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00:00:10Ken:I’m Ken Davis and today - oh, Lincoln Yards. A multi-billion dollar mega development, something you would think that any big city would kill for with its cleaner high-tech jobs and gleaming new workspaces all in a convenient central location with luxurious living and pristine new towers looking out at a completely repurposed and revitalized Chicago River, something open space. The list goes on and on and on. But you know it’s 2020 more or less and we are much more wary of these kind of big-ticket projects today. We are much more appreciative of the role that immigrant communities play in sowing the needs for our next generations. We’ve got a far deeper understanding of the importance of a diverse population and we’re really beginning to understand the complexity and the drawbacks of the draconian financing schemes that make these cities within cities possible. And lots and lots of people are starting to say, “Hm, no - no thanks.” And some are saying no with legal action. We have some of them with us. Aneel Chablani is an attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Brenda Delgado is the Board President for Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, and I’m just really happy that both of you have agreed to come and sit at our table today, so thank you. Thank you very much.Brenda D:Thank you.Ken:You described the loss Mr. Chablani, Mr. Attorney, you described the lawsuit you filed this week as a challenge to the Chicago TIF system and you said that TIFs deepen racial inequality and make segregation worse. Explain.Aneel C:Well thank you Ken for having us.Ken:You’re welcome. Glad you’re here.Aneel C:Se appreciate the opportunity to talk more about TIF generally and about this lawsuit. The lawsuit is a challenge specifically to the creation of what’s been called the Lincoln Yards TIF, which is the Courtland in Chicago River TIF around the process and the creation of that district, but it’s also a challenge to the system that has been used by Chicago for years now in a way that as the complaint alleges we believe is abusive and a misuse of TIF funds. And specifically what the lawsuit challenges is whether or not the Lincoln Yards District actually meets the statutory requirements around blight and but for. And what that means…Ken:Good old but for.Aneel C:That’s right. TIF is a very unique statute. It’s a way of investing in communities that are truly in need of economic development, and so it was designed in a way to ensure that when we use TIF funds, and keep in mind TIF funds are drawn off from the general tax base, when we use those it should be in areas that truly meet blighted standards and would not see the kind of economic opportunity or development without the use of those public subsidies. So that’s the intended use, and when we use TIF funds those districts are created for 23 years so it’s pulling off increment financing from the tax base for 23 years to invest in those communities. It can be used in a very successful way to truly bring equity to cities. It has not been used in that way in Chicago. Instead what we see are districts that are created and Lincoln Yards is just the most emblematic of uses, but districts that legitimately can’t be seen as disparately in need of subsidies to spur economic development.Ken:You mean like LaSalle Street for example, the famous LaSalle Street?Aneel C:That’s absolutely right. So that’s our concern that there’s been a use of TIF in districts that don’t really meet the light and but for requirements. And what’s happened is as those districts are created, as those are generating revenue and pulling off increment financing back into those districts it is disparately impacting other areas of the city, specifically communities of color and specifically communities that are not being able to use TIF funds to spur development in the areas most in need.00:04:30Ken:Just for the record explain the but for part of it.Brenda D:So TIF districts are part of a statute that requires that private development be not possible if it wasn’t for this TIF, and the keywords is ‘but for’. So it’s not that development could occur or could not occur it’s that specifically that development would not occur but for if it wasn’t for the TIF. We see Lincoln Yards sits right in the middle of three of the most affluent parts of the city. Those neighborhoods are not just developing at a quick pace but they also have the most affluent citizens of Chicago living in them with rents increasing exponentially for those who can stay. Development is already occurring in those areas and so we feel very strongly that that area can be developed and Sterling Bay is free to do that, but the requirement of having TIF does not meet that requirement. It would already be developed.Ken:Over the last couple of weeks I heard the alderman of that ward say that this is ridiculous. It’s just a bunch of empty property with degraded shore lines along the river and it’s got ground pollution, and this is something that there is no possible way this is going to develop unless it gets some help from the city.Brenda D:Well that area has been a manufacturing district for almost 30 years or so.Ken:Longer than that.Brenda D:And the reasons why it’s a manufacturing district is because it was zoned as such. But the alderman says himself it has the beautiful Chicago River running right through it and that Chicago River is a commodity that has increasing value as we see and more people are choosing to enjoy it. And it can be developed and it would bring that attraction of developers if it was allowed and be rezoned, but it does not require TIF for it to do that and that’s what we are strongly against.Aneel C:If you look at the circumstances over the past few years in that area I think it’s hard-pressed to say that that area would remain simply vacant without these TIF funds. So I think an accurate way to describe it…Ken:I can’t help but smile when you say that. Yeah, I can just imagine 20 years from now that it’s just sitting there just filled with weeds because just nobody wanted to develop it.Aneel C:That’s right and this is an accurate way to describe it. Lincoln Yards has the strongest financial support in real estate and development is already underway. Those actually aren’t our words, those are Sterling Bay’s own words back in 2017. Sterling Bay had become purchasing lots in this area back in 2013. This was an area that was promoted by Sterling Bay in the city to Amazon for HQ2. In that promotion it was described as the most capitalized area in the city. This is prime real estate and because of the activity going around there in terms of increasing property values, increasing building activity evidenced through permits being pulled. All of these indicators in the surrounding areas of Bucktown, Lincoln Park and Wicker Park. We know what’s going to happen there as soon as it is allowed to happen. The zoning restrictions were just removed in August of 2017 so we know what will happen even without using $1.3-billion in funds that should be going to the general tax base to support schools and our public institutions. 