Transfer tax campaign rhetoric heats up amid legal battle

Chicago’s real estate industry is taking even harder swings from supporters of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s property transfer tax hike since a court invalidated the ballot measure for the upcoming March 19 election.

The industry is starting to push back on the rhetoric.

Campaign organizers for the so-called Bring Chicago Home campaign to raise the transfer taxes for real estate deals of $1 million or more have called opponents of the ballot measure “anti-democratic,” accused them of wanting to keep people homeless and said the lawsuit by trade groups seeks to “disenfranchise Black and brown voters.”

Illinois Realtors CEO Jeff Baker said statements like these are “unfair” and do not reflect the views of real estate professionals.

“They’re just plain hateful comments about us, about real estate practitioners within the community,” Baker said. “We’ve been accused of being engaged in voter suppression while engaging in a massive ‘get out the vote’ campaign, which would be ironic if it wasn’t hurtful.”

Real estate industry groups led by the Building Owners and Managers Association successfully challenged the legality of the tax hike ballot question in Cook County Circuit Court, a ruling that the city and the Chicago Board of Elections are now pushing to have overturned in time for this month’s election.

The lawsuit alleged that the ballot question, which asks voters about a decrease in the transfer tax rate for sales under $1 million and an increase in the rate for sales of $1 million and above, is a form of “legislative logrolling” that’s prohibited to keep unpopular legislation from passing on the back of a more popular measure.

“At the end of the day, campaigns can have a lot of heated rhetoric around them,” said Doug Schenkelberg, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, a key supporter of the Johnson-backed tax hike. “The reason we started this campaign, the reason we’re continuing to do it, is because we believe that everyone should have a place to live and a safe place to live.”

To be sure, opponents of the campaign have taken shots against the measure and its supporters, too, claiming that “Chicago wants another blank check” and that “they can’t get the job done,” in campaign materials, among other statements.

Bring Chicago Home organizers have filed briefs in the lawsuit now before the Illinois Appellate Court contesting the invalidation of the ballot measure. Both supporters and opponents of the tax hike are continuing their campaigns to sway voters, even as it’s uncertain whether the votes will count — as of right now, they won’t, per the latest court ruling.

Illinois Realtors in January announced it would dedicate $1 million in campaign funds to fighting Bring Chicago Home, which, if passed, would raise an estimated $100 million annually in funds dedicated to providing services for the homeless, according to the measure’s supporters.

Illinois Realtors has spent the money on mailers and streaming advertisements, and will move forward with using the funds to get its message to voters despite the ballot initiative’s current status as invalid.

The Bring Chicago Home campaign will also continue “unabated” in the coming weeks as the lawsuit is appealed in court, Schenkelberg said. Its campaign has centered around grassroots organizing: door-knocking, town halls and press conferences.

But Baker said that the language of the question could be confusing to voters and, even if it isn’t, calling industry groups anti-democratic is inappropriate and inaccurate.

The biggest misconception that he feels Bring Chicago Home advocates have about industry groups like Illinois Realtors is that they don’t care about increasing affordable housing or reducing homelessness. They care, he said, they just don’t think that a new tiered transfer tax structure is the way to do it.

Schenkelberg said he doesn’t doubt that people in the real estate industry care about this issue, but he wishes they would join the cause to support the referendum.

“What we know is that housing solves homelessness, and that we need funding at scale to have a real measurable impact on it. The real estate transfer tax is the right vehicle for us to be using to do that here in the city of Chicago,” Schenkelberg said. “And I’m really disappointed that those forces out there are spending as much time and effort as they can to try to defeat it.”

If passed by a simple majority of voters, the referendum would have increased the real estate transfer tax imposed on sales of more than $1 million to fund services for people experiencing homelessness, including quadrupling the 0.75 percent rate the city currently charges for deals over $1.5 million.

Under the now-stalled proposal, the rate would have dropped to 0.6 percent for property trades less than $1 million, affecting the majority of local home purchases. Advocates of the plan estimated that upward of 95 percent of sales would get a transfer tax decrease.

Baker also expressed a desire to cut through the more bitter campaign rhetoric. In the final weeks of Illinois Realtors’ campaign, the organization plans to engage its members in speaking out against the proposal, he said.

“In addition to just trying to get people off of the hateful remarks, we do need to get word out that this issue is still on the ballot,” Baker said. “We do want everybody to turn out and vote, and we just need to continue pressing on voters to vote no.”