Alderman Joe Moore

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

• Preserving our neighborhood’s racial and economic diversity by providing more affordable ownership and rental opportunities for people of low and moderate income.
• Building on the progress we’ve made to reduce crime in the 49th Ward
• Strengthening business and economic development in our commercial corridors.
• Enhancing the quality of educational opportunities in our community.
• Improving the quality of public transportation services in the 49th Ward and throughout the city.

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

The improvements our neighborhood has witnessed over the last 16 years, such as a state-of-the-art branch library; new schools; new sidewalks, streets and alleys; and new retail amenities, helped to fuel an unprecedented investment in residential housing. The new condominium constructions and conversions have helped to stabilize our community by bringing in new families and cleaning up some troubled apartment buildings. At the same time, these housing developments have brought a new set of challenges, which threaten our neighborhood’s unique economic and racial diversity.

In my 16 years as alderman, I have endeavored to promote a balanced approach to development that provides housing for people of all incomes. Nearly 1,000 units of affordable rental and ownership housing have been created and preserved during my tenure, but much more needs to be done. Below are some of the efforts I have taken and will continue to take in the next four years to promote a responsible approach to development that maintains our diversity:

• Preserve existing affordable rental housing.
  We must step in whenever possible to preserve the affordable rental housing we already have. That is why I worked with the owners of the North Point Apartments to maintain the affordability of over 300 units of rental housing for very low income residents. The owners received my support for funding to rehabilitate the apartments, and in return, they agreed to extend the affordability of the units for an additional 20 years. I also have worked closely with the Chicago Metropolitan Housing Development Corporation to preserve dozens of affordable rental units in buildings once owned by the Chicago Equity Fund and Peoples Housing.
  
  I will continue to explore every avenue possible to preserve our affordable rental housing stock. For example, I am currently working with the Community Investment Corporation (CIC) to identify responsible owners who will both renovate the Broadmoor Hotel at 7600 N. Bosworth and preserve its affordability. Similarly, I am working with CIC to renovate and preserve the affordability of the buildings located just east of the Broadmoor. Over 100 units of affordable housing are at stake there.
• Implement economic incentives for building owners to maintain rental housing.
  While the condominium market has cooled somewhat, many building owners still find it more profitable to convert rental apartment buildings into condominiums rather than maintain them as rental housing. We must continually search for innovative programs that will provide an economic incentive for building owners to maintain their buildings as affordable rental housing. Accordingly, I have worked to establish a "Neighborhood Improvement Fund" in the Sheridan-Devon TIF to provide rehabilitation funds for building owners in the TIF who agree to maintain a portion of their apartment units as affordable rental housing.
  
  The Lakeside Community Development Corporation suggests that Chicago emulate a New York City program that provides a fund for the identification, acquisition and rehabilitation of rental housing. This fund provides "bridge financing" that enables affordable housing developers to secure government funds for affordable housing preservation. I will urge Mayor Daley’s Administration to consider adopting New York’s approach.
• Identify potential affordable housing developers and increase awareness of federal, state and local affordable housing programs.
  I will also continue to actively search for responsible nonprofit and for-profit housing developers who will commit to develop affordable rental housing in the 49th Ward. Many housing developers are unaware of the city, state and federal funding sources that are available for affordable housing development. This spring, I plan to host with the Organization of the Northeast an affordable housing forum for local housing developers, which will provide them with information on the various programs that are available and assistance on accessing funds from those programs. Similarly, I have actively promoted local landlord participation in the Chicago Low Income Housing Trust Fund. The Trust Fund, which just received a substantial infusion of funds, provides assistance to landlords who rent to low-income tenants.
• Identify innovative and low-cost ways of providing for affordable housing.
  Unfortunately, public funding for affordable housing has grown more scarce over the years and does not begin to approach the need. That is why it is important to identify innovative and low-cost ways of providing for affordable housing. For example, when a local landlord asked for my support for a zoning change so he could build additional apartment units in several of his buildings, I conditioned my support on his agreement to maintain those units as affordable and accessible rental housing. As a result, our community’s housing inventory will soon receive twelve additional units of affordable rental housing. I will continue to adopt those innovative approaches.
• Create affordable ownership opportunities.
  In order to maintain our diversity, we must also provide home ownership at an affordable price. That is why I was one of the first aldermen in the city to require an affordable housing set aside for any housing development of ten units or more that needs a zoning change or special use permit. At least ten percent of the units in any such development must be made available to qualified low and moderate income purchasers under the Chicago Partnership for Affordable Neighborhoods (CPAN) program. I have also encouraged developers to take advantage of state and city funds to create affordable condominium buildings. Two such affordable condominium buildings were developed on Hermitage and Paulina.