00:08:18Ken:There are several things about this that I just really don’t understand and one of them is as I understand it this is an area that I think we would all agree needs massive infrastructure improvement. A couple of bridges are needed and roadways. The city would like to extend the city grid as much as possible. And the way I understand it is that Sterling Bay has agreed to essentially front the money to build those infrastructure items and then over the next 27 years they will be reimbursed through the increment which is the difference between the tax what it would be and what it is when it’s built. That increment would go to Sterling Bay to offset the cost that they had up front to build all of that infrastructure that normally would be built by the city. So isn’t that kind of a fair use? Let’s not talk about the specific numbers, but doesn’t it make sense for the city to use this as an economic development tool to say you go out there and build that road, put in the streetlights or whatever it is and we will let the tax system pay you back for your expenses? That sounds reasonable to me.Brenda D:So once again it’s that requirement that if you’re going to use TIF it needs to meet that requirement that it’s a blighted community and it would not be developed but for the use of TIF. That community is going to be developed. Let the developers come in. We’re not against Sterling Bay choosing to develop Lincoln Yards. It’s going to be an economic engine if it is developed.Ken:So would developers want to do it if the city told them they have to put in the water lines and the sewer lines and the street lights and everything else, would that still work?Brenda D:So the use of TIF that really concerns us the most is it continues to be used in the most affluent areas of the city, and the other parts of the city that are required to be using general revenue from property tax dollars are not seeing the benefits of that. So we continue to see the central Loop area being developed. We continue to see the north parts of the city being developed, the near west side being developed and it’s a cycle. It’s an ongoing cycle that frustrates the other ends of the city. The city stretches all the way from Rogers Park to into the 100s and almost to Beverly. There’s residents who have been waiting for development and need infrastructure and need the support and we cannot wait any further for those property tax dollars to support all communities.Aneel C:If I could just add, you know I think the question of whether that area needs some infrastructure development is a separate question and a separate analysis than whether it qualifies for TIF financing. And you know we have to keep in mind that the TIF statute is very explicit about the uses of TIF, and it has restrictions because what it is in effect doing is removing funds, incremental tax increases from the general tax base for 23 years. That is a significant change and a significant burden upon other areas outside of that TIF district. So it’s designed in a way to ensure that when it is going to be used or when a district is going to be proposed it needs to truly meet those requirements. That’s what we need to analyze here and that’s what we need to analyze in terms of whether this was proper. The question of whether there are some infrastructure needs is different and the answer could be yes, we do need some infrastructure but the question could be how much of that should be picked up by developers. And you know the other aspect of this is you appropriately described it as a city within a city. When you create a city like that a high-end commercial residential area it is sort of creating the kinds of needs that would have to be reflected in increased infrastructure support. So this idea that we have to build this infrastructure because of this plan for a city within a city doesn’t mean that’s the only way to develop that area.00:12:42Ken:A number that I haven’t seen and I guess it’s unattainable at this point but I think it would be interesting to speculate on is how much the increment over 23 or 27 years, whatever it is would produce. I mean is there any way to even estimate that? Of course we don’t know what the valuation of Lincoln Yards would be when it’s completed but I mean we are talking about many many many billions of dollars I would guess. Isn’t that what the TIF would create? Do we know?Brenda D:Absolutely. We know that we have some TIFs now where development has really spawned quickly, so the South Loop, the Near West, the old Cabrini Green neighborhood those TIFs are pulling in more than $20-million in property tax for those TIF districts. And those communities continue to be expanding and growing and developing further. With just those three that’s more than $60-million going into TIFs that’s not going to regular general property tax revenue.Ken:And Sterling Bay would be as big as those three, maybe bigger I’m assuming if it ever gets fully built-out.Brenda D:And $60-million, so for example CPS is happy to report the $31-million in equity funding they just gave to just a portion of their schools. $31-million is great for those schools who are fortunate enough to get that extra bonus, but there’s $60-million that could have been had if the revenue for property tax was actually distributed throughout the entire city. So those are real dollars to public schools that in dire need to be adequately funded.00:14:22Ken:This is a point of confusion that I know Ben Joravsky and I have gone around quite a bit on his show and on this show, but it’s important I think to differentiate that the Chicago Public Schools is an independent taxing authority. And when it assesses its needs and states we need this amount of money it can assess that and it can get that money. I think there’s been some confusion about TIFs in saying that this money is going to Sterling Bay instead of going to Manley High School for example or something like that, and that’s not entirely true is it? It’s an indirect relationship, would you agree with that?Aneel C:Well I think there are again a couple of