49th Ward Alderman Elections February 2007: Chris Adams answers 8 questions: Rogers Park, Chicago

List in order of importance the five most crucial/important issues facing the residents of the 49th ward.

Inadequate public safety
Under performing schools
The lack of significant economic development
Declining affordability of housing
The absence of a coherent, workable blueprint for where we want to go as a community and how we will get there

What is your strategy for encouraging residential ownership while maintaining affordable housing?

The most significant strength my candidacy offers residents of the 49th Ward is the opportunity to place an experienced leader and team builder in the alderman’s office. I will use my real life-tested skills to work across city departments and bring the greatest benefits to the whole Rogers Park community.

Stabilizing affordable housing opportunities in Rogers Park has been an issue for some time and continues to be an area of concern throughout Rogers Park. As of this writing, my campaign is the only one to have articulated and published our thoughts on the broader issue of affordable housing. That piece can be found on our Web site at http://www.adamsforalderman.com/housingplan.shtml.

Two studies in recent years have addressed this topic and have provided some perspective. The first was conducted in 2002 by two Loyola University professors. The most recent was released earlier this year by the Lakeside Community Development Corporation.

Be reminded that just four years ago, the current alderman declared affordable housing to be the No. 1 issue in the 2003 aldermanic campaign. Yet, under his stewardship Rogers Park has lost nearly 3,600 rental units over the last four years, according to the Lakeside study. The 2000 U.S. Census Bureau statistics showed that nearly four of every five residents in Rogers Park were renters. Currently, that number is closer to two of every three, as the Lakeside study shows a 17 percent decline in rental units.

But affordable housing is not an issue that is limited to Rogers Park, and it is misguided to pretend that we can solve this matter ourselves. Mayor Daley has vowed to address the issue on a citywide basis, and supporting those efforts and making sure Rogers Park’s concerns are a part of the consideration throughout the process should help bring the stability we want.

For example, I support the mayor’s proposal that the definition of city assistance be broadened. Currently set-asides are mandated only for properties that need the city’s financial aid. The mayor is asking that any sort of assistance including zoning changes be a part of the equation, and that all affected construction include a 10 percent set-aside for affordable housing.

In Rogers Park, we have lamented the decline in the affordability of rental units for larger families. A part of any citywide affordable housing reform should include mandates for 3- and 4-bedroom units to accommodate these families. Only with strong leadership from the 49th Ward alderman’s office, however, does this have any chance of happening.

As a long-time resident of this community and a homeowner, I welcome the many young families and other newcomers who are choosing to invest in our community. Creating a growing, stable population of residents will help Rogers Park evolve into a more vibrant full-service neighborhood which will, in turn, encourage more residential ownership.

What is your strategy for reducing crime in the 49th ward?

Build a strong, effective partnership with District 24 police and the District 24 commander; enforce ordinances already in place that address things like unlawful gathering and problematic housing; engage CAPS as an effective whistle-blowing entity to address housing issues; and work directly with the Department of Buildings Strategic Task Force to bring about swift and stern enforcement.

Neighborhoods that are sick and tired of crime have been consistently effective in cleaning them up. Look at Andersonville, whose evolution into one of the north side’s most desirable neighborhoods comes after years and years of problems similar to and in many cases, worse than ours.

My alderman’s office will have no tolerance for crime and we will work with residents to stop our current, troubling trend right in its tracks. For example, when residents identify consistent and unabated problems at specific addresses, the alderman’s office will move swiftly to work with police and the city attorney’s office to leverage the maximum sanctions against property owners. We will work with the District 24 commander to identify workforce needs and work with the city as a whole to bring proper resources to the 49th Ward.

At the same time, we will move forward to develop a vibrant and active business environment along retail corridors like Morse Avenue, Howard Street and Clark Street that will help to create a deterrent to crime.

But the bottom line is, my alderman’s office will build strong relationships with the city departments that can help to bring effective change to the 49th Ward.

How would you go about attracting new business to the ward, especially on Morse and Howard streets?

Growing the breadth and depth of the 49th Ward’s retail base, creating more opportunities for entrepreneurs to be successful and creating a workable balance between retail and residential growth are big challenges in the next four years. I have developed relationships with area chambers of commerce, spoken with various business organizations and spoken with a variety of people with urban planning experience.

