lockouts, harassment, or

threats of violence. For undocumented immigrants, who are often afraid to assert their housing rights for fear of getting deported or caught in the criminal justice system, the stakes are even higher. (Learn more in "No Safety Net," page 8) “People are already leaving,” said Moises Moreno, director of the Pilsen Alliance, which connects residents to emergency housing, food and other social services. “There's already displacement happening. You don’t have to wait ‘til the courts reopen.”

Tenants who have lost their sources of income during the pandemic have few options when it comes to cash assistance.

When the Chicago Department of Housing opened its first round of rental assistance last spring, 83,000 people applied for just two thousand grants. Whether grant programs were government-run or cobbled together by grassroots mutual aid groups, the demand has far outpaced the supply.

L

ast fall, City Bureau reporters set out to speak with Chicagoans like Wallace—folks who are being sued in eviction court or otherwise forced out of their homes during an unprecedented global pandemic and economic crisis.

Our goal was to learn and document what the so-called “eviction avalanche” looks like in material terms for everyday people in a city with an especially dark history of racist housing practices. For many working-class and lower-income Black and brown tenants like Wallace, this is not news: The pandemic has only exacerbated an ongoing housing crisis.

In several of the stories that follow, we changed people’s names at their request. Some worried about retaliation from their landlords. Others feared the public shame that is often placed on poor and working-class people who are down on their luck and just trying to survive.

These names have been marked with an asterisk.

* Received 83,000 in a first round and 13,300 in a second round; some households may have applied in both rounds ** As of January 28, 2021

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

RENTERS

We heard stories of struggle and loss. We learned how an eviction filing can be weaponized against tenants, often without their knowledge. How easily people fell through the cracks of an ineffective eviction ban and inadequate support systems. How one missed rent payment can devastate an entire family, tossing them into an underbelly of housing instability where survival means cramming into a small, overpriced hotel room with four other people at a time when we were told to keep our distance.

And like many Chicago stories, we also heard examples of ingenuity and resourcefulness. We spoke with community groups and public officials who are actively working toward solutions—whether through legislation, tenant organizing, direct service or activism. We witnessed people refuse to give in to despair despite the incredible odds stacked against them. Most of the people we spoke with remained hopeful that better days would soon arrive— either through political will or their own genius.

Here are seven of those stories, as told to City Bureau reporters.

These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity. how we reported this story City Bureau identified 445 tenants who had a pending case in eviction court, using court records obtained from the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court. We mailed each renter a letter informing them of the filing and asked if they’d share their story with us. We also surveyed people in line at the DMV and created a social media campaign where people could sign up to speak with a City Bureau reporter.

In the end, our team spoke with thirty-two Chicago residents who were threatened with housing insecurity due to COVID-19. Most were facing negligent conditions at home—from the minor (occasional pests) to the more severe (black mold). The majority of people we spoke with identified as either Black or Latinx, twenty of them were women, and all of them had experienced some sort of financial or personal hardship that was directly related to the pandemic.

Andre*: West Garfield Park

I

grew up on the West Side of Chicago. Born and raised.

I’ve never been affiliated with any gangs or anything like that. I've tried my best to stay clean. I've been working at the same job for about six years. My partner was working for Dunkin’ Donuts. She was there for like, two, three years. And I've been working for the car dealership. My life was fine. I mean, I was twenty-two, twenty-three years old with two kids.

It's not the best thing to do at that age, but I was making a living for me and mine.

I found this apartment through my auntie, who stays downstairs on the first floor. She’s been there for fifteen years.

I was looking for a place to stay and just raise me and my little family, you know? After I signed my lease and gave this man my money, I actually went all the way into my auntie’s apartment [for the first time]. She’s seventy-eight years old and she had no ceiling in her bathroom or kitchen due to water damage. They still come and collect $800 from her every month knowing the condition of the apartment.

I started running into problems when I kept paying the owner’s son all of my money, and this guy wasn't coming to my house to fix anything. Every time I say I’m going to call and report this to the city, she'll promise me, saying “Oh, I’m going to do this for you and do that for you.” And then I fall into the trap. I'll pay her rent and then I won't see her again. So it comes to a point where I'm like, OK, I'm gonna take $100 from the rent, and I'm going to repair what I need inside the apartment.

Some days I can't put my kids in the tub because we don't get no water out of the pipe. We get brown water some days. We get no water some days.

I was planning on moving out at the beginning of [2020].

But then COVID hit and I literally got stuck here. Nobody's showing apartments or things like that. Things got hard. My hours got cut. My girlfriend lost her job and then everything was just left on me. She can't work now because somebody’s got to be home with the e-learning.

Eventually, I fell behind on rent. It was like, OK I’m going to pay rent or I’m going to buy food and try to survive out here.

It was hard. I'm the only one working, trying to pay the rent, the light bill, keep our phones on.

By the time I heard about the housing grants, it was too late. The landlady called me and asked me if I could apply for it. Why would I apply to give you a $5,000 grant when you’re not doing what you're supposed to do with the money that you're getting now—money that you're stealing from me and my auntie every month? It didn't make sense to me.

I didn't know anything about the [eviction] filing before you sent me the letter. That was the first time I've received anything about that. We shouldn't have to be penalized due to COVID-19—something that we didn't have nothing to do with. I think they should give a rent forgiveness program. They should hold off on eviction notices for working families who are trying to make a living. But then you also have landlords who just use and abuse their tenants.

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

Sandra*: Belmont Cragin

M

y five-year-old is in kindergarten. He's in speech therapy. My daughter has ADHD. She's not able to control herself at times. I'm a mom that’s constantly behind my kids. If they get in trouble, I'm there. If they need a field trip, I'm there.

They’re doing the e-learning thing when they didn't even have laptops. My son is doing his homework on his phone.

Two of my kids are teenagers. They don't really want to do the work. I've been having arguments with them. I tell them, you have to finish your school. It's something good for you. Maybe if I would have listened to my parents and stayed in school, I wouldn’t be in this situation.

A lot of things have happened. I lost hours at work. You know how these places are. If there’s no customers, they send you home. My boss was like, “You’re a good worker. You just have bad luck.” My husband was out of work for four months.

It was hard for him to find a job. I can’t rely on him. He always loses his jobs because he’s not from here. He’s trying to legalize his citizenship.

That house was falling apart and [the landlord] never did nothing to make it better. I rented the first floor. My light and gas were also connected to the basement unit but [the landlord] never gave me money for that. That left me in debt for $3,000. I tried talking to him about it and he's like, “now you're gone, so we don't have to discuss anything.”

I lost my apartment because I wasn't able to pay my rent. I had to go and live with one of my sisters-in-law. I wasn't evicted.

I just received this phone call saying that they were going to come and kill me and my family if I didn't give them the money.

The first one to receive messages like this was my husband, then my son, then me. I filed a police report. I changed our phone numbers. I was afraid for my life, honestly, because you don't know if it's a joke or not.

I was like, OK, what the heck? What's going on? Why is this happening to me? What did I do? I'm a working person—I work and work and still, it's hard. It's hard.

When I left that apartment, I left it nice. When I went back for my stuff, it was all dirty and filthy. I had to get rid of a lot. Right now, I only have like $50. I have to buy a curtain for my new apartment. I don't have sofas. I have a dining room set, but it's falling apart. I have maybe three or four dishes. My kids need jackets, and I’m thinking, “Where am I going to get this?”

I tried to reach out to so many organizations. I said, “I want nothing for me. I just want stuff for my babies.”

I have a house now. I thank God, my son was working.

He was working at Domino’s. He helped me out with $1,300.

I’m proud of him. I’m like, “Baby, I’ll pay you back when I get my taxes.” And he’s like, “It’s fine, mom. Whenever you can.”

He’s motivated to go to college to be a paramedic. He’s always encouraging me and I'm blessed for that. He tells me, “One day, you will stop working and just enjoy life. One day, you will have your own house, your own place, by yourself. That’s why I’m going to school. I’m going to make you proud, mom.”

RENTERS

Ruth*: North Lawndale

T

he apartment is falling apart. When I first moved in, [the landlord] wouldn’t even change my carpet. There’s mildew. There’s plumbing issues.

Electricity issues. With the plumbing issues, I have to wait 30 minutes to an hour to take a shower. One day the water is warm, one day it’s cold. All these issues and you’re harassing me about rent?

Even before COVID-19, I never saw my landlord.

Only time I see him or hear from him [is when] the guy downstairs needs something to be fixed or he’s coming to get mail. The only reason I took this apartment is because he made promises. He told me everything is going to be done. But he hasn’t done anything.

I lost my job due to the COVID-19. My landlord couldn’t understand that, so he gave me a five-day [eviction] notice. I haven’t been back to work since. I told him I applied for the rental assistance and he had to do his part. I guess he didn’t want to do his part. He just wants me out of his apartment.

I explained to him that I don’t have the funds to move out. Next thing you know, I’m getting a postcard in the mail saying he’s suing me. It got to the point that he turned my hot water off. I reached out to the city and he turned it back on.

I’m trying to leave anyway. It’s too much going on with this apartment. It’s falling apart. I know it’s going to be hard to get an apartment with him putting this eviction on my record. I’m tired of living like this with my kids. I have a little baby that’s four years old. I want my kids to be comfortable. I’m willing to move because I don’t want to go through the eviction process. I just need help.