layers to that. First of all I think you need to consider how TIF districts that truly don’t meet the but for and blight requirements, how pulling off increment financing from the general tax base affects the overall rate that other tax payers…Ken:Because everybody has to pay.Aneel C:That is correct. So even though CPS may set an amount and set the levy amount and generate that amount through the general tax base separate from the TIF districts, if that TIF should not have been created in the first place the rate that everyone is paying is increasing with that along with the other taxable bodies.Ken:And would be lower.Aneel C:That’s right. There are also limitations under state law in terms of the percentage of increase that taxing bodies like CPS can increase year to year. And when your general tax base is artificially lower than it should be because of the creation of these TIF districts it is in effect limiting the potential for CPS to generate and to maximize the increases under that state statute.Ken:It’s one of those things where these things are so interwoven and it gets complicated, but nevertheless the big picture issue that we are here to talk about today is this thing about whether we need to TIF something like the area around Goose Island. A few weeks ago we had Peter Cunningham who ran the Bill Daley campaign and he voiced what we’ve come to call the Cunningham axiom, which is that TIFs don’t work in the places they were designed for. If you try to put a TIF in in West Garfield Park the increment is not going to be very high. You are not going to get much out of it. But if you put the TIF in Lincoln Park you’re going to get a lot out of it, so it’s kind of a perverse tool. It doesn’t do the thing that it was actually designed to do to help struggling neighborhoods with environmental issues and everything else to make these improvements. Do you agree with that?Aneel C:I don’t agree with that promise. I think what’s happened is that Chicago has misused TIF for so long that we are using the misuse to support the argument that it just won’t work in the proper way. Now I think what is true is that you would not see the same type of incremental increases in places like West Garfield Park or areas on the South Side that you would in Lincoln Yards. That’s true, because you’re not going to have the same type of property value increases. But the fact is when the city is creating districts in places like Lincoln Yards and maintaining districts in the central area and Near North and developers can go there and get subsidized for up to 1.3-billion why would they make efforts or what incentive do they have to invest in districts that are truly created to meet the statutory intent to develop in those areas? So it is a troubling argument because I think we’ve in this city misused it for so long that we just don’t think it can work properly.Ken:That’s an interesting point.Brenda D:I think it’s also just a lack of priority and a lack of effort. So when you have a targeted effort to turn a community around, so for example I live in Washington Park and I live just south of 51st Street where no development is happening. I’ve been there for ten years and I’m still surrounded by vacant lots. But there was some concerted efforts from both the aldermen and the mayor and the city departments on creating Parade of Homes and it was very useful. And they used some vacant city lots and they brought in some different revenue streams and it’s in just one or two years turning that area around. The difference is there was coordination between the powers that be and there was a priority to turning that community around. So where there’s a will there’s a way and the lack of priority in many parts of the city continue to struggle with the lack of support, the lack of infrastructure, the lack of investment and that’s where the decision-making has to end. The lawsuit specifically calls for a reform of the TIF system, not just to stop the public investment into this private development for this TIF, but also to reform the TIF system so that it can actually be equitable for all parts of the city.00:20:02 Ken:So in this suit you’re not attempting to just kill the TIF process?Brenda D:Absolutely not.Ken:You think it has value?Brenda D:Right. So when it’s correctly used and when it has a - for example, we could use some tools that we’re calling for now like the racial equity impact analysis that actually looks at how this use of TIF s going to impact these communities. None of this analysis has been done for Lincoln Yards and it needs to be. So reforming the TIF system is one of the demands of the lawsuit that we hopefully can work together to achieve. Ken:Let me ask it this way, the number one question that gets asked at this table is why given the fact that we have so much open space that is part of the grid that already has the sewer and the water lines in it but there may be three or four houses on the block, why can the City of Chicago not induce developers to redevelop these communities that have fallen by the wayside? What are the financial stumbling blocks that are causing us not to be able to do that? And that’s my favorite number one question. I’ve never heard a good answer for it. You may be the ones. Maybe you have it.Aneel C:I agree it’s a great question. You know I think what we are looking at in terms of the advocacy that’s been done by Raise Your Hand and grassroots collaborative is exactly at least one answer to that question. You know we continue year after year to lament that wealth and equality growing in the city, that we continue to be racially and ethnically segregated and that we are not making progress like we should on those, and everyone will agree with that. But yet we are not making the tough choices in this city to reverse those trends. The creation of Lincoln Yards and the use of up to $1.3-billion in TIF funds is perpetuating those trends and it is easy to do that. It is much easier to put a development in that area because we know development is going to happen anyway and it’s easier to use TIF in there because we know property values are rising.Ken:It’s safe.Aneel C:It is harder, it’s harder work to invest in the communities that we truly need to do to invest in in order to reverse these trends of wealth and equality and racial segregation. But that’s what the advocacy has been about and that’s what we are hoping will come about through this lawsuit and through these efforts is to truly reform this TIF system so that it can start being used in that way.00:22:47Ken:That’s very interesting. I was last night up at, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa