Study Says Chicago's 40-Year TIF Program Left Poor Neighborhoods Behind Despite Billions
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Aug 26
Study Says Chicago's 40-Year TIF Program Left Poor Neighborhoods Behind Despite Billions
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 26
Summary
A sweeping study published Wednesday found Chicago’s tax increment financing program revived downtown far more effectively than poorer South and West Side neighborhoods it was meant to help.
More than 40 years after state lawmakers authorized TIF, the city freezes property assessments in designated districts for at least 23 years and reinvests the extra tax revenue from rising values locally.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Great Cities Institute argued nearly all of those property-value gains would have happened organically, undercutting the program’s central justification.
The team spent more than a year reviewing contracts and building a dataset from public property assessment and tax records dating back to Chicago’s first downtown TIF in 1984, though it noted gaps and errors in the data.