Dear Ald. Cappleman:
I was forced out of the Chateau Hotel on June 21, 2013, just prior to the 2013 LGBT Pride Parade that you, Ald. James Cappleman, co-hosted.
The forced move of about 140 residents from the Chateau last springincluding the elderly, people with disabilities, veterans and the working poor, most of whom were African-Americanwas due in large part to Cappleman's targeting of the Chateau Hotel which helped its sale to gut-rehab developer BJB Properties/Jamie Purcell.
On Jan. 17, 2014, The Chicago Reporter website published the article "Debating affordable housing in Chicago: An alderman and an advocate talk it out," which reporter Yana Kunichoff wrote. To read the complete article, go to http://www.chicagoreporter.com/debating-affordable-housing-chicago-alderman-and-advocate-talk-it-out#.U3PeOkoo6Uk.
The article was based on an email exchange between ONE Northside President the Rev. Monte Johnson and Cappleman.
The article ends with Cappleman saying, "I will continue to look for creative ways and help pass new legislation that makes building affordable housing easier and provide incentives to do so."
Ald. Cappleman,
1 ) Do you support and will you help pass the new "Chicago For All" ordinance designed to protect existing SROs from the rehab developers that have devastated the lives of so many poor people, including hundreds of your own constituents?
2 ) Or will you side with the gut-rehab developers who have done the damage and may continue to do so unrestrained without such an ordinance?
3 ) Are you only interested in building new affordable housing and not preserving affordable housing, like SROs, that already exists?
4 ) Why are not the currently available subsidies to provide market-rate rents to developers while providing affordable hosing to poor tenants not enough of an incentive for developers to put subsidized housing for poor people in their existing market rate rent buildings?
5 ) What excuses do developers give you for not taking advantage of existing subsidy programs to help house poor people while also giving developers the rents they seek?
6 ) What additional incentives for developers to do the right thing for poor people would you consider and that you think would work to fix the problem caused by those same developers?
7 ) If you oppose the "Chicago For All" ordinance, please detail your ideas that will solve the affordable housing crisis in the city. Why have you not proposed your own ordinance which includes your ideas and solutions to the affordable housing problem in the four months since this article was published or earlier?
8 ) Who on the city council supports your ideas and solutions to the affordable housing crisis?
Sincerely,
Robert Rohdenburg
Gay Lake View resident and
ONE Northside affordable housing activist
It's the law
Letter to the editor:
Dear Editor,
In the May 7 issue of Windy City Times, reporter Matt Simonette covered the LGBTQ youth summit that took place earlier this month. Participants explained that they wanted to see "the decriminalization of sex work" and the "opportunity to have records expunged."
Your readers should know that, in 2010, the Illinois Safe Children Act decriminalized all youth under 18 who engaged in prostitution. In 2010, the Justice for Victims of Sex Trafficking Crimes Act was passed, which allows people with prostitution convictions to ask a judge to vacate those convictions that resulted from sex trafficking. This law has already been used several times in Cook County to vacate prior prostitution convictions, including those obtained as a minor.
If people would like more information about this law, please contact legal-service providers like the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation at 773-244-2230, ext. 4, or Metropolitan Family Services at 312-986-4200.
Leena Saleh
Communications Manager
Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation