Aldermen Maria Hadden, left, and Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez celebrate during a news conference after a vote to authorize a referendum question for voters to fund homeless services passed on Oct. 31, 2023.
What has that got to do with Ballot Question 1, a referendum that was to ask March voters to approve a major increase in the real estate transfer tax to create a projected new annual revenue stream of $100 million to alleviate homelessness before it was thrown into legal limbo late on Friday afternoon by a Cook County judge?Duncan had his act together on the former, having come up with a specific plan that everyone could and did get behind, that had buy-in from business and resource-rich...
This all happened because, after an initially lukewarm response to their tax plan in City Council, the Bring Chicago Home campaign learned from that failure and its proponents sweetened this deal for voters bytransfer taxes on Chicago real estate transactions under $1 million to 0.6%, down from the current rate of 0.75%, even as they would hike it to 2% for deals between $1 million and $1.5 million and 3%, four times the current rate, for transactions above that amount.
The proponents of approving this ask, which aims to “bring Chicagoans out of the cold and into a home,” have little trust in the private sector. Their mailings reference “wealthy real estate developers who profit from the housing crisis.
In recent days, the editorial board has heard from those for and against “Bring Chicago Home,” to some degree another swing at the kind of tax redistribution voters rejected when they turned down the question of a graduated income tax in Illinois. Others, including Jeff Baker, CEO of Illinois Realtors, disputed that.