Abstract
This paper examines the housing market of metropolitan Chicago from 1970 to 2015, with particular attention on the three largest minority groups – African Americans, Hispanics and Asians. The Hispanic and Asian populations of the metropolitan area have grown rapidly, while the African-American population has actually declined since 2000. Metro Chicago has a much larger Hispanic population than is typical for major northern metro areas in the USA. Suburban growth coupled with population decline in the central city has produced large minority populations in the suburbs along with sharp declines in the traditional African-American areas of the central city. African-American areas of concentrated poverty remain. Sizable mostly white population growth has occurred in and near the downtown area as most of the nearby public housing has been demolished.
Introduction
This paper is an examination of the housing market of metropolitan Chicago since 1970 with special attention paid to the residential patterns of the three largest minority groups – African Americans, Hispanics and Asians. The purpose of this paper is to assemble relevant facts and so to provide a coherent story.
Metropolitan Chicago has experienced rapid growth in both the Hispanic and Asian populations while the African-American population has actually declined slightly since 2000. The suburban populations of all three groups have grown so that sizable majorities of Hispanics and Asians live in the suburbs, as do almost half of the African Americans.
African Americans are leaving the central city and moving to suburban areas, perhaps to escape the areas of concentrated poverty. Hispanics occupy two large areas within the city of Chicago, but those two areas may have reached population capacity. A variety of suburban locations are available to Hispanics, including the older satellite cities that surround the central city and provide employment opportunities. And Asians are found in many suburban areas, especially near the growing suburban employment centres. Rapid population growth at the metropolitan level for the Hispanic and Asian populations has meant rapid suburban population increases. See McDonald (2016) for a detailed enumeration of employment trends in the metro area.
Those are the basic trends, but there is much more to the story. The African-American population of the city of Chicago has declined sharply and those declines occurred mainly in some of the lower-income areas. The degree of segregation of African Americans from the other groups remains high; the boundaries separating the African-American population from others in the central city have not moved very much since 1970. Concentrated poverty exists almost entirely in certain African-American areas, but has declined since its peak in 1990. Hispanics and Asians are segregated from others, but to a much smaller degree than are African Americans.
Important changes in the housing patterns include the demolition of most of the high-rise public housing and the somewhat related rapid population increase in the downtown area. And, as is well known, the financial crisis of 2007–2008 was precipitated by the crash in the housing market. Lax lending policies in part abetted by increasing housing prices led to a wave of foreclosures throughout the metropolitan area. Housing prices collapsed to a greater degree in African-American and Hispanic neighbourhoods in the central city. Long-run implications of the financial crisis have yet to be explored.
Overview of population and segregation trends
The Chicago metropolitan area, as defined in Figure 1, had modest population growth over the 45 years from 1970 to 2015. Data are shown in Figure 2. Overall growth was 20.7%; i.e. just 0.42% per year, but growth in the decade of the 1990s was 11.2%. Slow population growth, coupled with the opening of the expressway system in the mid 1960s, meant a sizable decline in the population of the city of Chicago of 650,000 from 1970 to 2015. Population decline in the central city was concentrated in 16 high-poverty African-American community areas. These areas account for 63% of the decline in the city. The population of the suburbs grew from 4.5 million to 6.8 million over the 45 years.
Metropolitan Chicago.
Metropolitan Chicago population: City of Chicago.
Figure 3 shows the distribution of population growth in the suburbs by location. A majority of the growth, 61%, took place in the inner ring of counties (Lake, DuPage, Kane, and Will in Illinois and Lake County Indiana, see Figure 1.)
Suburban population: Cook County suburbs.
Figures 4, 5 and 6 show population data for the African-American, Hispanic, and Asian populations. The African-American population of the metropolitan area increased in the 1970s and 1990s, but has declined since 2000. The African-American population in the city has declined steadily since 1980. Starting with a relatively small base, the percentage growth of the suburban African-American population has been even greater than overall suburban growth. In 1970, 224,000 African Americans resided in the suburban areas, with 73.1% living in the inner suburban ring outside Cook County. In 2015, 749,000 African Americans lived in the suburbs, an overall increase of 234%. Now almost half (46.8%) of African Americans live in the suburbs. The bulk of the increase (60.2%) is located in suburban Cook County. It is shown below that most of that increase took place in the southern and western suburbs of Cook County adjacent to the city of Chicago. Yet 41.7% of the African-American suburban population is located in the rest of the inner suburban ring as of 2015 (see Appendix Table A1).
African-American population (1000s).