Kim*: Kenwood Oakland CW: this section contains details about sexual assault

I

was born in Atlanta and raised in Louisiana. I'm a Southern girl. I moved up here at eighteen to go to college. I transferred into UIC with hella credits as a Black person in STEM. I couldn't really afford school. I figured I’d find the money but that didn't happen.

I ended up suffering [sexual] assault that set me back a lot mentally. I wasn't performing well in my classes. Subsequently, I couldn't pay for school or to stay on campus. I talked to deans. I talked to professors.

I told them my story and everything. And there was no [solution] for what was going on.

I couldn’t go back home. At the time, my mom was also suffering from houselessness. She was trying to figure out her own situation. She got me in contact with a relative up here who lives on the West Side in Austin.

I ended up leaving UIC and staying with my family and sleeping on their couch for like four months. My stuff was in boxes. I was still recovering from being assaulted.

I [later] moved into a basement apartment in Kenwood Oakland. From the very first day that I moved in, there were issues with the apartment. The countertops were horrible. The cabinets were falling off the wall. There was water damage, gaps in the cabinetry near the floor where mice could crawl in—all types of shit. Mold started developing in the bathroom around the one-year mark. I would call them to come fix the mold. And they would come out and paint over it with mold paint. I was sneezing a lot.

In July or August, a smell started developing in one of the three rooms. It was mildew. The smell was so bad that the person who stayed in the room couldn’t stay there anymore. The apartment was affecting our health. We were in there coughing and sneezing all the time. We couldn't breathe well. I was like, OK, I'm

not finna do this. At the end of August, I'm like, I'm not gonna pay rent for September because you haven't fixed anything. The property manager said after I fix this stuff, we're gonna raise your rent to $1,300. And I'm like, you're not gonna raise my rent for this apartment to $1,300 from $865? Have you lost your mind?

Eventually, I went on an apartment search. The city [rental assistance] application was closed before I could apply. I left my job when my hours were significantly reduced; pandemic jobs are scarce. I ended up doing a GoFundMe. That was a really big thing for me to ask people for help. I'm a person who's never asked for help.

Despite everything that I've told you—being assaulted twice, being homeless, having issues surrounding housing—I've never said I need this or I need that. I just have handled it on my own.

I loved the neighborhood in my old apartment.

I'd been in that neighborhood for so long. I was super sad to leave. But I like the neighborhood I'm in now [Washington Park]. I love my new apartment. I feel comfortable and free. I like how responsive the people are. Now I'm in a space where if I'm coughing and sneezing, it’s not because of mold or mildew, it’s because maybe the neighbor was smoking, you know? And that's a little bit different to handle.

I'm still in school. I'm playing catch-up in my classes. I was so focused on trying to get a safe place to live that my classes suffered. And I got counseling.

I'm at a better place now. But I also have a lot of school anxiety. I'm studying integrated health science with a minor in chemistry. I want to be a doctor. This entire time—from when I was eighteen to twenty-four—I went to school every single semester even if I failed my classes, even if I was homeless or I was suffering from depression. I still went to school. All of this is testimony to how anybody can do something if they put their mind to it.

“This pandemic, it’s a hard thing. It’s something we ain’t never seen before. The government should step in and not let the landlords do us like this. It’s not our fault we lost our income due to the virus.”

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

RENTERS

Graciela: Brighton Park

I

t’s been more than two years since I moved in. Being on the first floor is perfect for me. It's hard for me to go up and down the stairs. I have asthma. I live with my granddaughter, my granddaughter's girlfriend and my granddaughter’s girlfriend's son. They worry about me, you know. I had a neardeath experience a few years back. They had to perform emergency surgery. They said that I had died on the table and they had to bring me back.

I always was on time with the [rent] money.

I worked with UPS for almost 16 years. I get a pension. It’s a small one, but it helps me to buy the necessary stuff—bathroom tissues, shampoo.

The bathroom had a broken window, and I've had to use plastic in the winter to cover up the cold coming in. The pests, it's year-round.

The ceiling is always throwing water into my room. In the winter, they have to put an electric heater in the bedroom. They [my landlords] always say, “Don't worry about it. We'll take care of it.” That's all I get. Promises, promises, promises. And to this day, I haven't gotten anything done.

In July, I offered [one of ] my landlords, who is an older woman, to make the repairs in the apartment by using some of the rent money, and giving her the remaining balance plus receipts.

She says, "No, I don't want that… if you don't give me the rent then I want you to move.”

I looked at her, like, what? Are you seriously telling me you want me to leave because I offered to fix the apartment? I just don't get it.

I've been waiting on you to fix the apartment for two years. You're more interested in the money than helping out your tenant. At that point, I started withholding rent.

About ten days later, she gave me a fiveday notice. I got a letter from the court a couple of days ago for my eviction court date. Because of the coronavirus, it's through an online video connection. My landlord did not even tell me that she was going to evict me.

I'm afraid that the judge is gonna tell us that we have to leave. We don't have anywhere to go. I mean, I like this house very much. If that goes on my credit report, I'm screwed. I cannot get put out on the street.

I didn’t have a lawyer. I was expecting to be able to say something when the judge called out my case. And instead, the opposing attorney was the one talking and I didn’t get a chance to really say anything. She [the judge] just asked me who I was and where I live and then that was it. I think we were only on camera for fifteen, twenty minutes. It was quick. Before I knew it, she said she wanted to continue the case [on a later date].

Just recently, they turned off the furnace in the basement, so now, I'm using our stove to warm up the house. Yesterday, I noticed water was coming down into my bedroom again. This year alone, I've had water come into my room about four times.

I reminded her that this is what I wanted to be taken care of before it got out of control. I asked you if I could do the repairs and you told me that you’d rather see me move. You've made this situation bad, not me. I offered to help you and you asked me to leave.

Mattice: Morgan Park

W

e were staying with family members here and there. I have a couple sisters here in Illinois. They had their own rules and it was just time for us to leave. There was a lot of pressure for me to hurry up and find something. When you’re under pressure with three kids and a wife, you don’t have no other choice. We was out on the street at the time.

Then we found a place. My landlord was a friend.

He went to the same school I went to. He knew the same people I knew. He said he had a house for rent, so I moved in. It was five people in a two-bedroom house. We stayed there for almost two years. I can show you pictures of all kinds of craziness. The sink was leaking. The ceiling had water damage and was falling off on the kids’ heads. The back door didn’t have glass in the windows. It was wrapped in plastic. Things like that. It was very, very uncomfortable.

I’m a truck driver. Before the pandemic came, my rent and everything was paid. We was fine. I was making a substantial amount of money; they wouldn’t even let me apply for food stamps. Then the truck business started drying up. A lot of drivers didn’t have no work throughout the pandemic.

I got let go around March or April. The first time I missed rent was in May. I called him and said, “Hey man, I’m laid off. It’s going to be hard for me to pay rent this month. Let me try to at least pay something next month.” He didn’t even say anything. Then two or three weeks later, he said he filed the eviction. Said the sheriff was going to come and serve me some eviction papers. He didn’t try to work anything out. That’s what was so strange about it. I missed only a month going into the second month. There’s some people who miss longer than that.

“I got a letter from the court a couple of days ago for my eviction court date. Because of the coronavirus, it's through an online video connection.

My landlord did not even tell me that she was going to evict me.”

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

RENTERS

I was surprised. As a friend, you know I've got three kids and a wife. You know COVID-19 hurt a lot of people. You know that. Why would you do this? Then you want to make it harder for me to get a new place to live. How can I move from your house when you put an eviction on my name, making it harder for me to get a new place to live? You know, they look at that. But he looked at it as a business, not a friendship.

Now we’re staying in a hotel. We’ve been staying in and out of hotels since then. I had to leave some of our stuff. Our stove, refrigerator, clothes, food, you know. I don't know what happened to it. Maybe he kept it.

The hotel room is small. It’s only two beds. Five people with two beds in one room. Me and my wife sleep on the floor. I can’t let my kids sleep on the floor.

When we first moved in, the room was like $112 a day.

But since I’ve been there for a while, they dropped the taxes and the room price. They were more lenient with me.

My wife wasn’t working. That’s what made it even harder. Unemployment was just half of my paycheck.

But by the grace of God, unemployment was something I was fortunate to get. It was a struggle for some months—at least three months. It felt like a year. I wish I would have talked to you before this. If you had told me that they weren’t putting no evictions out yet, I probably would still be there. But I looked at it like, as long as my kids are eating, I’m alright. As long as they have a roof over their heads, they OK. This pandemic, it’s a hard thing. It’s something we ain’t never seen before. The government should step in and not let the landlords do us like this. It’s not our fault we lost our income due to the virus. But we’ll be OK. God got us. As long as he got me I’ll be all right. I’m never going to get down on myself.

I’m back working now. I’m back driving. I started back in October. I see myself trying to get my own truck one day. That’s my future. My future is great.

Woojae Julia Song is a multimedia storyteller and was recently a reporting fellow with City Bureau. Her work focuses on how people navigate migration, and you can find some of it on woojaesong.com. This is her first piece for the Weekly.

Tisha*: South Chicago CW: this section contains details about intimate partner violence

I

'm a single mother of five. I grew up in the low end of Chicago. I grew up like any Chicago kid, you know. There was struggles, trying to make it while living in different shelters. My mom couldn't really do it on her own, so she had to give us to whoever could take care of us. We transferred schools a lot because we moved around a lot. That was very hard. The worst part was getting to know our friends then having to go to another school. I lived with my grandma for five years. She raised me to who I am now.