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

I am a firm believer in community policing and was the leading City Council advocate for its implementation in Chicago twelve years ago. Thanks to the efforts of my office and a coalition of community organizations, the 24th District was named as a site for one of the city’s first community policing pilot projects. As a result, the 24th District today boasts one of the most successful community policing initiatives in the city. That initiative, combined with an aggressive approach to problem buildings, has resulted in an 11% drop in serious crime in the last four years, and a 49% drop in serious crime since 1991. Put in human terms, there were 5,200 fewer victims of serious crime in the 24th District as compared to 16 years ago.

Crime in our neighborhood is still at an unacceptable level, however, and we must continue our efforts to make our neighborhood safer. Below are the steps I plan to take in the next four years.

• Encourage greater participation in CAPS.
  Community attendance at CAPS meetings is generally good, but does not always reflect the demographic make-up of the neighborhood. If community policing is to be truly effective, all members of the community must be engaged. I will redouble efforts to encourage participation in CAPS by young people, renters, business owners and people of color.
• Continue aggressive actions against slum landlords.
  Scores of gang and drug-infested apartment buildings in the 49th Ward have been transformed into safe, clean and decent housing with the assistance of my office working together with the police department and community residents. My chief-of-staff, Kevin Cosgrove devotes almost full-time to monitoring problem buildings and aggressively challenging bad landlords. I am one of the few aldermen in the city who sends a staff assistant to Housing Court on a weekly basis. The City’s Gang and Drug House Enforcement laws have provided us with enormously helpful tools to go after landlords who either negligently or knowingly harbor drug dealers. A complex of buildings at 1340 W. Morse and 1345 W. Lunt are the latest buildings to fall under the Gang and Drug House Enforcement laws, and a court order has been entered requiring the landlords to engage in a number of activities to stabilize the building, including hiring off-duty police officers as security guards.
• Urge the Police Department to continue aggressive actions to break up drug rings.
  Thanks to information provided by the community and my office, the Chicago Police Department broke up four major drug rings in the last two years, providing lengthy prison sentences to local street gang leaders. Although undercover investigations take time, these aggressive actions have helped to make our streets safer. I will continue to press the Police Department to root out the drug dealers and gang bangers who prey upon our community.
• Provide greater lighting and security cameras.
  Dozens of 49th Ward blocks have been made safer as a result of the bright new streetlights I arranged to have installed. The new lights are brighter and closer to the ground so they are not blocked by leafy trees. They also have an additional light, which illuminates the sidewalks. Streets near el stations and higher crime areas in our neighborhood received first priority for the new streetlights, but now I have arranged for lights to be installed on residential streets throughout the ward. At least a dozen new blocks of streetlights will be installed next year.
  
  I also arranged to have the first "blue light" police camera on the north side installed on Morse Avenue two years ago. Since then, additional blue light cameras have been installed at Howard and Ashland and Howard and Damen. New blue light cameras are due to be installed at my direction on Birchwood and Hoyne and Jonquil and Ashland in the next few weeks. These cameras have proven to be a helpful tool in deterring criminal activity.
• Advocate for continued funding of Cease Fire.
  Cease Fire, the anti-violence organization, has proven instrumental in reducing gun and gang violence in our neighborhood. Thanks in part to Cease Fire’s efforts, the 24th District was one of the few police districts in the city to experience a reduction in homicides in 2006. Cease Fire works aggressively to head off gang violence and encourage young people to steer clear of gangs and drugs.
• Support after-school and youth programs.
  Keeping our young people engaged in positive activities is another antidote to crime and violence. The new Gale Community Center, which the community and I have long fought for, will provide much-needed recreational activities and positive role models for young people living in the Howard Street area. Meanwhile, the Rogers Park Community Council, the Howard Area Community Center and Alternatives have provided youth programs in the Morse Avenue area. I’ve been proud to secure city funding for those agencies and will continue to do so.
• Advocate for local jobs and living wage jobs.
  Nothing would do more to lower the crime rate than ensuring jobs with living wages for 49th Ward families. Too many 49th Ward workers are barely making ends meet, sometimes working two or three jobs at subsistence wages to support themselves and their families. Jobs with living wages would give wage earners more time with their families and a chance at a better life. I will continue my fight in the City Council to enact a Living Wage Ordinance in Chicago, and will continue my efforts locally to secure union jobs for 49th Ward residents at local construction projects, such as the new Howard Street El Station, the Gale Community Center and the new fire station on Clark Street. I will also continue to work with the Howard Area Community Center to provide pre-apprenticeship training and job skills training for those who wish to improve their lives.

