Feds call out Chicago’s “discriminatory” zoning policies

The Biden administration is calling out Chicago’s zoning and land-use policies for disproportionately affecting minority communities.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development said in a letter to Mayor Lori Lightfoot that it would block millions of dollars in federal aid to Chicago unless she reforms the policies, the Chicago Tribune reported. The decision comes after civil rights investigators determined the zoning laws were discriminatory.

According to HUD, Chicago city officials have encouraged polluting industries to move out of white neighborhoods and into Black and Latino communities. One example: The city paved the way for scrap shredding company General Iron Industries to relocate to the city’s Southeast Side from the wealthy and mostly white Lincoln Park neighborhood.

“Disparities in environmental burdens and their health effects were well known by the city and raised by residents and experts,” Jacy Gage, director of HUD’s compliance and disability rights division, wrote in the letter. “Yet the city took significant actions toward the relocation without considering how the relocation would exacerbate those disparities.”

Gage said that even though the letter was dated Tuesday, his agency informed the Lightfoot administration of the findings in February, likely prompting the Chicago Department of Public Health to reject General Iron’s last permit needed before opening the Southeast Side location.

“Any allegations that we have done something to compromise the health and safety of our Black and Brown communities are absolutely absurd,” the mayor’s office said in its statement. “We will demonstrate that and prove them wrong.”

The investigation found that more than 75 “polluters” on the Southeast Side have been investigated since 2014 for violating the Clean Air Act. Some of the companies contaminated yards and playgrounds with brain-damaging manganese and lung-damaging petroleum coke.

HUD said policy changes under Lightfoot’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, were meant to encourage industrial development in areas throughout the city where white people account for only about 20 percent of the population. The investigation also found some policies were put in place to encourage non-industrial development in three neighborhoods that are 68 percent white.

If the city doesn’t make necessary changes, HUD says it will withhold grants that would go to several city agencies. In 2021, those grants totaled $375 million.

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— Victoria Pruitt