Gentrification in Chicago’s 46th Ward

Guest post by Alice Spencer, American Studies undergraduate student at the University of Manchester. The post reflects Alice’s research into a series of interviews undertaken by Lou Kushnick in the 1980s and 1990s which form part of the Lou Kushnick archive held at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre.

Throughout the 1980s, Chicago’s Forty-Sixth Ward, like much of the city, underwent a massive transformation, mostly because of the process of gentrification. Lower-income urban residents were most affected by these changes, and many were displaced by the rapid increase in rent prices, and the decline in the provision of welfare resources. The demolition of scores of affordable housing units led many to leave.

Three interviews that Lou Kushnick conducted with alderwoman Helen Shiller between 1989 and 1992 track the plight of such low-income residents, particularly the mostly minority communities of Shiller’s 46th Ward. Those conversations frame her commitment to these residents and to the need to address the crisis of displacement that was unfolding across the wider city.

Helen Shiller. Photograph courtesy of Helen Shiller

Shiller’s Forty-Sixth Ward was located on Chicago’s North Side, west of Lake Michigan, and encompassing neighbourhoods such as Lakeview and Buena Park. Among the ward’s most active voters during the 1980s were so-called ‘Lakefront Liberals’, comprising mostly white educated residents who supported racial equality and fair governance. Shiller, a white middle-class woman herself, was elected as the ward’s alderwoman in 1987, a known ally of mayor Harold Washington, and an advocate for social and racial causes since her early adulthood. While attending the University of Wisconsin, for example, she had worked alongside others supporting the Black Panther Party to provide education and resources for poor Black communities around Madison, before she moved to Chicago and worked for several years in state services.

Talking with Kushnick, Shiller repeatedly underlined how gentrification was a disruptive force, particular among Chicago’s lower-income neighbourhoods. In 1989, she told Kushnick that a recent ‘twofold’ increase in rent had meant a lot of ‘long term residents [had to] move’ elsewhere.. Such increases in rent happened alongside unkept promises to build more affordable housing. One notable example was the 1985 Lake Michigan High Rises, a proposal made by the Chicago Housing Authority to renovate some 450 units, temporarily relocating residents and allowing them to return once complete. Yet, after forcing all residents out, the high rises were eventually demolished, in 1988, worsening the ward’s housing crisis.

Shiller later wrote about the housing crisis of the 46th Ward in her memoir, Daring to Struggle, Daring to Win (2022), characterizing her ‘fight against displacement’, and arguing that her position had been to advocate for ‘development without displacement.’ In particular she was keen to slow the pace and scale of development around Chicago, as she saw how citizens within her Ward, who had lived there for generations, were having to move and restart their lives elsewhere. As she told Kushnick in September 1989, the communities many of these residents moved to were often ‘worse [with], more subsidised housing’, which only intensified the poverty they faced.

The gentrification that spread across the city of Chicago throughout the 1980s, displacing low-income residents, reflected the economic imbalance of the city’s population. Kushnick’s interviews with Shiller illuminate a rare focus on the residents of the 46th Ward and their battle against such urban displacement.

Further resources

• Lou Kushnick Collection catalogue (ref: GB3228.30), Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre, University of Manchester