The city files an Airbnb lawsuit, cuts a ribbon in Logan Square, and Springfield writes a housing check — all before lunch. Finally, things that actually happened. This is Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today: short-term rentals, a redesigned street, state housing money, a public-safety budget demand — and a kindergarten study that hit me harder than all of it. From Esther Yoon-Ji Kang at WBEZ:
The complaint filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court alleged that real estate broker Milan Rubenstein and his company, Slumber Stay LLC, did not properly register his short-term rentals and used a single nontransferable hotel license for multiple listings — then kept renting those units after being issued citations.
The city sued Airbnb Monday in Cook County — but read the WBEZ framing closely, because Esther Yoon-Ji Kang names a host company, too: Slumber Stay LLC, and a broker, Milan Rubenstein, allegedly running multiple listings off one nontransferable hotel license. The part with teeth is this: he kept renting those units after the citations landed. Forget the shiny tech-platform frame; this is a landlord getting a ticket and, allegedly, just shrugging. Right, and each one of those units is a place somebody could be living in. We spent half this week arguing about upzoning and supply — meanwhile, one guy with one hotel license is quietly pulling apartments off the rental market, block by block. The Shared Housing Ordinance has required registration for years, Brian. What’s new here is the city going after the operator layer and the platform together — alleging Airbnb profited instead of enforcing its own compliance. So what I keep asking is — how does a resident on that block actually know anything changed? Now there’s a live lawsuit to test it. Did the citations mean anything, or did the checks just keep clearing? From Streetsblog Chicago:
Rerouting Milwaukee to knit together the green space around the monument was no small feat. Neither was wrangling an acre of usable public space from a transportation project anchored by $21 million in federal funding. U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez received loud applause when she said, “This is how federal funds should be used!”
Monday’s ribbon-cutting in Logan Square: more than a hundred people on a linear plaza where Milwaukee Avenue traffic used to rumble. Twenty-one million in federal dollars, three new plazas, and an acre of public space pried out of a transportation project. And this is the rare one that actually got built — they finished the thing. Ten years of community engagement, and now there’s a real plaza standing where cars were. And it’s Wednesday, and Streetsblog’s already cataloging the trouble spots. “Refine the Redesign.” The ribbon’s barely been cut. Which — good. That’s the part everybody skips. You cut the ribbon, the dignitaries go home, and that bad sightline at the crossing is somebody’s daily commute. The follow-through is where this lives or dies. Illinois State Treasurer writes:
Frerichs invested $10 million with IFF, a Chicago-based Community Development Financial Institution that promotes economic development by providing financing and real estate consulting across the Midwest to nonprofits and people underserved by traditional financial institutions, particularly in low-income communities.
All week we’ve been arguing about who controls housing supply in Chicago — zoning fights, ward vetoes, the BUILD Act override. And now Springfield shows up with a completely different tool: Treasurer Frerichs put $10 million with IFF, a Chicago-based Community Development Financial Institution, to finance affordable housing through a nonprofit intermediary. No preemption, no zoning override. Just treasury money moving through a CDFI — and it’s supposed to earn a return for the state, too. Springfield found a side door around the local-control wall instead of kicking it down. And the first project they’re showing off? A $250,000 loan so Dilla Thomas’s Mahogany Foundation could buy and renovate a building in Auburn Gresham. That’s a real South Side block, a real building getting bought. But ten million through a CDFI versus what a single West Loop tower costs to build — let’s keep the scale honest. I like the mechanism. It doesn’t close the gap by itself. Right. Ten million gets you a pilot before it gets you a program. If the return-to-the-state piece holds up, that’s the argument for the next hundred million. This one's from Chalkbeat:
Just 1 in 10 kindergartners who start school at the bottom of their class in reading and math skills is proficient by third grade. This finding comes from a new analysis of MAP reading and math scores from the testing organization NWEA. It aligns with a large body of research that finds that many educational gaps are already present in kindergarten and remain stubbornly persistent throughout children’s educational careers.
This is the hardest number of the week, and it’s got nothing to do with a podium or a zoning vote. One in ten — one in ten kids who start at the bottom in kindergarten are proficient in reading by third grade. The gap is already there before the kid ever sits down in a CPS classroom. And it’s a real sample — NWEA pulled MAP scores from more than 400,000 kids who started in 2021. You can’t wave that off as some tidy little study. The researcher herself calls it “depressing” on the record. All week I’ve been rooting for schools as the thing that fixes a block. This says that by the time we’re measuring third-grade reading, we’ve already missed the window. So yes, pre-K, early intervention — money before kindergarten, not after. And the timing is almost cruel — the board’s mid-transition, about to pick a CEO, and this lands in their lap. Whoever takes that job inherits a number that says the easy fixes start too late. Right — so what that board actually controls just got a lot more urgent. If nine in ten kids who start behind stay behind, every lever that board touches matters a whole lot. From City & Local:
A coalition of Chicago faith leaders and activists is demanding the city establish a Department of Gun Violence Prevention with a $100 million budget, representing about 3% of the city's annual public safety spending, according to the Chicago Tribune. Chicago plans to spend over $3 billion on public safety this year, but activists contend this new, dedicated $100 million department is critically needed to effectively address gun violence, wbez reported.
Here’s the number I want you to sit with: the city’s already dropping more than three billion dollars on public safety this year. The coalition’s asking for a hundred million dollars for a prevention department. Three cents on the dollar to try something besides more squad cars. And per WBEZ and ABC7, it’s reallocated money, not new money. The Sun-Times says the plan would replace the mayor’s Office of Community Safety outright. So yes, a budget fight dressed as a moral demand. The Tribune says the coalition includes faith leaders and city and county officials. They want the mayor to hand over a slice of the budget he controls. And here’s the thing nobody on that podium answered: who actually runs a brand-new department? Because if it lives under the mayor’s office anyway, the name changes and the wiring stays the same. If Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily is part of your routine, take a second to subscribe or leave a review wherever you’re listening. It really does help other people find the show.
Links to every story we touched on today are in the show notes. If something stuck with you, go read the whole thing for yourself.
That’s Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.