Hispanic population (1000s).
Asian population (1000s).
The Hispanic population has grown rapidly from 634,000 in 1980 to 2.03 million in 2015. Most of the growth took place in the suburbs. As of 1980 the metropolitan Hispanic population was divided into 66.6% in the central city and 33.4% in the suburbs. The much larger population in 2015 was divided into 38.7% in the central city and 61.3% in the suburbs. The increase in the central city from 1980 to 2015 was 363,000, but the increases in suburban Cook County (428,000) and the rest of the inner suburban ring (499,000) were even larger.
The Asian population has also grown rapidly since 1980 from 144,000 to 567,000. It was 52% suburban in 1980, and the bulk of the rapid growth has taken place in the suburbs – in suburban Cook County and in the rest of the inner ring. The Asian population of the central city has grown rapidly, but as of 2015 some 73% of the Asian population resided in the suburbs.
From 1980 to 2015 the population of the suburbs increased by 1.77 million (34.8%). The increase in the suburban Hispanic population of 1.03 million is 58.8% of the total increase in the suburbs. The Hispanic population is now 18.3%, the African American population is now 11.0%, and the Asian population is 6.1% of the suburban population for a total of 35.4% for these three minority groups.
Next we look at the level of segregation in the metropolitan area and the central city. Indexes of dissimilarity are shown in Table 1, and are based on census tract data. The indexes show that the African-American population remains highly segregated from the white, Hispanic and Asian groups. The segregation of Hispanics and Asians from whites and from each other exists, but is much lower than the segregation of African Americans.
Dissimilarity index measure of segregation in housing.
Source: Russell Sage Foundation, American Community Project.
The index for African American population dissimilarity compared with the white population declined at the metropolitan level from 88.1 to 75.2 over the 30 years from 1980 to 2010. The index for the city of Chicago is greater than for the metropolitan area, but it too declined from 90.6 in 1980 to 82.5 in 2010.
The dissimilarity index for the Hispanic population compared to the white population is substantially lower than for the African-American population. At the metropolitan level this index fell from 62.9 in 1980 to 56.3 in 2010, while the index for the city of Chicago remained roughly constant and stood at 60.9 in 2010. Suburban population growth among the Hispanic population accounts for the decline at the metropolitan level. Is suburbanisation a recipe for reducing segregation?
The Asian–white index of dissimilarity is lower than for the other two groups. The index for the metropolitan area was 47.2 and 51.4 for the central city in 1980. Both indexes had declined by 2010, but the central city index was actually lower than the index for the metropolitan area. The Asian–white index for the central city in 2010 is 40.5, the lowest index in the table.
Table 1 also includes the index of dissimilarity for African Americans compared with the Hispanic population. By this measure African Americans and Hispanics are segregated from each other to a degree that is just slightly lower than the segregation of African Americans from the white population. Indexes have also been computed for African Americans compared with Asians and Hispanics compared with Asians. The segregation of African Americans from the Asian population is about as high as from the white and Hispanic groups, and the segregation of Asians from Hispanics is higher than the Asian – white segregation level (61.3 in the metro area and 66.6 in the central city in 2010).
Segregation indexes for the suburbs can be computed from the figures in Table 1 because the index for the metropolitan area is a weighted average of the indexes for the central city and the suburbs. The 2000 index for African American–white segregation index for the suburbs is 66.4 (versus 82.5 in the central city), and the African American–Hispanic index is 53.6 (versus 80.8 in the central city). And the Hispanic–white index for the suburbs is 53.3 (versus 60.9 in the central city). In short, the degree of segregation is lower in the suburbs, especially for African Americans.
The next part of this section provides more detailed discussions of the spatial patterns of each of the three minority groups. Figure 7 shows the patterns of decline and growth for the most recent census decade, 2000–2010. As we have seen, the African-American population of the central city has undergone significant decline – by 25% from 1980 to 2010. One result of the decline is that the boundaries of the African American parts of the city have not changed as the population has declined and the index of segregation has not declined very much. See Figure 8. The suburban areas are a very different story.
Population Change in Metropolitan Chicago: 2000-2010.
Chicago community areas: 2000.