Here are some important steps:

Create transparency in any process. In January, we expect that DevCorp, for example, will release the results of its own study and make proposals for Howard Street based on what it says are community input and the work with the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission. Beyond the suspicious timing of this announcement, what is unfortunately lacking is a consistent, clear and precise dialogue with the community at large and the important community input that would also include the selection of a planning partner.
Identify where we want this growth to go. If we want to redevelop Howard and Morse, then we have to get to work with local police to clean up those areas. Right now, I’m not a believer in the Morse streetscape. It might be a good idea later, but I strongly disagree with the notion government has too often when it embraces a "build it and they will come" policy. You can put all the pretty flowers and trees and facades on Morse you want to, but people won’t come if they don’t feel safe.
Learn from our own mistakes. Howard might be a retail corridor, but it’s a poor place for pedestrians. Have you ever tried to navigate a stroller down the sidewalk at Howard? I have. It’s nearly impossible. When we go about creating retail areas, we have to keep in mind that we want to attract all sorts of people: families, current residents, new residents, young people, professionals and people from outside the ward. We want the sidewalks to be busy. That means they need to be wide. They need to be accommodating.
Help entrepreneurs. I have discussed with the Chicagoland Chamber the possibility of bringing the Entrepreneurial Center to Rogers Park. That would give us an experienced entity with people trained to work with entrepreneurs not only on how to be successful, but also on targeting their entrepreneurial aspirations toward our community’s areas of need. We need places to shop. We need a wide variety of restaurants to accommodate our neighborhood. We need to expand our entertainment outlets and that would include growing the fledgling arts district which has the potential of being the real jewel of our community.
Address parking issues up front. We need to identify at least two and possibly three locations for commercial parking that will accommodate customer traffic in important corridors. That means parking for Sheridan customers, Morse customers and Clark customers. There was little foresight put into the location of the Howard garage. Parking is a crucial issue that must be included in the initial planning stages of all development.
Become model recruiters of businesses and promoters of this community. We need a strong local chamber that is able to identify potential retailers and attract them to our community. We need to have a polished and effective plan for outreach that emphasizes the best of Rogers Park and works to bring the businesses we need to our community.
Raise the bar. The people of the 49th Ward of Rogers Park deserve clean stores, clean streets and sidewalks, nice places to shop and meet folks. Our grocery stores ought to be as nice as the grocery stores in neighboring communities. Our shops and restaurants ought to be as clean and welcoming as the shops and restaurants in neighboring communities.

Rogers Park and Edgewater are often noted for being "diverse" neighborhoods and communities. This is often one of the main reasons many people choose to live here. What does this mean to you and how might you maintain this diversity?

Certainly the diversity of this neighborhood is one of the qualities that attracted my family when we bought a home here. While the cultural diversity our community now enjoys is a fairly recent phenomenon, it is worth preserving. We can do that by taking seriously the need to create safer neighborhoods, better schools and strengthening our established community of diverse business owners.

As alderman, my office will work directly with minority business owners to give them the tools to be successful and the resources they need to grow their businesses and learn to be better business people.

It is also important that we establish a strong chamber of commerce. A chamber that not only recruits new and varied businesses to our community, but also works aggressively to organize and promote what is here will provide great support toward to goal of diversity.

Economic diversity is among Rogers Park’s great legacies. This has, for generations, been the neighborhood where young couples come to establish their families. As our community continues to evolve, smart planning locally and team-building citywide will play important roles in preserving these traditions.

An earlier question addressed affordable housing, so I will not repeat myself here. Rather, let me emphasize that maintaining a good mix of affordable housing is an important factor in continuing our economic diversity. Now that the city as a whole has embraced this issue, it is more important than ever that we have the sort of leader in the alderman’s office who can build partnerships and bring results to our community.

Many of our CTA Red Line stations are quite old and in great need of repair. Would you make this one of your priorities and how would you go about it?

I spoke with someone in the mayor’s office about the issue of El maintenance recently. Rogers Park is, in fact, already on the list for improvements but those improvements will be several years in the future. Much of the funding for public transportation improvements comes from federal grants. Those grants tend to be large enough to cover the costs, but they are usually several years behind the need.

The time is now, however, to create the priority list for these improvements. Every viaduct from Howard to Granville needs to be targeted for some level of maintenance. Crumbling concrete must be repaired or replaced. El platforms should be upgraded and modernized. Handicapped accessibility should be a priority for every public transportation stop in the city. Why not make Rogers Park the first to comply 100 percent?

Certainly, however, if there are dangerous structural problems, they would be addressed quickly.

Also, my alderman’s office will work with the Chicago Transit Authority and Metra to hold annual public meetings in the 49thWard so that both sides can discuss issues as they relate to the community and to the system as a whole.

What is your vision for our cherished lakefront and many parks?

Preservation of the lakefront and other green spaces in the 49th Ward is a mission that engages the community and inspires its greatest passion. Rogers Park is the only Chicago neighborhood with its own beaches. The numerous, spacious parks provide ample space for recreation and reflection. They are envied in nearly every corner of the city.

