Mixed-Income Development in Chicago's Jefferson Park Faces Protest

"Alderman, John Arena, and representatives from Full Circle Communities, the project's nonprofit developer, attempted to explain the vision for the seven-story, 100-unit building, which would house families, veterans, and people with disabilities," Maya Dukmasova reports for the Chicago Reader. That development drew visible and intense opposition, "One home owner said she was worried tenant screening wouldn't prevent future residents "from bringing in every miscreant cousin, nephew, brother, son." Another said she's worked with Section 8 voucher holders before. 'The behavior never changes,' she said, 'and it's the majority of the participants in these programs,'" Dukmasova reports.

The discomfort stems from the below market rate units that would be in the building, "Twenty units would be leased at market-rate rents—between $900 and $1,700 per month. Sixty units would be affordable to households making up to 60 percent of area median income, or $46,140, and would rent for between $800 to $1,200 per month," Dukmasova writes.

This is not the first time there have been protests over developments in the neighborhood, "100 white protesters who gathered outside Branch Community Church in northwest-side Jefferson Park February 9 to oppose a proposed affordable housing development felt eerily reminiscent of the 1960s," Dukmasova reports.