After questioning the legality of a demolition moratorium to address gentrification around The 606 trail last week, Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Tuesday endorsed a similar plan by Northwest Side aldermen who have been trying to find ways to stop working class families from getting priced out of their homes.
The new ordinance is smaller in scope than the one Lightfoot criticized last week, saying “we need to use a surgical knife and not a club” to deal with the housing problems in parts of Humboldt Park and Logan Square near the popular elevated park.
Instead of a 14-month moratorium on all demolition permits — which supporters hope would slow down developers who are quickly replacing two- and three-flats in the area with million-dollar single-family homes — the moratorium would now last just six months, until August.
And the boundaries of the moratorium were shrunk considerably, now stretching west to east from Kostner Avenue to California Avenue, and south to north from Hirsch Street to Armitage Avenue.
An earlier, larger version contained a chunk of the 32nd Ward on the eastern end of the moratorium zone, but Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, said he didn’t think the moratorium was legal, and his ward was removed.
Lightfoot questioned the moratorium herself in a Friday news conference. “So stopping all demolitions, I don’t even know how we would do that as a practical matter. And doing it in such a wide swath, I have concerns about it, and I have concerns whether or not it would be viewed as a taking by property owners whose property would be affected,” she said then.
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It’s still there, but in a Tuesday statement, mayoral spokeswoman Lauren Huffman said Lightfoot backs the new version as a temporary measure.
“After discussions with the local aldermen, the updated ordinance presented at today’s committee hearing provides a legally defensible, but a temporary path to allow for a more comprehensive means to address affordable housing preservation along The 606 trail,” Huffman said in a statement. “Importantly, this latest version includes a shorter time frame for a moratorium on demolitions only and narrower geography, while preventing a unilateral ban on zoning approvals in order to preserve the rights of existing property owners in the area.”
The Housing Committee discussed the ordinance Tuesday, and Chairman Ald. Harry Osterman, 48th, set a Wednesday morning vote on the plan. If it passes, the full City Council would consider it later Wednesday.
Humboldt Park Ald. Roberto Maldonado, 26th, said he would rather have included a moratorium on all building permits in a wider area for a longer time, but he can live with this compromise plan. If the city can’t come up with a longer term solution to protect working class residences by August, Maldonado said he would try to extend the demolition ban.
“Gentrification … is very parochial,” Maldonado said. “It’s citywide, the crisis, but it’s very peculiar to many different communities. And so I think that we should treat it as such.”
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