Chicago’s Black Voters and the Politics of Buyer’s Remorse

By Richard Graves, 08/23/2025

“We need that money in my neighborhood, we need it on my block.”  — Black Chicago resident at a City Council meeting (Cherone, 2023)

Recent coverage from Chicago City Council meetings shows mounting frustration among Black voters who supported Mayor Brandon Johnson, believing he would prioritize their neighborhoods. They point to a clear reality: millions have been allocated to support incoming migrants, while their communities continue to face elevated crime, struggling schools, deteriorating infrastructure, and longstanding disinvestment (Cherone, 2023; Associated Press, 2025).

In May 2023, the City Council voted 34 to 13 to appropriate 51 million dollars for migrant assistance, a concrete expression of budget priorities that passed over objections from Black and Latino residents who argued that their neighborhoods had been repeatedly overlooked (Cherone, 2023).

Documented patterns of capital flight and disinvestment reinforce these grievances. A WBEZ and City Bureau analysis found that 68.1 percent of dollars for home purchase loans went to majority white neighborhoods, compared with 8.1 percent in majority Black neighborhoods and 8.7 percent in majority Latino neighborhoods, effectively twelve cents invested in Black neighborhoods for every dollar in white neighborhoods (WBEZ and City Bureau, 2020). Urban Institute researchers similarly report that Black households make up roughly 22 percent of Chicago homeowners but receive only about 14.5 percent of purchase lending, with the gap most pronounced in low and moderate income neighborhoods (Walsh, 2022).This also reflects a lack of educating people who live in low and moderate income areas about economics and finance and specifically how to prepare for and ultimately buy a home. This helps forward a vicious cycle of renting.

Education trends add weight to these concerns. ProPublica and Chalkbeat report that about thirty percent of Chicago Public Schools operate at half capacity or less, with forty seven schools below one third capacity. While the district average spending is about 18,700 dollars per student, one very small school incurred a per pupil cost of approximately 93,000 dollars, a symptom of systemic under enrollment and program erosion in many South and West Side communities (Koumpilova & Richards, 2025).

Public safety disparities remain acute. Peer reviewed research in Public Health Reports finds that neighborhood crime exposure is roughly three times higher in predominantly Black communities than in predominantly white communities in Chicago, approximately 195 per 1,000 residents versus 65 per 1,000, which aligns with the Sun Times’ ongoing documentation of homicide and shooting concentrations on the South and West Sides (Kim et al., 2023; Chicago Sun Times, n.d.).

Economic development tools have not consistently corrected these gaps. Legal scholarship analyzing Chicago’s tax increment financing shows that white wards receive substantially greater TIF allocations than Black and Hispanic wards, suggesting structural skew in how redevelopment subsidies are distributed (Knight, 2023). Market reporting also shows that South Side and south suburban TIFs collect significantly less revenue than many North Side and downtown districts, limiting the very tool often used to finance infrastructure and commercial projects in disinvested areas (Crain’s Chicago Business, 2023).

Johnson has proposed new approaches, including a 1.25 billion dollar borrowing plan for affordable housing to be repaid with expiring TIFs, and the City’s equity reports acknowledge long standing racial disparities that require targeted action. Supporters who now feel ignored argue that acknowledgments and proposals are not substitutes for visible reinvestment in Black neighborhoods that is commensurate with the urgency of conditions on the ground (WBEZ, 2024; City of Chicago, 2025).

In sum, Black voters who believed and voted for an equity first agenda now see a mismatch between rhetoric and resource allocation. Their call is straightforward: redirect public policy and capital toward long neglected Black communities, measure progress transparently, and make investment in safety, schools, housing, and neighborhood commerce a first order priority, not an afterthought.

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Works Cited

Associated Press. (2025, May 16). Chicago mayor’s bumpy first year tests progressive credentials, puzzling some supporters. AP News.

https://apnews.com/article/e7b876aeec1bb70bc668b789987005b6

Chicago Sun-Times. (n.d.). Homicides in Chicago: A list of every victim. https://chicago.suntimes.com/graphics/crime/victim-list/

City of Chicago. (2025). 2025 Equity Report. Office of Equity and Racial Justice. https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/sites/oerj/fy25-budget-equity/2025%20Equity%20Report_Final%20(3).pdf

Crain’s Chicago Business. (2023, January 12). TIF districts in Cook County collected $1.6B in 2021; South Side, south suburban TIFs saw sinking revenues. https://www.chicagobusiness.com/politics/tax-increment-financing-districts-cook-county-collected-16-billion-2021

Cherone, H. (2023, May 31). City Council votes 34-13 to spend $51M to help care for migrants after tension between Black, Latino Chicagoans boils over at meeting. WTTW News. https://news.wttw.com/2023/05/31/city-council-votes-34-13-spend-51m-help-care-migrants-after-tension-between-black-latino

Kim, S. J., et al. (2023). Racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to neighborhood crime in Chicago. Public Health Reports. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10836639/

Knight, J. F. (2023). Is tax increment financing racist? Chicago’s racially disparate TIF allocations. Iowa Law Review, 108, 2047–2083. https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/sites/ilr.law.uiowa.edu/files/2023-02/N3-Knight.pdf

Koumpilova, M., & Richards, J. S. (2025, June 13). 100 students in a school meant for 1,000: Inside Chicago’s refusal to deal with its nearly empty schools. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/chicago-public-schools-enrollment-costs

Walsh, J. (2022, December). Measuring lending gaps in mortgage and small business loans in Chicago’s communities. Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2022-12/Measuring%20Lending%20Gaps%20in%20Mortgage%20and%20Small%20Business%20Loans%20in%20Chicago%E2%80%99s%20Communities.pdf

WBEZ. (2024, February 20). Johnson pitches a $1.25 billion borrowing plan to pay for affordable housing. https://www.wbez.org/politics/2024/02/20/johnson-pitches-1-25-billion-borrowing-plan

WBEZ and City Bureau. (2020, June 3). Where banks don’t lend. https://interactive.wbez.org/2020/banking/disparity/