had a community forum up in Logan Square because of the Emmett Street project that they want to build, and I have to say I was very cynical walking in. I was thinking there were going to be hundreds of people there and that it would be kind of a repeat of what we saw in Jefferson Park where people were going to say we don’t want these people. It was not like that at all and there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people from all walks of life there and they were all testifying that they want to see a diverse community and they supported this project, which is a pretty radical project. It’s a hundred units of affordable housing right on top of the Logan Square Blue Line stop. And it gave me a little bit of confidence that maybe the people of Chicago are beginning to understand these things in a way that I don’t think they did ten years ago. And maybe, just maybe there is actual support for trying to use these tools in a more complex, more subtle and frankly more difficult way to use them. Yes, no? Brenda D:Absolutely. I think many of the residents in all over parts of Chicago are dedicated to their communities and want their communities to strive to be the best communities that they can be. They need the resources and the priorities to be placed in those areas equally. I live in Washington Park. I have fabulous neighbors. I have more vacant lots around me than I do fabulous neighbors. I would love a neighbor instead of a vacant lot next to me. Many of those neighbors also have been dedicated to those communities for generations or for decades and that’s the developing Brownsville neighborhood. So those schools that are in those neighborhoods are starting to turn around. We need to make sure that equal light is being shed on all parts of the city instead of just the Lincoln Yards and the North areas that can quickly be developed and turned around within a year or two.00:25:03Ken:So we’ve established that your suit is not in pursuit of destroying TIFs but modifying them, but reforming them. Give us the sort of the lay of the land now. What happens next? You have filed your suit. Is it a Cook County suit?Aneel C:Yes. The complaint was filed in Cook County in the Circuit Court in the Chancery Division. It’s seeking injunctive relief. What happens next is we will soon be filing a motion for a preliminary injunction which means we will attempt to get an order from the court to enjoy activity in the Lincoln Yards area that would be supported through the promise of TIF funds, and so that’s the next step.Ken:So in English that means you want the court to take the TIF away from Sterling Bay?Aneel C:That’s right. Ultimately what the suit seeks is to reverse this decision that has approved the city ordinance that has approved the creation of the TIF district. We’re not opposing the development. As Brenda said Sterling Bay we’re not opposing their ability to develop in that area and use their money or other private money to develop in that area. What we’re opposing is the use of the public funds to subsidize that and so that’s what the ultimate goal of the lawsuit is.Ken:Okay, so not to beat a dead horse but who builds those bridges then? Sterling Bay has to build the bridges and turn them over to the city, is that what happens?Aneel C:That would be part of a development plan. When you propose to build a city within a city those things are going to be part of your development so there are other choices. You know a lot of the conversation has focused on this as being the one and only plan for development. I think those are the wrong parameters. There’s a lot that can be done with that area. It’s bursting at the seems with efforts to develop. We’ve seen that as soon as zoning restrictions are lifted you get Whole Foods, you get Crate & Barrel, you get Bed, Bath & Beyond.Ken:Well you had people trying to get in when the zoning restrictions were more strict. They were still trying to figure out ways to cheat on what buildings were in there, so yeah, the pressure is immense. Well I’m fascinated by your attempt and what can I say - good luck. I’m not supposed to say that but hey, hang in there. This is a very interesting test of the way things have been done and the way things are going to be done moving forward and you guys have actually pulled the trigger on it, so congratulations on that. Thank you. Thank you for being here today.Brenda D:Thank you.Aneel C:Thanks for having us.00:27:51EndPART TWO: Demographer Rob Paral00:28:37Ken:Demographics are in the news a lot lately. In fact, you could argue that demographics really are the news. Chicago is shrinking but not by much but enough to do some real damage and it’s getting more affluent. That may sound like good news but that’s only if you are affluent yourself. If you’ve been living reasonably comfortably in a middle income neighborhood and then suddenly all the houses on your block are being bought by people with way more money than you have that’s not a happy situation. So it seemed like a great time to call in a demographer. We need a demographer and one of the very best currently practicing in Chicago is Rob Paral who works most conveniently for a firm called Rob Paral & Associates. He’s written eloquently about black out migration, the gentrification of large parts of the city and the staggering impact that immigration has played in cg’s history. I think an argument could be made that of all the bone-crushing issues and problems that we talk about every week here on the show nothing is more important than being vigilant about our demographics. It’s something we all ignore with great peril. Rob welcome to the show.Rob P:Thank you so much Ken. Happy to be here to talk about numbers and neighborhoods and populations and people.Ken:I’ve wanted to have you on the show for a long time so we’re going to have to talk fast because we both have so much to say.Rob P:Okay.Ken:I think out migration of African Americans is probably a good place to start because everything ties into it, right? Just give us some numbers. Let’s start there.Rob P:So there was kind of a hidden story for a long time in Chicago which was that every year the Census Bureau was coming out with data on the city and saying the city’s population was falling or maybe just flat. You had all kinds of people wringing their hands and saying that it was due to all kinds of things, saying that it was due to taxes, due to this or that. But then we finally started looking into the numbers a little more and we realized that there is only one group leaving the City of Chicago, only one and it is the African American