Everything was going OK until I experienced real bad domestic violence from my kids’ father in February 2020. I was working as a cashier at Shark’s Chicken. I lost my job a month after we moved in due to my face being messed up and me not wanting to go to work like that. My boss fired me. He didn’t believe I was going through domestic violence. He thought I just kept calling off from work for no reason, but I wasn’t. He was paying me cash so there was no way to get unemployment.

When you’re getting paid cash, it’s like you’re not even working.

I was in the hospital for a while. My kid’s father messed up a lot of things in my face. When I got out, I had a conversation with my landlord with my face all swollen. I let him know that I was behind on rent because I wasn’t able to work. He said, it’s fine.

We’ll figure things out. After that day, I didn’t see him again. Because of COVID, I couldn’t find a new job to at least try to pay him some type of money and get to some type of agreement. The city had shut down. People wasn’t hiring. It was very hard.

I actually thought he would be a nice, understanding guy. But I see how it is when people don't get their money. He started coming around, doing little things to get me out of the apartment illegally. He started turning off my water. He broke my furnace. He turned my lights out. He took my cat. The city [ticketed] him after I called 311 to make complaints after he broke my furnace.

Malik Jackson is a South Shore resident and recent graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in Urban Studies. He last wrote a review of The Trial of the Chicago 7 for the Weekly.

While I was sleeping in my room with my kids, he came into the apartment to give me a five-day notice. I woke up to go to the bathroom and there he was, standing in my living room. I asked, “Why are you here?” He’s like, “Oh, I’m giving you a fiveday notice. You have five days to go, or I’m going to just put everything outside.” I told him he had to take me to court and he’s like, “I’m not doing that, here’s a five-day notice,” and just walked off. I called the police right after he left and made a report. My kids were scared. We left the apartment for the night because I didn’t know if he was coming back. That was scary.

The day the apartment went up in flames, I was at the hospital supporting my best friend. She had just had her baby. After I left the hospital, I picked my kids up from my mother’s house. She lives a couple of blocks away from me. By the time we get home, I saw smoke coming from the back of the house. I called 911 and then my mother. The fire department said the fire started because of a cigarette, but I don’t believe it. Most of our stuff burned or was totaled because of the smoke. We were all crying because that’s all we had. We have nothing now except the clothes we had on our backs that day.

I’ve been trying to get donations now. My pride makes it very hard for me to suck up to ask for handouts because I'm so used to doing everything on my own. But right now I need a lot of help. I was trying to find some domestic violence assistance.

I kept calling the domestic violence court, I think.

I left voice messages after voice messages, but they never called me back. I’ve been trying to get relocated. My partner is actually incarcerated still right now because of me.

The city should really look into these evictions before they just start evicting people. They should really take their time to really hear the people's side of the story. I just want people to know that you don't have to go through domestic violence. It's not cool. It's not something that you should take at all.

That's the one thing for sure. Everybody deserves better, everybody deserves happiness in life.

Access the full series online, learn more and get involved at citybureau.org. ¬

Justin Agrelo is a City Bureau reporting resident from the Northwest Side.

His reporting focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on housing in Chicago. This is his first piece for the Weekly.

Natalie Frazier is a worker, community member, filmmaker and writer based on the Westside of Chicago. This is her first piece for the Weekly.

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

POLICY

Four Ways to Stem the Housing Crisis

Renters are still struggling almost a year after the pandemic began, but there are actions residents and lawmakers can take to minimize the pain.

BY JUSTIN AGRELO, CITY BUREAU The Housing Cliff is a special series about the COVID-19 housing crisis produced by City Bureau, a civic journalism lab based in Chicago.

L

ong before COVID-19, eviction has been a problem in Chicago.

Over the past decade, one in twenty-seven renter households in Chicago has faced eviction each year, according to data from the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing (LCBH), an organization that offers free legal services to Chicago residents facing eviction. Before the pandemic, the city saw more than 22,000 eviction cases a year, disproportionately impacting Black and brown communities.

The pandemic has only worsened this crisis, forcing Chicago to the brink of a housing disaster. According to research from Loyola University and LCBH, Chicago could see as many as 21,000 eviction filings in a single month once the eviction moratoriums are lifted. Despite the moratoriums, 5,472 evictions were filed in Chicago last year. These figures don’t account for the likely hundreds of people and families who have been forced from their homes in the shadows of the law.

Meanwhile, renters have relied mostly on limited federal funding and an eviction ban that has only weakened over time and that could incite a surge of eviction cases as soon as it expires.

But it’s not too late to act. Here are four solutions offered by housing experts and advocates to keep people in their homes and prevent a housing crisis.

Rent freeze For years, housing activists have fought to repeal Illinois’s rent control ban, a law that prohibits the government from putting any restrictions on the way property owners set rent. When the pandemic began, the Lift the Ban coalition shifted tactics; they called on Governor J.B. Pritzker to use his emergency powers to lift the rent control ban and freeze rent for struggling tenants—a move that could help keep the roughly one million Illinois residents who are currently vulnerable to eviction in their homes.

Though Pritzker campaigned on lifting the ban and supported a legislative repeal, he dismissed the activists’ demands, claiming that his executive powers did not extend that far.

But in a legal memo published in April 2020 in response to questions from Lift the Ban coalition members, lawyers at the firm Despres, Schwartz and Geoghegan, Ltd., argue that there are “a variety of ways” the governor can provide rent relief that do not require the state legislature. According to the lawyers, the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Act allows Pritzker to either suspend rent himself or empower municipalities to do so on their own.

“The powers the governor has in an emergency like this are pretty broad,” said Will Bloom, a lawyer with the firm.

“A solution could be crafted that gives tenants the protection they need without putting the burden on small homeowners who also need help.”

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

Emboldened by the legal analysis, the Lift the Ban coalition has regularly protested outside of Pritzker’s Gold Coast mansion, demanding he cancel rent. Last summer, the coalition set up its “Pritzkerville” encampment, which depicts the scene of an eviction, outside of eviction court.

“Everything has gotten ten times worse in this last year,” said Brian Bennett, a community organizer with the coalition. “If you owe back rent because you lost your job due to COVID, the city can’t pass any laws that address that. They can dole [out] a little federal funding, but we’re talking about billions of dollars.”

But political will for canceling rent is low. “Landlord associations are big donors,” Bloom said. “The Democratic party takes a lot of money from landlords.

They don’t want to do something that’s going to anger the people whose donations they rely on.”

To change that political landscape, Bennett encourages Chicago residents to get more involved at a local level.

“We have representatives right here in Chicago representing these heavily renter, heavily evicted districts who are killing this legislation [to lift the ban],” Bennett said. “Sending emails or calling is not going to get the job done. People need to be joining coalitions together in order to show that there is a wide and deep constituency of renters.”

More money for struggling residents Without a rent freeze, getting money into people’s hands is critical to keeping them housed once the eviction bans

expire. Even before the pandemic, missed rent was a major precursor to eviction, with 82% of eviction cases in Chicago filed over non-payment of rent, often for less than $2,500, according to data from LCBH. Since the start of the pandemic, city and state governments have relied on emergency rent and mortgage assistance programs to keep people in stable housing.

Last year, the Chicago Department of Housing (DOH) distributed more than $22 million in rental and mortgage aid, according to Daniel Hertz, the department’s policy director. Still, the DOH was only able to serve 10,421 households despite getting 96,300 requests in two rounds of applications (Hertz notes that some households may have applied in both rounds).

Illinois is preparing for another round of emergency aid after Congress allocated over $834 million to the state for rental assistance, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It’s not clear how much of that will come to Chicago, but Hertz expects it to be “significantly” more than what the city received last year. Whatever the number, Hertz said that last year’s rush to get money to hardhit residents has made the city more prepared this time around.

Mortgage forbearance for landlords Millions of U.S. landlords are eligible for COVID-19 mortgage forbearance programs, which allow them to suspend or reduce mortgage payments temporarily, either through the federal government or private lenders. Tenants struggling to pay rent could suggest the programs to their landlords; mortgage forbearance could lessen the burden on landlords to collect rent, and some programs include specific protections for renters. Deadlines for these programs are coming up in February and March, so property owners should contact their mortgage servicer soon—they can find out who services their mortgage at http://bit.ly/cbmortgage or http://bit.ly/ cbmortgage2.

Landlords with governmentbacked loans (FHA, VA, USDA, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac) can defer their

POLICY mortgage payments for up to a year if they’ve experienced hardship as a result of COVID-19. These programs forbid landlords of buildings with five or more units from charging late fees or evicting tenants who can’t pay rent during the forbearance period. Landlords with FHA, Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac loans must also provide tenants with flexible repayment plans and inform tenants of the new protections.

The programs aim to keep tenants in their homes while preventing property owners from going into foreclosure.

Entering into forbearance will not hurt the property owner’s credit, nor will they be charged late fees or interest on the loan during the forbearance period.

Program eligibility, tenant protections, and deadlines depend on each lender and are subject to change, so consumer protection lawyer Kathleen Robson, who has worked with Chicago

Volunteer Legal Services, suggests the best course of action is for “people to call their lenders and request the forbearance.”

