Homelessness and housing.

A city for the rest of us.

It must be fifteen years ago that Matthew, a fourth grade teacher in my old school, and I were approached by somebody from the Metropolitan Planning Council.

They asked if our students could do some brainstorming about a city of the future and then actually put those plans on paper.

I was glad to do it. My fourth grade art students spent most of the year exploring the built environment and architectural history. Nothing is a teaching grabber like asking students to envision and draw what they imagine the future might look like.

I chuckled yesterday when I read that the Mayor and the MPC had issued a report outlining a vision of Chicago. I could only wonder if my students’ ideas had made their way into the plan.

The draft opens by recounting past policies that led to “harms to Chicagoans” that “were both deliberate and unintentional, often involving leadership, cooperation or silence of local, state and federal governments.”

According to the document, those policies began in the late 1700s with the “seizure of land and displacement of Native Americans” for the "establishment and growth" of the city and extended through the 2013 closure of dozens of Chicago Public Schools by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

But formal and informal land use policies are singled out, including highway construction that “harmed dozens of densely populated neighborhoods,” redlining that excluded minority neighborhoods from receiving federally backed mortgage loans and former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s “plan for transformation” that demolished Chicago Housing Authority highrises only to replace them with empty promises to build new housing elsewhere.

Coincidentally, The Morning Newsletter in the New York Times focuses on how homelessness and housing affordability is becoming worse, a real crisis for Americans.

The combination of zoning rules and local protests has added to a housing deficit year after year, as growing populations have outpaced new homes built. Now, California has 23 available affordable homes for every 100 extremely low-income renters — among the worst rates of any state.

I frequently post on my Facebook page examples from my own neighborhood, Logan Square on Chicago’s northwest side, of million dollar single family homes that have replaced perfectly fine and once-affordable two and three flats.

It is part of the gentrification of our neighborhood and of the City.

Tens of thousands of working class Latinx families have been forced out of Logan Square over the past decade or two.

They have been forced out by sky-rocketing rents and unaffordable property tax increases.

We could not afford the house we live in.

That is a common refrain from many long-time residents like us.

There is good news.

A few months ago the ribbon was cut on the Lucy Parsons Apartments. It is named for the anarchist and widow of Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons. The 100 one, two and three bedroom rentals are 100% affordable.

The project took nearly a decade to complete. And it took that long even though the project had overwhelming community support.

I was at many neighborhood meetings in which hundreds of my neighbors turned out to show their support with only a few NIMBYs in opposition.

Block Club reports that a another 100% affordable apartment of 105 units, managed by the same affordable housing organization, Bickerdike, as Lucy Parsons, will be built in Logan Square on land owned by the Chicago Transit Authority.

But as I keep saying, we need more.

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My art is on Instagram @klonskyart