population. And the situation is that the white population is growing and actually growing faster than Latinos even which is a story in itself. Latinos are growing, Asians are growing, but we have an exodus of blacks in Chicago that it’s hard to put a good adjective on it because of the size and the scope. It just keeps going year after year anywhere from ten to 20,000 people and we’ve been going for a couple of decades of this.Ken:From what I’ve seen of your numbers it almost looks like it’s the second migration but in reverse.Rob P:It is the reverse migration. Ken:The black population peaked, I read yesterday that it peaked in 1980.Rob P:1980 was the peak of the black population in the City of Chicago and then it was declining but not in a very dire way. Something really tipped around year 2000 though and the numbers really started nose-diving.Ken:Now you say white population is stable or growing but there’s always numbers behind the numbers because a lot of white people are leaving Chicago.Rob P:I’m glad you asked about that because whites are not a monolithic group. White people in the North West side and the South West side are not the same white people as living in what I call the zone of affluence, the growing booming expanding downtownish area. So actually we’ve got two things going on. We do have people leaving Elmwood Park, places like that, North West side. They are retiring. They are moving away. They’re not having children. Their children are moving out of the city. But then we have just an incredible influx of people and not just whites, but there are a lot of young white people getting out of college coming to Chicago living anywhere from Roosevelt Road on the South to as far North as you want to go - Montrose or North out to Western Avenue just booming. You look at the housing growth, housing development, jobs, etc. So you’ve got this center of the doughnut just kind of expanding and bursting at the seams in Chicago and that explains a lot of the white growth. The Latino growth we can talk about too, a whole different story going on there.00:32:32Ken:That is also a completely different story.Rob P:A whole different story with Latinos. Latinos in Chicago saved us for many decades in the sense that when…Ken:I think that’s such an important point.Rob P:When white population was declining and there was black population decline we were stable and in fact in the ‘90s we grew because of Latino growth and that was driven by immigration. So you had neighborhoods anywhere from Pilsen down to the further South West side going out towards Midway Airport. You could pick any number of neighborhoods, North West side, Belmont and they were just really growing. Schools were growing, full of kids, etc. That’s all turning around too now though. Immigration is way down. It’s down for a bunch of reasons. Partly it’s the economy. Partly it’s because of the guy we’ve got in the White House, partly because of that. And then also if you look at Latinos in Chicago, I’ve mapped this out, they’ve been moving westward away from the lake front. They are getting pushed out by housing prices. It’s very clear, Latinos on the North side of Chicago every year westward, westward, westward. A real good example that a lot of people would be familiar with is look at the Humboldt Park area. Look at division in California, the center of the Puerto Rican community. If you go around they’ve got these big Puerto Rican flags and cultural centers, etc. Just a block or two east of there it is so gentrified. Ken:It’s all coffee shops and yoga studios. Rob P:And you repeat that story in Pilsen, you repeat it in neighborhood after neighborhood, so that’s the Latino story, getting kind of priced out and not getting replenished by the immigration that we’ve always had.00:34:05Ken:But we need to stay with that a little bit because that’s such a story of Chicago. I mean I love that phrase you used about Chicago being a processor of immigrants. I have to say as someone who grew up at North and Kedzie I was on-hand as the Puerto Rican influx came into that community, so it’s been a long time. That’s been 40 or 50 years. And I have been alive long enough to basically see this mouse in the snake, to see the large influx of Hispanics coming into the city and having their children and they are having their grandchildren and these grandchildren are success stories. Well I mean they are all success stories but there’s a difference to… Rob P:They are moving on up. They are doing better than their parents.Ken:We are seeing people who are graduating from college. They are getting much better jobs than their parents ever could have imagined and we are seeing that American story play out in just all its glory in Chicago but it’s slowing down.Rob P:Here’s why that’s a problem for Chicago. Chicago you could say was kind of made to be and has always been like a Waring blender or a Mixmaster or some kind of a processor of people. It’s true, because our history is waves of migration, both migration from the south but also immigration and then the story you just described up and out moving out. And when you cut that off, when you cut off that immigration you get a vacuum after it and that’s a problem. And there’s another kind of side story to that which occurs to me, if you look at Chicago from a helicopter ride or the L ride where you are high up in the air you could go through a lot of neighborhoods here where the houses are really very modest. You know Chicago is not a pretentious city. You could say oh my gosh those are small houses. Those are narrow streets. You could say who would want to live here? You could say that by the standards of the average typical American. But you know what, you know who wants to live there? Immigrants want to live there and that’s been our history, so we’re set up to do that and that’s why the things we are doing right now are so self-damaging about immigration.Ken:My wife and I have made this exact comment when we’ve walked around on the North West side and out on the West side and so forth and you see these [tiny] little neighborhoods with the really kind of nasty 1950s four-flats. They are just not very pretty buildings and we’re saying it’s like these are not the kinds of places that we would want to live. But you know who would want to live there and you know who would find this to be a vast improvement over the lives that they left behind? And that’s what we do. That’s what we do here. Rob P:And we will take care of that and make it prosperous and would make that neighborhood strong and safe. Ken:That’s right. Exactly right.Rob P:That’s been our story. It’s