Minimizing the harm of eviction filings In January’s lame duck session of the Illinois General Assembly, a COVID-19 housing bill stalled that would have (among other types of relief ) limited public accessibility of certain eviction records, including any evictions filed during the pandemic, in addition to extending the statewide eviction ban and closing some loopholes in the existing ban. State Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Chicago) sponsored Illinois Senate Bill 3066, known as the COVID-19 Federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program Act, and vows to introduce it again in February when legislators reconvene.

“People shouldn’t have an eviction record that harms them for the next

ten years because they couldn’t pay rent during COVID,” Ramirez said. “I’m really worried that while we fight for [a rent freeze], people are going to have a record that will make it difficult for any landlord to want to rent to them.”

Landlords file evictions at much higher rates in Black communities than in other parts of the city. Black women are especially vulnerable. In some cases, an eviction filing can stay in a renter’s credit history even after the case is dismissed or ruled in the renter’s favor. According to data from LCBH and Housing Action Illinois, a policy group working to expand the state’s supply of affordable housing, more than 15,000 people each year end up with a public eviction record despite having no eviction order or other judgment against them.

Ramirez’s bill received bipartisan support in the House, but failed to make it to the Senate floor for a vote.

She encourages Chicago residents who want to support the bill to call their state senator and representative and demand they back it.

“This bill is a health protection, it’s removing barriers to housing, it’s a criminal justice bill,” Ramirez said. “We desperately need to make sure that it passes. This could potentially mean over a million people will be impacted if it doesn’t.” Access the full series online, learn more and get involved at citybureau.org.

Justin Agrelo is a City Bureau reporting resident from the Northwest Side.

His reporting focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on housing in Chicago. This is his first piece for the Weekly.

ILLUSTRATION BY RAZIEL PUMA FOR CITY BUREAU

“People need to be joining coalitions together in order to show that there is a wide and deep constituency of renters.”

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

Resources for Renters

ILLUSTRATION BY RAZIEL PUMA FOR CITY BUREAU

Find financial aid, emergency shelter, legal help, and tenant support in 2021.

BY JUSTIN AGRELO, CITY BUREAU

Financial Assistance and Shelter The Housing Cliff is a special series about the COVID-19 housing crisis produced by City Bureau, a civic journalism lab based in Chicago.

C

hicago residents are still reeling from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly a year after it began. The patchwork of government, nonprofit, and mutual aid can be challenging to access. To help folks find much-needed resources, we’ve compiled a list of various housing- and food-related resources that you can access right now. (To access this full article with links online, go to citybureau.org/resources.)

city of chicago

New application for rental assistance expected to reopen by late February chi.gov/housinghelp

illinois domestic violence helpline

Twenty-four-hour hotline for temporary emergency shelter, counseling and other resources (877) 863-6338 or (877) 863-6339 (TTY) amani house

Twenty-four-hour hotline offering short-term housing for women, women with children, and intact families.

(773) 874-8345

brighton parK neighborhood council

Assistance for rent, mortgage, and electric and gas bills in Brighton Park.

(773) 523-7110, M-F, 9am-4pm

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

Legal Aid lawyers’ committee for better housing

Free legal help for tenants facing eviction, utility shut-offs, or other housing-related legal issues.

(312) 347-7600, lcbh.org legal aid chicago

Free legal help in English and Spanish to Chicago and suburban Cook County residents with limited income; regarding unemployment insurance benefits, evictions, and other civil legal issues (312) 341-1070, legalaidchicago.org

early resolution program, cooK county legal aid

Free legal assistance, counseling, pre-court mediation, and case management for Cook County residents who are dealing with eviction, foreclosure and unresolved debt (855) 956-5763, Cookcountylegalaid.org

Tenant Rights metropolitan tenants organization

Mediates disputes between tenants and their landlords; tenant rights hotline is open to English and Spanish speakers.

(773) 292-4988, M-F, 1-5pm

chicago tenants movement

Helps renters facing housing issues like an illegal lockout, refers people to legal aid, and offers info on how to form a tenants union in English and Spanish.

(773) 657-8700, W-Su, 10am-2pm, 5-9pm autonomous tenants union

Offers resources in English and Spanish, from how to make a 311 call to templates of letters you can give your landlord. autonomoustenantsunion.org/resources rentervention

Free immediate, step-by-step support with most housingrelated issues.

(866) 773-6837, Rentervention.com, or text “hi” to 866-7RENTER

Mutual Aid Mutual aid groups are run by volunteers who collect, distribute, and organize resources within a community, using the principle of “solidarity, not charity.” These informal groups both accept donations and offer resources, often with no questions asked. For the full list, go to chicovid.org and search “mutual aid.” brave space alliance

Crisis pantry program delivers free food to residents within city limits.

(872) 333-5199, bravespacealliance.org/covid-19 the love fridge

Get free groceries at colorfully decorated refrigerators throughout the city. thelovefridge.com/locations

bronzeville-Kenwood mutual aid

Free food and supplies drop-offs and wellness checks for South Side residents. bkmachicago.com

360 nation’s lil’ miracles project

Free boxes of groceries, baby supplies, personal hygiene items, and PPE every third Thursday at 4320 W. 5th Ave. from 4-6pm. @360__nation on Instagram

humboldt parK solidarity networK

Free food, supplies, mental health support, wellness checks, and more.

(312) 883-7526, @HPSolidarityNetwork on Instagram

Access the full series online, learn more and get involved at citybureau.org.

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

UTILITIES

Lights Out

How more than 73,000 Illinois homes lost electric service during COVID-19.

BY ALEX RUPPENTHAL

A

rlanta Shelley was grocery shopping on a Friday morning in October when she got a call from her oldest son, who is nineteen and lives with schizophrenia. He had been at home playing video games until the screen went dark.

“I thought maybe it was due to a mistake or something else could have went wrong, maybe a blown fuse,” said Shelley, who lives in far-north suburban Gurnee.

She got on the phone with Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) and learned that her electric service had been cut off due to nonpayment on her bill, which had ballooned to more than $800.

Shelley was surprised because she had heard she didn’t have to worry about late utility payments due to protections put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Especially with this COVID going on, I just didn’t think they would cut my lights off,” said Shelley, thirty-nine, who works as a home health aide assisting elderly individuals. “And then I was afraid. ‘What if they cut my gas and water off too?’ I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.”

Since September, when a statewide moratorium on utility shutoffs enacted in response to COVID-19 expired, more than 73,000 Illinois households have had their electric service cut off because of nonpayment, according to state filings and publicly available data from utilities.

Based on Illinois’ average household size, an estimated 189,000 residents lost access to electricity at some point between September 30 and December 31.

By far, the most affected have been residents in low-income, predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods, including thousands of homes on Chicago’s South and West sides—yet

another way the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected communities of color, which have faced higher rates of death, illness, and unemployment resulting from the virus.

“We’re essentially punishing people for being poor during a pandemic,” said Karen Lusson, a staff attorney with the National Consumer Law Center who has represented the Chicago-based group Community Organizing and Family Issues, or COFI, in proceedings with state utility regulators.

State filings and interviews with consumer and community advocates show the issue stems from a failure by Illinois regulators and officials to ensure the state’s most vulnerable residents— including low-income, elderly, and sick individuals—could remain safely in their homes in order to contain the virus.

Allowing utilities to cut off service may also have exacerbated the virus’s spread.

“Utility [service] is a necessity that you cannot live in a home without,” said State Rep. Carol Ammons (103rd), whose district includes ChampaignUrbana. Ammons said losing service “causes more people to have to leave their homes, which causes people to have to interact more with other people in order to try to find a place to stay. That really causes a ripple effect.”

This past fall, state regulators voted against reinstating Illinois’ initial COVID-19 moratorium on utility shutoffs—even after utilities reported data showing tens of thousands of homes were being disconnected as temperatures dropped and cases of the virus began surging again.

Meanwhile, seventeen other states and the District of Columbia have

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

kept bans on disconnections in place throughout the pandemic, which as of January 31 has killed more than 21,000 people in Illinois and 2.23 million worldwide.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has urged utilities to voluntarily freeze shutoffs— and several have said that they would do so, under certain conditions, through the end of March 2021—but said he did not have the authority to impose a ban on utility shutoffs. But others have pushed back, citing the governor’s broad powers during the public health emergency and an executive order by New Jersey’s governor that extended the state’s utility disconnections until March 31, 2021 “We have had people who are in their own apartment who had had to move their family, three or four children, to a relative’s because they have no utility service,” Ammons said. “This is a recipe for significant disaster.”

Disproportionate impact The eleven ZIP codes with the most electric disconnections during the pandemic are all on Chicago’s South and West sides, state data shows, with the most shutoffs occurring in ZIP codes that cover Chatham, Auburn Gresham, Calumet Heights, East Side, Roseland, Pullman, South Shore, West Lawn, Woodlawn, and Englewood.

In some South Side neighborhoods, ComEd shut off service from more than four percent of all households, a rate nearly four times higher than for the company’s total coverage area across northern Illinois, where it serves 3.7 million customers.

“We do recognize that those communities have been hit hard,” said

Nichole Owens, ComEd’s vice president of customer channels. “ComEd does not have policies and does not have systems that would target communities or neighborhoods for disconnections. There is not some guy sitting in a room flipping switches.”

In filings with state regulators, ComEd blamed shutoffs on customers who didn’t reach out to the company about their financial situation, stating that without the threat of disconnections or late fees, “many customers did not seek help.”

