As the Obama Foundation’s $500 million presidential center approaches its 2025 grand opening, some of Chicago’s poorest residents, many of whom are black, have sounded the alarm over skyrocketing rents in the surrounding South Shore and Woodlawn neighborhoods, which have priced out many longtime residents.
In February, almost 90% of voters on the South Side voted for a referendum to create more affordable housing and provide aid to renters and homeowners who live near the Obama Center, the Washington Post reports.
“Some of us have lived here for more than 40 years,” said one woman during a March community meeting to discuss the issue.
“What happens in communities where there is economic development is families get pushed out because of property value raises,” said Democrat Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s Mayor Elect. “We have to make sure, for families that live in the very communities where economic development is taking place, that landlords don’t see it as an opportunity to push the families out who have been a part of these communities for decades, since”.
“Since before the library’s come,” one woman interjected.
Lifelong Chicago resident Michele Williams was at the meeting, where she listened closely from the back row.
…she told her neighbors what she said no one likes to say out loud. “The Obama Center is not being built for Chicago,” she said. “It’s being built for the world.” And the people of the world, Williams said, “don’t want us here. So what do you think is going to happen?” -WaPo
When the Obamas broke ground on the center two years ago, the former president and first lady declared the site open for business – despite protests from community members who thought it should go elsewhere, as well as five years of challenges from environmental groups.
“It feels natural for Michelle and me to want to give back to Chicago and to the South Side in particular,” Obama told the audience, as protesters demanding housing guarantees raged outside. “The Obama Presidential Center is our way of repaying some of what this amazing city has given us.”
As he spoke, a cluster of demonstrators calling for affordable housing guarantees from the city stood just beyond the perimeter of the construction site, holding poster boards and bullhorns. Dixon Romeo, a South Shore native and founder of the community organization Not Me We, told a gaggle of assembled press that South Shore residents don’t want Obama’s legacy marred by the displacement of thousands of Black families. -WaPo
“This is the community that sent him to the White House, and we should be the community that gets to stay and benefit from the presidential center,” said Romeo.
“It seemed to me that some of the concerns folks were raising — even then — about having a really visually appealing tourist attraction in the middle of all these homes, what’s going to happen?” Romeo told the Post. “Rents, property taxes, all of that is going to exponentially rise.”