also been the story of midwestern cities in general so this is being replicated in the Milwaukees, the Clevelands, the Cincinnatis.00:37:06Ken:I mentioned earlier I was out at the thing last night, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, the alderman had a big community meeting to talk about what’s going on with the Emmett Street project which is this thing that they want to build. It’s a hundred units of affordable housing essentially on top of the Blue Line stop at Logan Square. And one of the things that came up there that - I was amazed by a lot of things I heard last night, but one that I heard is that the schools that were built you know in the days of Paul Vallas and stuff, these kind of 1980s schools are starting to empty out like everything else.Rob P:Yeah.Ken:And it’s because there are no or not no, but the number of Hispanic children in those neighborhoods has dropped so dramatically that it’s being affected in the schools. Rob P:That’s of course the perfect example of that, it went from a Polish European immigrant prior to the 50s to being very Latino and Puerto Rican and now it’s families, if they are families with no kids or one kid and you can’t sustain the schools that we had built in some of those neighborhoods.00:38:28Ken:Which leads me to a whole different question. Are we just not having children anymore?Rob P:Yes. What they call the replacement rate for the white population in the United States is slightly negative and for African Americans I think it’s slightly negative. I might be wrong about that. And again it’s been immigration that distinguishes us from Japan. The same thing is true in Germany. If you take the immigrants out of Germany and France those are negative population trends, in Western Europe, in the prosperous East Asia societies and here. And we’ve been lucky in the US because as I say we’ve made up for it with immigration.Ken:We’ve always had people who want to come here.Rob P:Yeah, and we’ve had it built into our DNA so far.Ken:Yeah. So it really is true then what has been suspected for a while that when a population begins to sample affluence and gets more and more educated and lives a more comfortable life they tend not to have as many children.Rob P:There’s a correlation of prosperity in education and child-rearing. And you know where you see it by the way? You see it in Mexico now. Ken:Yeah, yeah!Rob P:The average woman in Mexico up until the 1970s had something like eight children, I mean a really large number per child and that’s been plummeting, which actually is a factor in the changing immigration. We have less people coming here so less pressure to leave Mexico, but you are right, no, we don’t have the children we used to have.Ken:I mean that has all kinds of implications. You raised the specter of Japan which is a country that seems to be just kind of imploding on itself demographically.Rob P:Well I think it’s about consumers. Children turn into consumers. They turn into people who buy a house eventually and every Saturday run to Home Depot and run to this and that to buy things for their property and then they turn into taxpayers. And what you need in a healthy society is what they call a relatively good ratio of workers and children to take care of the elderly. But we’ve got this as you said mouse in a snake, the baby boomers moving into retirement, arguably not enough people to sustain them.Ken:We baby boomers didn’t get too much right but we at least had enough children [laughs] to sustain the population, but these damn kids today.Rob P:Baby boomers didn’t have enough children. The baby boomers’ parents had all the children because your parents came back from the war and had all the children.Ken:That’s right. I forgot.Rob P:No, actually the baby boomers they fell down on that. Ken:Yeah, that’s right. I had them trying to take credit for one thing and can’t even do that. Back to Chicago for a minute because we were talking just a little while ago about Lincoln Yards and all of that. This zone of affluence from a demographic point of view what are the advantages and disadvantages of having a great big growing zone of affluence in the middle of your city?Rob P:Well in the context of Lincoln Yards the zone of affluence which informally as I said before maybe goes as south as Roosevelt Road, actually probably is going to go farther south by the way. We could talk about what it’s going to look like ten or 20 years from now, it’s going to reach Hyde Park. It’s going to reach Hyde Park along the lake but anyway, a central part of the city growing. There’s so much demand there to move there and live there and build housing there and live there that the question of you need to subsidize that process is a little questionable. You’re subsidizing - it’s like subsidizing San Francisco. Name me a place where people want to live. It’s like subsidizing people to come live where they are already moving. There’s a real disconnect there.00:42:09Ken:Yeah. But this - I mean I guess my question is is it good for a city to have a zone of affluence? Does the city benefit from it?Rob P:Well I tell you one angle you might take on that is you would rather have a zone of affluence than no zone of affluence. If you want to really compare us to some of our more downtrodden midwestern patriots, the St. Luises, all of which have their little zone. They have little zones of affluence in St. Luis, Detroit, etc., but we are distinguished by being a global metro area that a lot of capital wants to come to and people want to, so you would rather have it than not. I think an issue with a zone of affluence is how do you make sure we don’t become a city and a society where your access to resources, your access to a safe neighborhood to government services to a job, etc., are not distinguished by your zip code. Because as soon as you get into a sense of where I live depends on what I get even though I’m in the same city why should anyone be happy with that? You’ve got to mellow out that affluence and spread its benefits.Ken:Another really key thing that I wanted to talk to you about is density because only in the last couple of years…Rob P:I like density. I like density. The worst density problems we have in the city are around prosperous areas, around CTA stations where people are reconverting two-flats, where they are knocking houses down to put a yard up for themselves a block away from a train station. You need density to support certain kinds of urban realities. You need it for the shops. You need it for public transportation. We’re going the wrong way with density in neighborhoods that are too affluent, Lincoln