The company said it was on track to disconnect less than a quarter of households compared to its pre-pandemic projections for 2020. It also argued that continuing a full ban on shutoffs would shift the burden of unpaid bills to all customers. (State law allows electric and gas utilities to recover the full amount of unpaid bills by adjusting rates for all customers.)

ComEd said that as a result of the state’s initial six-month shutoff moratorium, the average overdue balance for its low-income customers had increased to $529 compared to $252 last year. But advocates say ComEd and other utilities failed to fully acknowledge the financial reality faced by residents who had lost jobs or had their hours reduced as a result of the pandemic.

Illinois processed unemployment claims from more than 1.3 million people from the start of the pandemic in March through October 2020, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.

“We can’t ignore the impact it’s had on people’s incomes,” Lusson said.

“We can’t look at dealing with this crisis by simply saying, ‘Well, unless we

“How can you stay in your home if you don’t have heat?

How can your kids e-learn if you don’t have electricity?”

ILLUSTRATION BY MELL MONTEZUMA

send disconnection notices and issue disconnections, the bad debt will be too high.’ At what cost? The disconnection of thousands of customers. That’s unacceptable.”

Even before the pandemic, nearly one third of U.S. households were struggling to pay their energy bills, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Pablo Mendiola said his family went without gas service for nearly a year because of an outstanding bill, forcing him, his wife, and their two children to heat their home in Back of the Yards with space heaters. That increased the family’s electricity use, leading to an outstanding electric bill of about $1,350, he said.

Mendiola, who works in cleaning services, said he was unable to work for three months because of the pandemic, during which his family received a disconnection notice from ComEd. Although he was eventually able to pay the entire bill and keep the electricity running, Mendiola, fifty-eight, said the family’s gas service was not restored until November, when an energy-focused nonprofit helped cover the outstanding balance.

“It definitely has been stressful because you’re wondering, ‘Where can I go? What can I do next?’” said Mendiola, who spoke in Spanish through an interpreter.

Owens and representatives from other utilities—including Ameren Illinois, Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas—told the Weekly they enhanced measures to assist customers during the pandemic and increased communication efforts to reach customers struggling with their bills. They also said they encouraged customers facing financial hardship to contact their provider to explore options for financial assistance.

Utility disconnections in Illinois during the pandemic have been mostly limited to electric service. In May 2019, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a moratorium on water shutoffs that remains in effect. State filings show 2,579 households outside of Chicago had water service shut off in October, while more than 500 homes statewide have had gas service disconnected during the pandemic.

Addressing electric shutoffs, Lightfoot expressed frustration in a September 21 letter to ComEd CEO Joe Dominguez that the utility planned to resume disconnections “amidst a pandemic and financial crisis.” Lightfoot also stated the city would not sign a new franchise agreement with ComEd— which remains under federal investigation for what prosecutors have called a “yearslong bribery scheme”—until the utility commits to implementing “a plan to eliminate the use of late fees and nonpayment disconnections as credit and collections techniques,” among other conditions.

ComEd resumed disconnections three days later.

‘It’s just ridiculous’ For those affected by shutoffs, losing utility service can have a devastating impact any time, advocates say, let alone during a deadly pandemic that is unprecedented for most people alive today.

Rosazlia Grillier, a mother and community organizer in Englewood, had gas service shut off at her home several years ago. “It really kind of challenged my ability to live,” said Grillier, who works on energy assistance initiatives as cochair of COFI’s Stepping Out of Poverty campaign.

Grillier said people need “every ounce of energy or effort” they have to get

through the pandemic and shouldn’t have to worry about losing something as vital as utility service.

Given COVID-19 restrictions, living without electricity or gas service makes it more difficult to access medical services remotely, to work from home and to participate in remote learning.

“How can you stay in your home if you don’t have heat?” said Mia Segal, managing attorney in the health, housing, and economic stability group of the Legal Aid Society, which provides legal services for low-income families in Chicago.

“How can your kids e-learn if you don’t have electricity?”

For those who receive housing through Section 8 and other rental

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

UTILITIES

assistance programs, losing service can directly lead to losing their home, as tenants are often responsible for ensuring continuous utility service or risk being forced out.

“It’s just ridiculous because there’s a lot of people that don’t have jobs right now,” said Cedric Robinson, who lost his job at a restaurant near his home in Urbana this spring as a result of the pandemic.

Robinson, thirty-two, eventually landed a new job at a Best Buy. But in the meantime, he fell behind on his electric bill, which had grown to more than $300.

Robinson was in the shower one morning in early November getting ready for work when the lights went out.

Because of his outstanding bill, downstate utility Ameren Illinois shut off electric service in the 600-square-foot apartment he shares with his girlfriend and their roommate — even though Robinson said he had called the company a week earlier and arranged to begin making payments once he received his next paycheck, which was later that day.

“It didn’t make sense,” he said. “They turned off my power the same day they said they were going to take a payment plan.”

Robinson finished showering in the dark, grabbed his towel off the door hook and then used the flashlight on his phone to help him get dressed. He then got in touch with the local township supervisor’s office, which contacted Ameren Illinois on his behalf and got the company to restore service at his apartment later that day.

But Robinson's electric bill has started to add up again. It’s currently at $235, he said.

“I need time to pay it,” he said.

Once customers are disconnected, utilities typically require them to pay a certain percentage of their outstanding bill before restoring service, which can be a challenge for some.

That was the case for a Chicago woman who filed a complaint with the Citizens Utility Board this fall after Peoples Gas disconnected gas service at her home. The utility, which has disconnected service from 372 households

during the pandemic, told her she needed to pay thirty percent of her outstanding bill to have service restored. But the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was unable to pay the amount because of her financial situation.

In her complaint, she told CUB “she was under the impression that per the ‘COVID Rules’ she would be protected from disconnection.”

Of the roughly 50,000 households disconnected by ComEd as of late November, about ninety-seven percent have had service restored, according to data shared by the company with consumer advocates, meaning that about 1,500 homes remain disconnected.

Ameren Illinois, which provides electric service to 1.2 million customers in central and southern Illinois, did not say how many of the 23,000-plus homes it disconnected this year have had service restored.

‘Everybody is under stress’ As Illinois’ ban on utility shutoffs was about to expire in early September, lawyers and advocates representing utility customers in Chicago and across the state were sounding the alarm about the potential negative consequences of resuming disconnections.

In fact, so were those with the power to do something about it.

On September 4, a week before the state’s shutoff moratorium ended, commissioners with the Illinois Commerce Commission, which regulates utilities, sent a letter to utility executives urging them to “take immediate steps” to halt residential disconnections resulting from nonpayment until spring 2021.

The letter noted that two regions of the state had recently increased restrictions due to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases, and that Illinois’ unemployment rate remained high, at 11.3 percent.

“Customers continue to struggle with the current health emergency,” stated the letter, which was signed by all five commissioners of the ICC. Commissioners also said shutoffs would “have a disproportionate impact on the state’s most vulnerable citizens: the

24 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

“We’re essentially punishing people for being poor during a pandemic.” elderly, persons with medical conditions, and those working and learning remotely.”

In response, two utilities—Nicor Gas, which serves 2.2 million homes and businesses in Chicago’s suburbs; and Liberty Utilities, which provides gas service to about thirty communities in southern Illinois —agreed to continue holding off on residential disconnections entirely until next spring.

Other utilities, including the state’s largest electric service providers, ComEd and Ameren Illinois, did not. Instead, they agreed to more limited protections for customers, pledging to hold off on disconnections for low-income customers and for those who claimed financial hardship by contacting their provider.

Although the protections have helped some customers stay connected— ComEd said nearly 78,000 residential customers had contacted the company to express a financial hardship as of early December—others have fallen through the cracks.

“The vast majority of customers don’t know what their options are,” Segal said. “For people to reach out, they have to know they need to reach out. And everybody is under stress in ways that we haven’t been before.”

In some cases, customers have received shutoff notices even after utilities announced that they were ceasing disconnections, said Jared Policicchio, supervising assistant corporation counsel with Chicago’s Law Department, who has represented the city in proceedings with the ICC. “It obviously creates confusion for customers and residents,” he said.

While customers eligible for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) are protected from shutoffs, the pandemic has caused delays in processing LIHEAP applications, state filings show.

Some residents have also struggled to

upload required documents online.

“That’s the biggest hurdle we’re facing right now,” said Erin Dowland Kabwe, chief development officer with the Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County, which assists residents with LIHEAP applications.

The organization’s roughly 100 locations throughout Cook County remain closed, meaning residents cannot receive in-person assistance.

Since the pandemic started, about fifty percent of residents who started LIHEAP applications have not completed them, Dowland Kabwe said, reflecting the difficulty many have had navigating the process online.

‘A missed opportunity’ On October 22, the ICC’s commissioners, who a month earlier had pleaded with utilities to hold off on disconnections, voted 4-1 to strike down a measure proposed by Lusson that would have reinstated the state’s full freeze on utility shutoffs.

The vote came one week after the commission received data showing utilities had shut off service from more than 16,000 homes after disconnections resumed in September.

On the day of the vote, Illinois reported a record high of nearly 5,000 new COVID-19 cases.