How would you go about attracting new business to the ward? Especially on Morse and Howard Streets?

While commercial corridor development has tended to lag behind residential development, this is beginning to change. The Morse Avenue streetscape continues to improve. I recently secured $3 million in streetscape improvements that will be constructed this summer, including new lighting, planters and community identifiers The Morseland Restaurant is thriving and Cobblers Mall, just east of the Morse El Station will soon be transformed into a restaurant and live acoustic music venue. A new coffee shop will soon be opening at Morse and Greenview and two new mixed-use retail-condominium developments promise to bring new businesses and vitality to the street.

Jarvis Sqare is booming with new restaurants, pubs and coffee houses and Glenwood Avenue has become a thriving arts community, supporting nearly two dozen artists and galleries and hosting an annual arts festival with over 80 vendors. Clark Street is a thriving business district that supports many family-owned businesses and attracts shoppers from far beyond the 49th Ward. Last summer’s Clark Street Festival, which my office helped organize, demonstrated the strong commitment of these retailers to our community life.

Howard Street continues to revitalize. Gateway Plaza is now 87% occupied, construction of the Gale Park Community Center is underway, a new 24-unit condo and commercial development will soon replace a tire store and several shuttered storefronts, and the Wisdom Bridge Arts Project is moving forward with plans to build a community arts center on the old Wisdom Bridge Theater site.

Some of this revitalization is due to the work of DevCorp North, the economic development corporation for Rogers Park, which I helped to form early in my first term as alderman. DevCorp North recently spearheaded a community-based process for developing commercial district plans for Howard Street and Morse Avenue. Much of my work in the next four years will be devoted to implementing those recommendations. The recommendations include:

• Encourage the growth of new retail stores and services to fill storefront vacancies on both Howard and Morse.
  I will continue to work closely with Dev Corp North to co-host business attraction seminars and workshops that have proven successful at attracting new locally owned businesses to the neighborhood. My office also works very closely with new businesses to help them navigate through the myriad of city bureaucratic requirements. My office will continue to identify types of businesses that are currently missing from the community and encourage them to locate here.
• Build on the distinct identities of both Howard and Morse.
  Morse and Glenwood Avenues are home to a burgeoning arts and theater district. Howard Street has developed a number of Caribbean-oriented restaurants and stores. I plan to work with DevCorp North and area businesses and residents to build upon those area identities through festivals and promotions.
• Align the efforts of landlords, realtors, business owners and community residents to strengthen business development efforts.
  I will host most meetings in my office with property owners on Morse and Howard, particularly those who have expressed an interest in redeveloping their properties, to encourage cohesive design elements in buildings and reiterate community expectations around parking, density and affordable housing units. I will encourage those who hold dilapidated properties to either improve their properties or sell to those who will.
• Continue to improve the safety of the commercial streets.
  Enhancing the safety of the streets helps the business climate. The presence of the police "blue light" cameras in the Howard and Morse business districts clearly has contributed to making those business districts safer. But cameras are not enough. I will continue to encourage our police commander to provide foot patrol officers on Howard and Morse whenever possible, and will try to increase business owner participation in the CAPS meetings.
• Improve the appearance of the streets and buildings to cultivate a distinct district identity.
  I will work to ensure the completion this year of the Morse Avenue streetscape project. The project will greatly improve the physical appearance of Morse and help create the feeling of a small, walkable "town center." I will also continue my efforts to secure funding to complete the Howard Street streetscape project east of the Howard El Station. I will encourage property and business owners to take advantage of building improvement funds available in the Special Service Areas to improve their building facades and remove metal gates whenever possible.
• Formalize guidelines for new development in the 49th Ward.
  While my office and the 49th Ward Zoning and Land Use Advisory Committee have informally applied design guidelines for proposed new developments in the neighborhood (e.g., be context appropriate/sensitive, avoid concrete block construction, vinyl siding, Dryvit, etc.), those guidelines have never been formalized. I will assign the 49th Ward Zoning and Land Use Advisory Committee the task of creating a "Development Handbook," that will include recommendations for general design and appearance.
• Increase off-street parking opportunities.
  I will work with DevCorp North and the Special Service Areas to perform a parking study to measure local on and off-street parking usage and continue to encourage owners of off-street parking lots to allow pubic/shared parking in underutilized sites.
• Encourage use of I-Go Car Sharing and bicycle ridership.
  In addition to providing more off-street parking sites, I also believe we need to discourage whenever possible the use of the automobile. That is why I worked closely with the Center for Neighborhood Technology to locate four different I-Go Car Sharing sites in the ward and worked with the City to create bicycle lanes on Howard Street.