Park.Ken:I’m glad you’re saying that because it seems to me that it’s only been in really the last couple of years that we’ve actually been able to allow ourselves to appreciate density. I mean for most of my life it’s always been you’ve got to get out of here and go live in Libertyville or something, right?Rob P:Yeah, there’s something in the American what - DNA or [00:44:16] or something. There is this sense of density is bad. I think we have images of New York, I don’t know, the Godfather movie, something about crowding. And then there’s something about the American spirit of go out and have a big house and yard, but I think something is shifting on that, the young people. The young people are voting with their [feet]. They want density. For one thing lack of density costs a lot of money. You’ve got to own vehicles. Your transportation costs and time become high. Ken:The time spent mowing your lawn.Rob P:And you don’t have access to amenities, be it food, be it exercise, so there’s been a shift but it’s not with everyone. There’s still lots of folks that do want to live - you said Libertyville. I think Libertyville is doing pretty well but a lot of people want the density now.Ken:Yeah, and that to me seems to be something new that there is an appreciation for the fact that when you have a large crowd of people together as you said your amenities, the amenity fact arises dramatically.Rob P:And here’s an issue with those, I think in a lot of peoples’ minds there’s a sense of when there’s more density there’s more crime. But you know the crime rates of Chicago neighborhoods on the North side, the denser neighborhoods they are down historically, murder rates, different kinds of crimes. So we’ve kind of broken the connection between density and this idea that there’s crime as a result.Ken:I remember reading not long ago that in some neighborhoods in Chicago it’s safer than it is in the safest parts of Toronto which really surprised me.Rob P:I’ve seen that too that our crime rates are - well even if they are like Toronto I mean compared to what people have in their mind. There’s so much misconception about crime. My favorite complaint about that is anyone who reads a Chicago paper from out far away my goodness, the conclusion you would draw about what neighborhoods are like here. There’s a disconnect.00:46:04Ken:Yeah. Well let’s talk about that a little while. The crime issue and the incessant shooting reports that we have every day talk to me about that as a demographer. When you see that what are the first things that come to your mind when you think about just the urban mayhem that exists in some parts of our city?Rob P:Well you’re right with the word mayhem and you’re right with the word some because as a demographer I look at dot plots of where the crimes happen, and you know very sadly it’s not evenly distributed. It’s happening in several zip codes and several places, so you have this situation again. It’s like the city developing and splitting in two pieces. Neighborhoods that are getting safer over time, safer with more amenities and neighborhoods where the crime rate has not declined. So that’s what I think as a demographer is just how much we have limited peoples’ mobility so that they are stuck sometimes in neighborhoods of high crime.Ken:Now you get asked from time to time for recommendations on these things I know, that’s why you’re in business, and I’m just wondering if Lori Lightfoot’s people called you up, maybe they already have and they said, “What are your key recommendations for us? What are the things we need to look at from a demographic point of view like now?”Rob P:Talk to the African American community. Talk to leaders in the community. Talk to pastors. Talk to people on the street. What is going on? Because no one has explained the black out migration. We don’t know why it’s happening really, so find out what’s going on. Listen to people, what are their concerns and address them. Another issue is if you drive around Chicago you see these billboards move to Berwyn and you see other kinds of billboards, but maybe Chicago and Illinois need to start thinking more proactively about listening and coming up with what are the reasons to stay here and move here? We’ve never done that. We used to have Indiana in kind of a ridiculous way trying to poach Illinoisans with billboards. I mean it was crazy because there were billboards saying come to Indiana, get away from your high taxes, to a state that itself has all kinds of natives heading for the exits. It was just like if anything let’s try to make up for the fact we can’t keep people here. Ken:[Chuckles] And I always thought well if anybody was crazy enough to take them up on the offer in about six months they will be back but that’s a different discussion.Rob P:So we need to think of some marketing on this issue and we need to listen to communities.00:48:29Ken:So has anybody done really detailed research on where our - I say ‘our’ African Americans went? I mean they seem to have gone in many cases to suburbs leaning to the south.Rob P:There’s so much that’s not being looked at but we know a few things. So the black population in suburban Cook is growing actually, not by a lot. Well actually I take that back, as a percentage rate it’s growing by about 1% a y year, so some blacks are leaving Chicago for the suburbs.Ken:So they are living the American dream.Rob P:That’s only a portion. Well I hope they are. I mean there are some suburbs that are not doing well. Some people are in suburbs that don’t have a lot of amenities and have physical crisis, etc. Some people are doing well. But then is there a reverse migration to the south of African Americans from across the northern states? Absolutely yes. And you know where they are growing, people like to say oh they are going to places like Atlanta and they name cities. It’s not true. They are growing to suburban portions of southern metro areas, so the City of Atlanta is losing blacks. Ken:Is that right?Rob P:The City of Atlanta has a negative…Ken:I’ve never heard that.Rob P:Who would know that, right? Because some of the similar dynamics are happening. Perceptions or experiences with unsafe neighborhoods, inequitable resources, rising housing costs, problematic school systems. African Americans are suburbanizing in the south as well.Ken:So I’m going to move. I want to live in the suburbs but while I’m at it I might as well go someplace with a better climate.Rob P:That may be what’s happening. And again you talk about what was…it was out of the question 50 years ago, right? People were specifically leaving the south but the