Commissioner Maria Bocanegra cast the lone dissenting vote. “I just want to express my extreme disappointment that the commission is not taking this opportunity to get ahead of what is the inevitable,” Bocanegra said during the October 22 meeting, which was held virtually. “The circumstances continue to evolve and are changing, and I think this is a missed opportunity for the commission to really take advantage of an opportunity to protect ... consumers.”

UTILITIES ICC Chairman Carrie Zalewski said she shared Bocanegra’s concerns given the rising COVID-19 cases and evidence of “help not getting to those who need it.” But Zalewski then voted against the measure, saying she hoped utilities and other stakeholders “continue a conversation” to “get help to those who are particularly affected by the pandemic.”

The ICC declined an interview request with Zalewski. “As a quasi-judicial body, ICC Commissioners review all legal arguments before taking a vote and speak through” the commission’s written orders, ICC spokesperson Victoria Crawford stated via email.

Crawford wrote the commission “has worked vigorously to protect all residential and small business customers from losing access to utility service,” in part through an agreement reached in June that provides increased debt forgiveness and bill payment assistance, in addition to a temporary ban on reporting nonpayments or late payments to credit and collection agencies.

Five days after the ICC’s vote, Urbana’s mayor hand-delivered a City Council resolution to Pritzker’s staff urging the governor to reinstate the full ban on utility shutoffs.

Pritzker said he doesn't have the ability to "simply put a moratorium in place."

But the governor, who has broad powers under the state's Emergency Management Act, froze evictions by executive order last April, and the ICC enacted the shutoff ban at Pritzker's request.

“I don’t understand why the executive orders that were in place at the height [of the pandemic] in March and April are not in place during this resurgence period,” Ammons said. “The people really need the executive branch to step in on this as we are asking them to stay at home, to limit contact.”

Jose I. Sanchez Molina, Pritzker’s deputy press secretary, stated via email, “While Governor Pritzker does not have the authority to fully suspend utility disconnections, the administration has requested that the ICC do all it can to ensure that residents and businesses continue to have access to utilities.”

Damage done In mid-November, ComEd, Ameren Illinois, and several other utilities agreed to cease all residential disconnections about two weeks before the start of the state’s annual moratorium on shutoffs during winter months, which took effect Dec. 1.

By that point, at least 73,000 homes statewide had been disconnected.

“I think there was a sense that if the utilities agreed not to cut off [lowincome customers] and not cut off people who express financial hardship, everyone will be okay,” Lusson said. “But the reality is that that hasn’t worked as intended. The reality is that we needed a broad moratorium during a pandemic so that people could remain safely in their homes.”

Expanded protections for customers with unpaid utility bills are set to expire at the end of the year. Lusson, Policicchio and community advocates say the state and utilities must take steps to continue and even expand those protections, including by eliminating fees for late payments and increasing access to payment assistance programs.

“We just don’t know where the economy is going to be,” Lusson said.

“Deferred payment arrangements won’t be enough.”

Also uncertain is what the state of the virus will be on March 31, when the state-mandated winter moratorium on disconnections expires.

As of now, Owens said ComEd plans to resume disconnections in April.

Shelley said she was able to get electric service restored at her Gurnee home the same day in October after calling a number of agencies that offer financial assistance.

But the incident brought added stress as she struggled to afford food and other essentials for herself and her two sons, the younger of whom has been struggling with anxiety since the start of the pandemic, she said.

“My fifteen-year-old, he’s just so scared,” Shelley said, adding that losing electric service in her home, even for just part of a day, was a “troubling experience.”

“What if that happened to the clients I take care of?” she said. “They need people like me to help them. And here it is, the person who’s helping them is going through a crisis. Something has to be done.”

The pandemic’s financial strain continues to impact electric customers.

According to data filed with state regulators in January, ComEd and Ameren Illinois assessed late fees to more than 940,000 customers in December alone, the most in a single month since the start of the pandemic.

In late December, Lightfoot, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and consumer advocates sent utility executives a letter asking the companies to extend the enrollment period for financially strapped customers with overdue bills to enter into deferred payment arrangements of up to 24 months -- a provision of the June agreement with utilities that expired Dec. 31. As of Jan. 22, ComEd, Nicor Gas and Peoples Gas had agreed to extend enrollment for the deferred payment plans through March 31.

Since the inauguration of President Biden on January 20, a coalition of advocacy groups is calling on the president to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue a directive under the Public Health Service Act enacting a national moratorium on residential utility and water disconnections resulting from nonpayment. The groups cite a Duke University study showing that local bans on utility and water shutoffs and evictions have reduced the spread of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, consumer advocates are encouraged by the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan proposed by President Biden, which calls for $5 billion to help cover home energy and water bills. Some of that money could be used to cancel debts from overdue payments, which have grown during the pandemic, Lusson said.

“We can’t just do nothing,” she said.

“These [debts] have accumulated in people’s monthly bills due to no fault of their own. We need to as a society address this and not make a bad situation worse.” ¬

More info on utility service/disconnections: To contact ComEd about your electric service, call 1-800-334-7661 (or 1-800955-8237 for support in Spanish).

For more information about applying for financial assistance through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), contact the Community and Economic Development Association (CEDA) of Cook County at 1-800-5712332.

To file a complaint about your utility service, contact the Citizens Utility Board at 1-800669-5556 or fill out an online form.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has encouraged residents facing a utility disconnection to contact his office at 1-800-386-5438. Residents can also file a complaint with the AG’s office online.

Alex Ruppenthal is a freelance reporter in Chicago. He can be reached at alex. ruppenthal@gmail.com. This is his first piece for the Weekly.

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 25

HOMELESSNESS

Who Counts?

Chicago’s annual homeless count provides a “snapshot” of who is sleeping on the street, but critics say it’s inaccurate and can be traumatic.

BY CHARMAINE RUNES

O

ne of the first things I noticed when I met Ricky Berner were his slippers. They were a soft tan and waffle-knit, with a darker brown strip running along the bottoms and a smiling sloth stitched on the toes. I told him I liked them and asked where he had gotten them. "I don't know," he said, adjusting his red beanie to cover his ears.

"Somebody dropped them off, I'm sure.

We got a lot of people down here who just bring us lots of stuff."

We were on Lower Wacker Drive, where Ricky has slept for the past six months. He had just finished answering a survey conducted by Homeless Outreach and Prevention staff from Chicago's Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS). He was one of thousands of Chicagoans DFSS counted this year.

Since 2013, the DFSS has coordinated a Point-in-Time (PIT) count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness, as mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The counts, which are conducted every January, include a survey that collects demographic and social service data. Typically, DFSS recruits hundreds of volunteers from other city departments, for-profit and nonprofit organizations; colleges and universities; and the general public to conduct the count. The goal of the census is fourfold: to inform service and resource planning, apply for funds to serve unhoused folks, build public awareness of homelessness, and track trends over time. In the 2020 count, DFSS identified 5,390 people experiencing homelessness, two-thirds of whom were staying in shelters the night

of the count. The remaining third slept outside: in parks, in airport terminals, in train stations, and on the streets.

On January 25, the day before the 2021 PIT count officially started, Chicago moved into Phase 1b of its COVID-19 vaccine rollout. While Phase 1b includes Chicagoans in homeless shelters, the city has not announced any plans to offer and administer vaccines to unsheltered residents. In an email to the Weekly, a CDPH spokesperson said the Department is working with Heartland Alliance Health to provide services to unsheltered people, and “is actively planning mobile outreach to encampments and other places frequented by people experiencing homelessness to reach this population.”

Berner said he tries to learn as much as he can about COVID-19 and the vaccine rollout by doing online research and reading newspapers. "I'm not too sure about the vaccine," he said firmly. "I want to wait and see, you know, how it works out with other people. I don't want to take something that might potentially make me sick."

Concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic, which as of press time has killed 4,634 Chicagoans, pushed HUD to loosen its requirements for the annual count, giving rise to a very different methodology and implementation plan on the local level. Instead of relying on cadres of volunteers, DFSS sent out only trained staff from the city and homeless services organizations. Instead of trying to conduct the count in a single overnight shift, DFSS spread their efforts over four days, from January 26 through January

26 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

COURTESY OF DFSS

DFSS counted people who were sleeping outside in targeted census tracts, instead of canvassing all neighborhoods as previous counts had done.

29 during business hours. And—likely because they lacked volunteer support this year—DFSS targeted "particularly concentrated pockets," where unhoused people are known to gather, rather than canvassing every neighborhood as it has typically done.

In an email to the Weekly, a spokesperson for DFSS said that despite these significant changes, they are confident in the PIT count data they compile. But even in a normal year, the count may not accurately represent the state of homelessness in Chicago. "It's a literal eyeball count," said Julie Dworkin, director of policy at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH). "We don't

really put a lot of stock in [its] accuracy."

Instead, CCH uses the most current U.S. Census data from the American Survey to estimate the number of unhoused Chicagoans for their advocacy efforts.

Their latest annual report shows that 76,998 people experienced homelessness over the course of 2018; the PIT count from that same year was 5,450.

Berner said he doesn't remember ever being part of previous PIT counts.

He has slept on Lower Wacker Drive for the past six months and stayed on State Street prior. "We have a tent over there," he said, pointing across the busy road.

"We have it insulated with blankets, and we use heat candles inside for heat."

