(The Center Square) – The city of Chicago is selling empty lots for $1 while spending more than $800,000 per unit on affordable housing.
Chicago Department of Planning and Development Commissioner Ciere Boatright said the total value of the 405 lots placed on sale last week is $26 million, with some properties available from the city for a dollar.
Boatright said it is important for the city to get the vacant lots back on the tax rolls.
“Most of the properties were acquired by default, often by demo and tax liens, sometimes decades ago,” Boatright said.
The properties include Missing Middle housing on the Far South Side, a Chicago Transit Authority site to be used for mixed-income housing on the North Side, and more than nine acres of industrial land for mixed uses in Armour Square and New City.
Boatright said pricing missing middle lots at one dollar is a repopulation strategy.
“Missing Middle involves one-to-six unit homes that are systematically disappearing from neighborhoods, and it’s been going on for the last 75 years, along with the people that lived in those homes,” Boatright said.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Chicago’s population was around 2.66 million in 2023. In 1950, it was 3.62 million.
Chicago Flips Red founder Zoe Leigh said many of the city’s redevelopment projects never get off the ground.
“They’ll start, but it never happens because, at the end of the day, they do it to try to get this [Tax Increment Finance district] money. The city is the city. The city takes forever to pay out, so a lot of people who are applying for TIF money and the TIF money is where these vacant lots are, they can’t get the TIF funding, and so a lot of them just end up not developing,” Leigh told The Center Square.
Leigh said the city favors developers over residents who wish to develop lots adjacent to their homes.
Mayor Brandon Johnson touted his development plans with Boatright and other city officials at the formal opening of Auburn Gresham Apartments, an affordable housing complex on the city’s South Side.
The $47 million project includes 58 units, placing the per-unit taxpayer cost at $810,345.
Johnson said the $1.25 billion economic plan he put forth was the largest housing and economic development investment in the history of Chicago.
“What it ultimately does is it creates a comprehensive approach, a citywide economic strategy that focuses on quality affordable housing, but it also ensures that business innovation and job growth and community development is also part of that,” Johnson said. “We want to continue to attract people, businesses and jobs to Chicago, particularly to our South and West Sides, and these projects in Auburn Gresham are an important step forward for our city.”
Paul Vallas, the former mayoral candidate Johnson defeated in the 2023 runoff election, offered his reaction on X.
“Mayor Johnson celebrating spending $47 million in taxpayers dollars to secure a meager 58 affordable housing units. That’s the equivalent to spending $810,344 per unit. The city has approved five such deals spending $324 million in subsidies in return for just 505 units,” Vallas posted. “This includes $150 million going to downtown developers converting office buildings to housing, committing to just 300 affordable units. An outrageous misuse of tax dollars.”