Rogers Park and Edgewater are often noted for being very "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?

As I noted above, preserving our neighborhood’s racial and economic diversity is my top priority. I am proud to have led a community that proves that a diverse neighborhood can also be a successful and vital neighborhood. A true commitment to diversity requires more than empty rhetoric. It requires deeds as well as words. I am proud to have assembled a ward staff and campaign staff that reflects the diversity of the 49th Ward. The membership of the 49th Ward Democratic Party, of which I am one of the leaders, also reflects that diversity.

Our neighborhood cannot remain economically and racially diverse unless people of all incomes can afford to live here. That is why preserving and creating affordable housing is such a critical priority. I outlined those goals in my response to Question 2 of this survey.

Many of our CTA Redline 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?

Access to public transportation is one of our community’s prized assets. That is why I worked hard to secure a commitment from the CTA to construct a new station at Howard Street. Work has begun on the new station and I will monitor its progress to make sure the CTA adheres to its promised timetable. I also mobilized over a hundred community residents to attend the CTA’s capital improvement hearing to demand upgrades to the Morse Avenue El Station. As a result, the CTA amended its capital budget to include $800,000 in improvements to the Morse Station that included a new canopy and platform that stemmed chronic leaking during rain storms.

Much work remains to be done, however. Below are some of the steps I plan to take to improve the el stations and improve CTA service in general.

• Pressure the CTA to expedite planned improvements to the Morse and Jarvis El Stations.
  Upgrades to the Jarvis El Station and further improvements to the Morse El Station are included in the CTA’s long-term capital improvement plan. Unfortunately, federal funding cuts, state funding disparities and misplaced CTA priorities threaten to push these improvements off until the distant future. I will work with my colleagues on the City Council and organizations such as the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group to pressure the CTA to redirect its capital funding to basic neighborhood needs rather than splashy downtown projects.
• Pressure the CTA to improve the upkeep and maintenance of its train stations.
  The CTA’s maintenance of its stations throughout the Redline, including the stations in the 49th Ward is spotty at best. I will continue to work with my City Council colleagues to remind the CTA of its responsibilities to provide basic maintenance of its property. I will also include the CTA stations in my bi-annual 49th Ward Clean-up events held every spring and fall.
• Clean up and landscape CTA berms.
  Several years ago, I prevailed upon the CTA to reconsider its plans to clear cut the trees on the berm along Glenwood Avenue. While we protected the trees, the berms are in need of regular landscaping and cleaning. I will work to identify local sources of landscaping materials and landscape designers interested and willing to work on the berms.
• Pressure the CTA to improve its service on the Red Line.
  Riders of the CTA Red Line have experienced a series of inexcusable delays in recent months due to equipment failures and malfunctions. The CTA is clearly cutting back on maintenance. Accordingly, I will ask my City Council colleagues to join me in a resolution calling for hearings on these malfunctions and demanding an explanation from the CTA.

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

Preserving our most valuable asset, our precious lakefront, is one of my highest priorities. I will not permit the extension of Lake Shore Drive or any other roadway on the lakefront, nor will I permit any harbors, residential development or large commercial development on existing park property. And I will continue to insist that the 49th Ward parks receive their fair share of services and improvements from the Park District.

I will reinvigorate the 49th Ward Parks and Beaches Advisory Committee, which in the past performed a valuable service in assessing the needs of our neighborhood parks and beaches and monitoring Park District compliance with those needs. An engaged and involved citizenry are my best eyes and ears.

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

Given the fact that hospitals in the city are closing rather than opening and that the 49th Ward simply has no available land for a major medical facility, it is highly unlikely that such a facility will locate in our community. Nonetheless, we need to do everything we can to provide affordable health care for our low and moderate income residents. The County’s current financial crisis makes the possibility of a new County health clinic in our neighborhood extremely remote.

Fortunately, the Heartland Alliance and Neighbors for a Healthy Rogers Park have been working hard to secure federal funding for a health clinic in our area. Identifying a potential site for a health clinic is a prerequisite for the funding, and when the groups ran into a roadblock finding such a site, my office stepped in and helped identify a site. With the site now identified, Heartland is cautiously optimistic about obtaining the federal funds. I will continue to do whatever I can in my power to make that health clinic a reality in the 49th Ward,

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