HOMELESSNESS With average daily highs of twentythree degrees Fahrenheit, January is an especially cruel month to be outside. Two days before I met Berner, the National Weather Service in Chicago issued a winter storm warning. Meteorologists predicted an average of six inches of snowfall and wind gusts at thirty to forty miles per hour. Dworkin said DFSS’s practice of conducting the count during the winter is not unintentional. "On a very cold night, you're going to have fewer people out on the street," she explained.

Inclement weather forces people to go to shelters, where they are "easier to count."

But many unhoused Chicagoans end up being excluded from the PIT count because when DFSS is conducting it, they aren’t in shelters or on the streets.

The count uses “a very narrow definition of homelessness,” Dworkin said. “[It] doesn't count people that are temporarily staying with others due to financial hardship, which is the primary way that most people experience homelessness, especially families and youth."

Beyond potential problems with PIT data accuracy, other stakeholders are concerned with the ethics of conducting such a count at all. Dr. Molly Brown, an assistant professor of clinical community psychology at DePaul University who has volunteered for the city's PIT count twice with her research team, recently wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune about her experience on the other side of the clipboard.

In an interview with the Weekly, Brown emphasized how the count focuses on data collection at the expense of the very people whose lives make those numbers meaningful. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who is staying outside—your physical safety and that of your possessions is very precarious, she said. Then a complete stranger approaches in the middle of the night to ask very personal questions about your life. "It really feels like the public is duped into believing that [the PIT count] is a caring process, that that we're doing this because we care about people," Brown said. "But this is a true violation of respect for individuals."

Brown pointed out potentially traumatic questions on previous PIT surveys. "We were asking questions about people's homelessness history: how many

times they've been homeless and [the] duration of homelessness," she said.

"We asked about people's mental health, whether they received or been told they should receive mental health treatment.

Same with substance use. Whether they were survivors of domestic violence and whether they've been incarcerated. We asked about children, whether they had guardianship over their children or not.

Very painful questions."

The 2021 PIT survey excluded many of those more probing questions, and was only half as long as the survey Brown used when she was a volunteer during the 2019 count. This year, surveyors focused on demographic questions about race, ethnicity, military status, and age, where the respondent spent the night on January 26, and whether a partner or children were with them that night.

DFSS public affairs director Quenjana Adams disagreed with Brown’s contention that DFSS staff were complete strangers to the people they were counting. "The people know them; [outreach staff ] already have relationships with the residents," she said. According to Adams, DFSS staff visit encampments every week, handing out masks and hand sanitizer and offering information and connections to housing services.

Still, Brown said she worries about the "exploitative" nature of the count, especially the possibility that unhoused people might feel pressured to participate in what should be a completely voluntary survey. "There's certainly a power dynamic, you know, if you're the person with the clipboard," she said. "It's not always easy [for the resident] to say no."

Berner watched another Lower Wacker resident receive a free flu vaccination from the doctor accompanying DFSS staff—an offer he had politely refused. He told me that he appreciates that people come by, bringing food and extending prayers.

"There's a lot of good people. I mean, it's real good. It's real nice." ¬

"There's certainly a power dynamic, you know, if you're the person with the clipboard.”

PHOTO BY CHARMAINE RUNES

Charmaine Runes is a graduate student at the University of Chicago’s Computational Analysis and Public Policy program. She last wrote about remote learning and concerns around CPS reopening plans, and the Weekly’s open-source Twitter bot.

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 27

The Displacement of Chinatown’s Low-Income Residents Is Aggravated by COVID-19 IN 2019, THE CITY APPROVED PLANS TO BUILD THE MASSIVE HIGH-END DEVELOPMENT “THE 78” ON VACANT LAND BETWEEN THE LOOP AND CHINATOWN, SPURRING FEAR THAT SUCH PROJECTS WILL ENCROACH ON THE SPACE OF LONGTIME RESIDENTS. PHOTO BY SARAH DERER

Data from the Chinese American Service League shows an exodus to the South and West

BY YILUN CHENG

A

t the intersection of Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue, a stately red gate with a handpainted inscription that reads “The world is for all” welcomes visitors to Chinatown.

Dim sum restaurants, grocery stores, and Chinese medicine shops line the streets to serve the nearly 7,000 people living in the area. But the very thing that has long distinguished Chinatown––its close-knit Chinese population––is being dispersed throughout the city as the pandemic-induced economic downturn puts a striking number of Chinatown residents out of work.

In recent years, rising rental costs, combined with high poverty rates and a lack of affordable housing, have forced an increasing number of lowincome Chinese Americans to abandon their longtime residences in Chicago’s greater Chinatown area. Such housing challenges have long haunted the historic neighborhood, said Paul Luu, the CEO of the nonprofit Chinese American Service League (CASL). But COVID-19

and the job losses that came with it have made it more apparent that people are struggling to pay rent and mortgages, he said, and are leaving as a result.

In the past year, Chinatown’s Chinese population has migrated south and west along Archer Avenue to more affordable places in Bridgeport, McKinley Park, Brighton Park, and all the way to Gage Park and Archer Heights next to Midway International Airport, as shown by a heat map generated by CASL, which visualizes the displacement of more than 5,000 clients who utilize services offered by the Chinatown-based organization.

“I’ve met families who said they’ve moved three times in the past three years,” said Luu. “When I asked them why they moved, the answer was always the cost of housing.”

Chinatown residents see drastic income drop amid COVID-19 Even before the pandemic, Chinatown had a higher-than-average poverty rate.

28 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

In Armour Square, the community area where Chinatown is located, thirty-eight percent of the households live below the poverty line, compared with the city-wide average of seventeen percent, according to an analysis of census data done by the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

As communities of color have been hit hard by the pandemic, Asian Americans have not been immune to the surge in unemployment. Across the nation, the unemployment rate for Asian Americans jumped from 2.4 percent in February to 14.5 percent in April, before slowly settling to 6.7 percent in November, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In Chicago, Chinatown businesses felt the blow of the pandemic long before Illinois’s statewide shutdown in midMarch, said Hong Liu, the executive director of Chinatown-based nonprofit Midwest Asian Health Association. In fact, some business owners started to report a nearly eighty percent drop in

sales volume shortly after the first cluster of COVID-19 cases in Wuhan, China, broke out at the end of 2019.

“The Chinese community started to be cautious and stopped going to restaurants starting in January,” Liu said. “Even the American people, they knew there was a huge outbreak in China, so they were afraid of coming to Chinatown to eat.”

With COVID-19 disproportionately affecting those in the service industry, Chinatown residents—many of whom work in restaurants, retail stores, and hotels—are increasingly dependent on unemployment benefits to survive.

In Cook County, the number of Asian Americans who filed for unemployment insurance increased by nearly sixteen times in the month of April, skyrocketing to an unprecedented level of more than 20,000 claimants––a steeper increase than that experienced by any other ethic group––according to data from the Illinois Department of Employment Security. By October, the number of claimants had dropped to

GENTRIFICATION 7,200. But it is still significantly higher than the pre-pandemic level, which had not exceeded 1,500 a month in the past five years.

Chinatown’s renters and homeowners at risk of losing their homes Chinatown rents have been rising rapidly in recent years. Weiying Zhang, a housing coordinator at CASL, said that the monthly cost of renting a two-bedroom apartment, for instance, has surged from approximately $700 five years ago to $1,200 currently.

Data aggregated by the apartment listing website RENTCafé confirms Zhang’s observation, showing an average rental price of $1,381 in Armour Square in December 2020. Just ten years ago, according to analysis by the Chicago Rehab Network, the area’s median monthly rent was only $548.

Chicago’s citywide affordable housing shortage also affects Chinatown residents. With 333,000 low-income households but only 217,000 affordable housing units, Chicago has a rental affordability gap of approximately 116,000 units, according to the latest report by DePaul’s Institute for Housing Studies.

There are nearly 400 people on the waitlist of Archer Courts, a popular 146-unit affordable housing property located in the heart of Chinatown, but only two or three families are able to move in every year, Zhang said. Seniors, especially, have a hard time securing a spot in the area’s limited senior housing facilities. According to Zhang, most of them have to wait eight to ten years before they can get off the waiting lists.

The secrecy surrounding housing information in Chinatown makes it even more difficult for tenants who are already struggling to pay rent to cope with the additional economic hardship brought by COVID-19.

Many landlords in Chinatown are small, private owners who are reluctant to report their real income and pay tax accordingly, Zhang said. Tenants at risk of homelessness could theoretically apply for Chicago’s rental assistance program, which offers benefits that cover up to six months of rent. However, because landlords often refuse to cooperate with tenants in their grant application process, Chinatown residents have not been able to take advantage of the program, said Zhang.

Even the landlords themselves are threatened by the increased risk of foreclosure, according to Grace Chan McKibben, the executive director at the

A WOMAN LOOKS OUT WINDOW OF THE CHINATOWN ELDERLY APARTMENTS. PHOTO BY SARAH DERER

nonprofit Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community.

“In other communities, when people talk about housing challenges, they focus only on renters,” Chan McKibben said.

“Whereas in the Chinatown area, there are many small landlords because the Chinese culture values investing in real estate so much that even folks that are relatively low-income want to purchase an additional apartment as soon as they save some money.”

As such, Chinatown’s private landlords are under growing financial strain as more renters are unable to make payments on time. Over the past two decades, the 25th Ward, where Chinatown is located, has seen the third-highest property tax increases across all Chicago wards. It is becoming less and less feasible for these low- to middle-income homeowners to maintain their regular rental income, said Chan McKibben.