perception now is that it’s more hospitable.Ken:That’s fascinating. That’s a really interesting development. I had not heard.Rob P:The loss of blacks hurts, it really hurts Chicago because we were the prime destination for migration. This is where so much culture blossomed. We owe it to the African American community. We owe it to them to find out what’s going on.Ken:How much of this city they built.Rob P:Exactly.00:50:40Ken:Yeah, and this is the thanks. A little bit of history here. You made mention of the liberalization of immigration rights in the 60s and you kind of gave us a 50-60-100-year… Rob P:The history of immigration in Chicago, yeah.Ken:That’s really interesting. Rob P:Well go back to 1920 in Chicago. This city was 30 or 40% foreign-born, and if you included the children of the immigrants it was more than half foreign born, a huge foreign-born…Ken:Can I stop you just one second?Rob P:Yeah, go ahead.Ken:This is interesting. So this is the 1920s and 1930s. I went into the Chicago Public School system in the mid-50s so I was there with the children of those people.Rob P:That’s right. Ken:They and I.Rob P:Given your age you could easily have been the child of an immigration wave.Ken:Well I was. My parents came here in 1957, right. So yeah, when I grew up everybody was from somewhere.Rob P:People think oh what happened to immigrants? We had these huge numbers in the 20s. In the 30s and 40s it plummeted. Well it wasn’t an accident we shut it off. Our national politics got consumed by something similar today which was really kind of like slitting our own throat. And so in the 30s, 40s, 50s we had very very low levels of immigration in the United States. A long story short, in the mid-60s we you could say liberalized, we really made it fair actually. We took quotas away. We said people from Asia can come here and that starts the wave of immigration that we’ve known now for 30, 40, 50 years, yeah. Let Latinos coming in illegally. Ken:And all of those children now have grandchildren who I guess are millennials?Rob P:Those immigrants have children and grandchildren and there’s some kids that are little kids in grade school. They have some kids who are young adults now.00:52:45Ken:Oh you know what? I knew there was this question I wanted to ask you. Who are the millennials? Whose kids are they? Because I’ve never figured this out.Rob P:That’s a hard question. There is no hard and fast… Let’s talk about baby boomers.Ken:Where did they come from?Rob P:Baby boomers go up to 1964 they say, and again there’s no law about this, generation X. Millennials are born sometime - I can’t tell you. I ask my students that. I teach people in their early 20s, they don’t consider themselves millennials anymore.Ken:But who are their parents? This is irrelevant but it’s just fascinating.Rob P:Some of their parents are boomers. Yeah, their parents are basically boomers. Ken:I guess late boomers and the older millennials could be children of the boomers but they are too old to be children of gen-Xers. Rob P:That’s right. The millennials are mostly going to - I think, I will have to go back to my dusty [00:53:37 tones] and look into this, I think the millennials are going to be largely the product of the later boomers.Ken:Yeah. So it goes to show that it’s really kind of folly to divide us up into these groups.Rob P:Oh those are marketing… The reason we do that is to help market things like baby boomers buy this and millennials want that.Ken:Because if gen-xers were born between this year and this year well there’s a whole half of people who were born between here and here and they just didn’t get a name. They were unfortunate.Rob P:These are just ways we are trying to get a handle on who likes these. And it’s sort of crazy because within any one of those groups the experiences of people from different parts of the country or different races can be very different.00:54:17Ken:Yeah. We’re getting a little bit tight on time here. I guess I wanted to ask you sort of a broader picture about where Chicago fits in with the demography of the United States, but I can’t quite figure out how to ask the question.Rob P:There’s a census going on. There’s what’s redistricting going to mean, what’s reapportionment going to mean. After this next census of 2020, Illinois is actually balanced on a cliff right now. We’re going to lose one congressional district without a doubt. We could lose two and we could lose two because of a sloppy census count. Chicago and Illinois and Cook County every government needs to just have a hands-on deck situation on how to get a good census count, keep an extra congressional district. Ken:This thing about the citizenship question is going to have a huge impact here I would think.Rob P:It doesn’t help. It specifically hurts - surprise, the big immigrant centers. It suppresses count that way. The other thing that a census and a low census is going to do to us it’s going to really make redistricting of Chicago wards complicated. Well it’s not just a bad census, it is also the reality of people leaving. It’s going to be harder to draw wards that elect blacks. There’s going to be fewer where you’re going to have a super majority of blacks, so this redistricting process at the ward level…Ken:Is that true for Latinos also?Rob P:Latinos have growth. The problem with redistricting with Latinos redistricting is a process of drawing new boundaries based on where people are now living, a state house or the state senate. The problem with Latinos is they are very diffuse, spread-out, so it’s a little harder to draw districts where they have a great majority. We’ve historically been able to do that for blacks [00:55:55] Latinos. A lot is going to get shuffled around after this next census. Ken:Wow. Something to look forward to. Rob P:We’re going to see a different city council, a different dynamic in the state legislature.Ken:Well this is why we had to have you in here, to clear up some misconceptions, and I will never again say that a lot of African Americans from Chicago have relocated to Atlanta. I will never say that again.Rob P:The suburbs of Atlanta.Ken:They may be to the suburbs, right. Well Rob it’s been a thrill.Rob P:Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. I appreciate it. Ken:I really enjoyed having you here. Rob Paral is I don’t know, founder and owner of Rob Paral & Associates. Rob P:Demographer for hire.Ken:Yeah, demographer for hire and demographer to the stars and in the political world and it’s just been really great to have you here, so thank you very much.00:56:44End ................
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