Rogers Park residents have a history of fighting for their beaches. In 1952, private developers planned to build high-rises that would have blocked the view of the lake and compromised access to beaches. Residents banded together to fight for the right to have public space and demanded that the city purchase the land and preserve it for the community. In a strategy that not only was highly effective, but has become a part of city legend, neighborhood activists mailed hundreds of bags of sand to then-Mayor Richard J. Daley.

That activism spawned the Rogers Park Community Council, which remains active promoting and pursuing community-related issues. It also produced the Lakefront Protection Act, an ordinance designed to preserve the integrity of open space in and around the lake. It limits the height of buildings along Sheridan Road, and spells out specific requirements for all would-be development.

As Alderman, I will:

Enforce the Lakefront Protection Ordinance to preserve our lakefront from such projects as view-blocking high rises
Continue the community’s long-standing commitment to preserve green space and beach access
Commit to a transparent process with public notices and open meetings on all matters as they pertain to the beach, the parks and other green resources
Work directly with the Chicago Parks Department to repair damaged or aged structures
Work with community organizers to restore lakefront plant habitats
Work directly with the Chicago Parks Department to identify and create open spaces, while making a priority of upgrading existing public areas

The 49th ward has no major medical facility. Do you think this problematic? If so how would you work to bring such a basic service to our community?

We have before us the possibility of a solution to this issue and it comes in the form of Loyola University’s curriculum plans and the need to have a strong working relationship between the alderman’s office and the university’s top administration.

Loyola is currently looking at moving the first two years of its medical school program to a new facility based at the Lakefront Campus. I propose that Loyola include a teaching clinic that could serve both the Rogers Park and Edgewater communities. I have promised throughout this campaign to make creating a partnership with Loyola one of my top priorities. A plan as ambitious as this will never happen under our current administration. As alderman, meeting with Loyola’s University and Medical School leadership immediately will be a top priority.

Still, it is important to note that having a major medical facility doesn’t guarantee care for everyone, particularly the uninsured, and that preventative care is a key to a healthy community.

Although the United States health care system is by far the world’s most expensive (the United States spent $1.9 trillion on health in 2004, or 16 percent of the gross domestic product) sadly these huge expenditures don’t always add up to improved clinical outcomes for people.

In recent years, the problem of the uninsured in Illinois has been growing steadily worse. Nearly 33 percent of the new uninsured in the U.S. last year were in Illinois. The problem of people without adequate health coverage touches us all on a practical as well as moral level people without adequate access to routine care tend to seek it in very expensive emergency room settings that are least suited to providing it. The associated costs work their way through the health care economy to impact everyone.

Illinois also faces the problem of individuals who are eligible for existing public sector health care programs but are not enrolled. It is estimated that there are 350,000 uninsured adults and children in the Chicago metropolitan area who are eligible but not enrolled in existing KidCare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration, Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and other public health programs. This is due to confusion about changing welfare rules; difficult enrollment procedures; unfounded fears of becoming a “public burden;” and lack of information.

Rogers Park is not immune to the problems in American healthcare. Many of the other challenges we face in the 49th Ward like security, quality housing, education, transportation and economic development are linked to healthcare. We must develop collaborative, achievable solutions that consider these interrelationships. We should resist the temptation to resort to gestures which may only serve to obscure deeper problems or even unintentionally cause new ones.

As your Alderman, I will seek to improve the health of the Rogers Park community through the following immediate actions and initiatives:

We will form partnerships with Chicago-based community organizations specialized in matching eligible individuals with existing affordable care they may be unaware of. We will also work with these organizations to create community outreach initiatives to bring people into public sector care they are already eligible for.
We will work with our schools, early child care centers and community organizations to enhance the health and safety of children and babies, including working to expand enrollment in All Kids, the state’s new program to provide affordable, comprehensive health insurance to all the children of Illinois.
We will create a healthier environment for seniors, working with Rogers Park senior housing facilities and community organizations to provide comprehensive wellbeing checks during severe weather and to promote nearby city sponsored low and no-cost wellness initiatives such as the wellness and fitness programs offered through the Chicago Department on Aging Northeast (Levy) Senior Center and other community preventive health initiatives.
Recognizing the relationship between improved public health and walkable cities, we will pursue economic development, safety and crime reduction initiatives that make Rogers Park a more pedestrian friendly environment.
I will aggressively lead the use of all available legal remedies to enforce health and safety codes in 49th ward residential buildings identified as "troubled".
As a member of the city council, I will fight to expand and maintain quality public transportation for people living with disabilities including working directly with the Chicago Transit Authority to make all the 49th Ward’s el platforms handicapped accessible

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