The move to the West leaves the older generation more isolated than ever In contrast with the experience of other Chinatowns across the nation, such as those in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, Chicago’s Chinatown still remains majority Asian. Census data shows that seventy-three percent of the Armour Square population is of Asian descent.

But the recent influx of more wellto-do immigrants from mainland China and young Chinese professionals is changing the neighborhood’s dynamics, organizers said, making the place less recognizable for the working-class Cantonese-speaking immigrants who used to dominate the community.

“The older people that have lived in Chinatown for a while tend to only speak Cantonese and not much English and not much Mandarin,” Chan McKibben said. “They are still getting used to the new environment.”

For the older generation, Chinatown offers them a sense of belonging in a city where they cannot assimilate.

But as residents continue to scatter across Chicago, it becomes harder for community organizations and service

providers to reach out to these more vulnerable populations.

“When seniors moved from Chinatown with their sons or daughters, they might become very, very isolated,” Luu said. “What we fear is that they are getting further away from us and other services like Chinese grocery stores, Chinese restaurants, the Chinatown library, and Chinese churches in Chinatown, which makes it difficult for them to be a part of the community.”

“Imagine if you’re an eighty-yearold woman traveling on a bus that stops at every stop from Archer Heights to Chinatown,” Luu continued. “That’s a forty-minute one-way bus ride!”

George Villanueva, an assistant professor of advocacy and social change at Loyola University who studied the displacement pattern in Chicago’s Chinatown, argues that the experience of Chinatown residents is just another example of how the working class in ethnic enclaves gets left out of the city’s urban transformation process.

“Chinatown is similar with other neighborhoods in Chicago in that it’s usually the marginalized and the working class in the community that is the most vulnerable,” Villanueva said.

In 2019, the city approved plans to build the massive high-end development “The 78” on vacant land between the Loop and Chinatown, spurring fear that such projects will encroach on the space of longtime residents.

“You get the tensions around the whole idea of whether those communities are going to be displaced in favor of younger professional classes,” Villanueva continued. “That’s not equitable development if you're just paying attention to giving more resources to people who already have the resources.” Yilun Cheng is a freelance journalist who reports on housing, immigration, race relations, and other social justice issues in Chicago and beyond. She holds a political science M.A. from Columbia University and is currently working toward her MSJ degree at the Medill School of Journalism.

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 29

CHA

CHA Lags on Section 8 Tenancy Approvals Chicago falls behind major cities in getting Section 8 voucher holders into their apartments.

BY MORLEY MUSICK

M

ore than forty-nine thousand Chicagoans rely on federally funded housing-choice vouchers to afford their apartments each month. The vouchers, commonly referred to as “Section 8” after the part of the 1937 Housing Act that mandated them, are distributed by the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and pick up the cost left over after tenants pay thirty percent of their income toward the cost of renting market-rate apartments.

Before a voucher-holding tenant can move into their apartment, both the landlord and the unit must undergo a federally mandated background check and inspection process. The CHA’s inspection and approval process can often drag on for weeks, and is significantly slower, on average, than those of at least two other public housing agencies.

Because the vouchers help tenants afford market-rate apartments, they’re supposed to provide low-income renters with choice in where to live. Chicago’s housing voucher program has apparently failed to provide this mobility; more voucher holders live in South Shore and Austin than in all of the city’s nineteen majority-white communities combined.

The slowness of the request for tenancy approval—or RTA, also called the “leaseup,” process—may contribute to voucher holders’ reduced ability to compete for apartments, thereby impacting their mobility.

Via Freedom of Information Act requests, the Weekly obtained data from the CHA showing how long it took tenants to get approved to move

into their units last summer, as well as comparable documents from the New York City Housing Authority and the King County Housing Authority, which services the metro area around Seattle.

CHA provided data from April 9 to August 11, 2020; NYC, from April 9 to September 17; and King County, from April 9 to September 20.

An analysis found that during that period, some thirty percent of Chicago tenants were able to complete the leaseup process in thirty days or less, compared with fifty-six percent of tenants in King County, and ninety-six percent of tenants in NYC’s Housing Authority. More than twenty-seven percent of Chicago tenants waited longer than fifty days for their lease-up, compared to fourteen percent in King County. Zero tenants in NYC waited more than fifty days for their lease-up during the period we analyzed.

Chicagoans who hold vouchers already face a slew of challenges finding apartments, many of which stem from long-entrenched racism and discriminatory housing practices. The lagging lease-up processing times only add to the difficulty. Researchers who study housing cite the vouchers’ low value and landlord discrimination as key factors as to why vouchers don’t provide mobility.

Landlords who can make more money from private market tenants have less incentive to accept voucher holders and may also be biased against them, perceiving voucher holders as unreliable tenants.

A 2015 study published in Housing Policy Debate found landlords consider voucher holders unattractive because

30 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 4, 2021

ILLUSTRATION BY ELLIE MEJÍA

accepting them as tenants required too much paperwork, inspections, and often entailed administrative errors on the part of public housing agencies.

“Poor administration of voucher rental applications and extended lease-up processes only compound the obstacles of discrimination and poverty, making it extremely difficult to compete with non-voucher-assisted renters,” said Ben Goldsmith, an independent housing researcher who worked with housing choice voucher holders for several years. “The toll is enormous. It creates a race to the bottom in which only the least desirable rentals are within reach.

It hinders mobility and magnifies segregation rather than combating it.”

The CHA gives itself more time for its lease-up process than either the NYC or King County housing agencies do. The CHA says its RTA process takes thirty-six days, whereas NYCHA states that owners can expect new lease contracts approved in thirty days or less and King County’s administrative plan explains that moveins can occur after a fifteen-day apartment and landlord approval process.

Though the landlord approval step of the CHA’s RTA process has a sevenbusiness-day target length, Goldsmith, who worked with voucher tenants while employed at Housing Choice Partners from February 2018 to June 2019, said the actual approval process takes “minutes, not weeks.”

Much of the responsibility for the lethargic pace of lease-up approvals may fall with the private contractor who administers the voucher process, Nan McKay & Associates, which calls itself “the leading provider of professional services to the affordable housing industry.” Records obtained via a FOIA request and reviewed by the Weekly show that between October 2019 and January 2020, the firm fell below the CHA’s performance benchmarks—sometimes by as much as seventy percent—in the majority of areas that the CHA measures.

In one example, Nan McKay produced a Housing Assistance Payments contract (a document needed to complete a leaseup for a voucher holding tenant) on time in only thirty-eight percent of cases over this time.

CHA When the firm fails to meet its benchmarks, the consequences are minimal: Nan McKay earns a one- or two-percent pay increase for meeting benchmarks, and a similarly small pay cut for failing to meet benchmarks.

Voucher holder Angela Lacy dealt with the effects of lengthy move-in times and administrative errors firsthand in 2014, when she had to move from her unit at Hyde Park Towers after the property owners decided they no longer wanted CHA voucher holders in the building.

Lacy sent her request to move to the CHA, requesting access to the Amli Building, an accessible property whose Loop location would help with her disability. After the initial request languished, she found out that her paperwork had been lost internally.

When the CHA inspectors went to look at her prospective unit to approve it for usage, they inspected the wrong unit.

During the five months Lacy waited for a decision about the unit, she experienced homelessness. Ultimately, after weeks without her own apartment, she was surprised to find out that the owner of the Amli Building had refused to accept the rent the CHA was offering.

At the time, Greg Mutz, Amli’s CEO, said in a statement to Crain’s that “Amli does not support the push to provide luxury rental housing to a lucky few when so many are on the waiting list for basic housing.” Then-mayor Rahm Emanuel vowed the CHA would stop the practice.

In the end, Lacy was denied the apartment. She ultimately moved into her current home, a property with dysfunctional elevators that sometimes require her to take the stairs, against the advice of her surgeon.

“I have a disability, so I needed a place that was safe for me,” she said. “I ended up in a building that is not ADA compliant...

I don’t trust the CHA right now.”

The CHA’s approval process can also be compounded by long background checks that landlords conduct on their prospective tenants. One voucher holder who spoke to the Weekly on condition of anonymity said that several landlords failed CHA background checks while she was trying to move. In the process, she lost $1200 in application fees.

Goldsmith said that the CHA should find a way to process RTAs more efficiently, particularly because landlords are unlikely to keep a unit vacant on the off chance CHA will approve it for vouchers. “They can start by doing what many other cities and counties are doing and conducting more of the approval process concurrently, frontloading approval of the monthly rent and lease so that once a unit is inspected all parties know that their search for an apartment or a tenant is over.”

The CHA did not provide comment by press time.

Lacy said she is looking to move again, this time to a property that’s better-suited to her disability, but she fears that the CHA’s lease-up process will cause similar problems as those she faced before.

“I have anxiety over [moving] because in the back of my mind [the CHA] could stop this again and then I’ll be right back where I started from,” she said. “I just want to be in a place where I... can take the elevator, and if something goes wrong I can leave, instead of feeling anxiety and worry.” Morley Musick is a writer and reporter from Chicago. He last covered the DuSable Museum’s virtual-reality MLK exhibit.

FEBRUARY 4, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 31

SERVICE DIRECTORY CLASSIFIED Section SERVICE DIRECTORY SHOWCASE: JOE & RUTH REMODELING of Illinois Inc.

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