🏡💚 Green social housing wins in Chicago
In March, I wrote about Chicago’s green social housing ordinance and the inside-outside strategy that organizers used to make green social housing part of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s platform. Just getting that ordinance introduced was years in the making: from the creation of the Illinois Green New Deal Coalition in 2020 and their decision organize a campaign to win green social housing, to Mayor Johnson’s mayoral campaign in 2023, to finally introducing the ordinance this past February.
On Wednesday, Chicago’s City Council voted to pass the green social housing ordinance, creating a Green Social Housing public developer.
Capitalized by $135 million from the housing bond that passed last year, the Green Social Housing developer will use a revolving loan fund to provide low-cost financing and equity investments for developing permanently affordable, mixed-income housing.
In the press release, Mayor Johnson celebrated this as a “first step towards a greener, cleaner, and more affordable future for the working people of Chicago,” with confidence that “Green Social Housing in Chicago will become a model for the nation.”
The Department of Housing Commissioner, Lissette Castañeda, did a great job articulating the promise of green social housing, saying, “This model allows us to build permanently affordable, mixed-income housing that is sustainable, community-led, and responsive to the real needs of Chicagoans. We are not just building homes; we are creating healthier communities and ensuring long-term affordability for generations to come.”
This is a huge win for our friends at the Illinois Green New Deal Coalition and partners at PowerSwitch Action after years of organizing and campaigning. There’s so much to learn from, and we will be bringing in some of the lead organizers to share with the coalition at a future call, so be on the lookout for that.
In the meantime, I hope news of this victory brings you some inspiration and light amidst the dark times we’re facing. I believe one of the great strengths of these campaigns for green social housing is that they are opportunities for us to go on offense; to not just defend against oppression, persecution, and exploitation, nor simply call for a return to the status quo. Green social housing lays out a positive vision for how we invest in our power and build the new. 🏡💚
From PowerSwitch Action via Twitter/X
News of this victory fittingly arrived during a national convening on social housing, which I was fortunate enough to attend this week. This was the first time that groups from all over the country working on social housing campaigns gathered in person to meet, strategize, and share lessons learned.
One of the most powerful takeaways from that convening was to see how many grassroots campaigns for social housing have emerged just in the past several years. Largely uncoordinated and unconnected, these campaigns have been created from the bottom-up by community demands and a shared analysis that the root cause of the housing crisis is a system that makes our homes a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder for the highest profit.
I’ll spend future newsletters going into greater detail, but here is a quick snapshot of some of the communities and campaigns for social housing across the country:
Seattle won a ballot proposition in a landslide (63% voting in support) that taxes the rich to fund a social housing public developer.
Reclaim Rhode Island is campaigning for the state to create a public developer, and organizing tenants to create tenant unions and collectively bargain with their landlord. Fans of The Dig may have heard Daniel Denvir talk about this campaign at the beginning of the episode featuring LA Tenant Union members and authors of the book Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis.
Green New Deal for DC has a campaign for social housing, and a bill to create an Office of Social Housing Development.
New York has introduced legislation to create a Social Housing Development Authority with the support of community and tenant organizations, faith-based groups, and the Building Trades, teachers’ union, and other labor groups.
The Connecticut Tenants Union has successfully fought for and won tenant unions across the state, developing an organizing model that informs national tenant organizing through the Tenant Union Federation.
Housing Oregon is supporting legislation to create a social housing revolving loan fund.
National formations like Right to the City, Alliance for Housing Justice, and Popular Democracy are all supporting efforts to organize and campaign for social housing.
It should be wind in our sails to see some of these victories as the movement for green social housing grows — whether it’s a fully funded public developer, or a group of tenants organizing to form a union in their building. And it’s powerful to know that we are far from alone in this campaign, and that we can learn from each other along the way.
WHAT WE’RE READING
WEBINAR: Housing as a Public Good: The State of Social Housing Today (Shelterforce) — featuring Rev Rae Huang of Housing Now among other panelists
EVENT: Green Social Housing: Grassroots solutions to the housing and climate crisis — we will be hosting an *in-person* green social housing panel on Wednesday, May 28th. Speakers to be announced very very soon, but register now to secure your spot!
To Rebuild Post-Fire, Los Angeles Should Look to Singapore (Jacobin)
In a bid to blunt gentrification after fire in Altadena, nonprofits look to buy burned lots (LA Times)
Immigrant tenants lead rent strike movement against San Francisco’s largest landlords (El Tecolote)
Feel free to reply any time! I always enjoy hearing from people and getting any feedback/questions/additional thoughts.
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