Figure 4 shows 738,000 African Americans lived in the suburbs in 2010 (45.4% of the metropolitan total for this group). Where were they? Two types of location pop up. First there are the old satellite cities of Waukegan, Elgin, Aurora, Joliet and Gary. The first four of these cities have experienced rapid population growth from 291,000 in 1980 to 545,000 in 2010, an increase of 87.3%. The African-American population of these four cities increased from 40,800 in 1980 to 70,100 in 2010, an increase of 71.7% that almost matches the percentage increase in the total population of the four. Three of these cities (Waukegan, Elgin and Joliet) have one or two suburbs with a sizable African-American population, and these add 24,400 to the satellite totals, which were 55,600 in 1980 and 94,500 in 2010. 1 Then there is Gary, Indiana. The decline of the steel industry has devastated this city. Population fell from 152,000 in 1980 to 80,300 in 2010. Gary was and is largely African American; this group declined from 108,000 in 1980 to 68,100 in 2010. However, the change in the African-American population in Lake County, Indiana from 1980 to 2010 was from 126,000 to 128,500. In effect, the African Americans of Gary moved to other locations within Lake County. As of 2010 223,000 African Americans resided in the five satellite cities and their nearby suburbs, but the Gary story is very different. Gary is a case of losing population to its suburbs.
The other locations that pop up are the western and southern suburbs of Cook County. A group of 14 southern Cook suburbs was home to 57,100 African Americans in 1980. 2 In 2010 these 14 contained an African American population of 199,000. Ten out of 14 were at least 70% African American in that year. Four suburbs just to the West of the central city housed 35,500 African Americans in 1980, and this number increased to 57,000 in 2010. Together the five satellite cities and their nearby suburbs, along with the southern and western suburbs mentioned here account for 467,000 African Americans, which is 63.3% of the total African-American suburban population in 2010. The increases in the African-American population in the five satellite cities and their nearby suburbs and the southern and western Cook County suburbs were 193,000 from 1980 to 2010, which accounts for 50.9% of the increase in suburban African Americans. If these suburban locations account for more than half of this population but only half of the population growth, where are the others? Evanston, the suburb just to the North of the central city, was home to 13,500 African Americans in 2010 – down from 15,800 in 1980. The remainder of the population is scattered throughout the suburbs, including 42,000 in the outer suburban ring – up from just 4,000 in 1980. Figure 7 shows that suburban growth during 2000–2010 was concentrated in the western suburbs.
The Hispanic population of the central city is concentrated in two large areas, the northwest side and the southwest side. The concentration on the near northwest side includes seven community areas that had a Hispanic population of 143,800 in 1980 and 205,300 in 2010. The concentration of the Hispanic population in nine community areas on the southwest side is much larger at 256,000 in 2010, up from 121,000 in 1980. Figure 7 shows that population grew in these two areas during 2000–2010.
The Hispanic population of the suburbs increased 968,000 from 1980 to 2010, going from a relatively modest 202,000 to 1,180,000. This group has been attracted to the five satellite cities and their nearby suburbs; 340,000 Hispanics lived at these locations in 2010, compared with 85,900 in 1980. All five experienced large increases, with Aurora the leader gaining 68,300 Hispanics. Two suburbs just to the West of Chicago, Cicero and Berwyn, went from a Hispanic population of 6300 in 1980 to 106,600 in 2010. The town of Cicero, which is adjacent to the Hispanic community areas on the southwest side central city, was 86.6% Hispanic in 2010. A group of seven other near west suburbs gained 27,500 Hispanics. 3 In all these nine western suburbs had a Hispanic population of 134,100 in 2010, an increase of 114,500. Together these two categories added 381,000 to the Hispanic population, which accounts for only 39.4% of the total increase in the suburban Hispanic population. The remaining increase of 587,000 is scattered throughout the suburbs. Growth during 2000–2010 was scattered, with some concentration in the western and southwestern suburbs (Figure 7).
The Asian population in the city of Chicago of 148,000 in 2010 largely can be found in two distinct areas. The traditional ‘China Town’ is located on the south side and was home to 23,300 Asians in 2010. Other Asians are found on the north side of the city. However, the concentration of Asians in any of these community areas does not exceed the 26%. Some other Asians have been attracted to the new housing in the downtown area. In 2010 a total of 16,300 Asians resided in the three community areas that constitute the core of the downtown housing market. This market is described below. Asians are not found in the heavily African American areas of the city, but otherwise are scattered around the city.
Suburban Asians are scattered, but some concentrations exist in the newer suburbs that are termed ‘edge cities’. These include Schaumburg (14,700 Asians, 19.8% of the population), Naperville (21,200, 14.9% of the population), Oak Brook (23.2% of a small population of 7900), Bolingbrook (8500 out of 74,300) and Aurora (13,400, but just 6.7% of the population of this large and rapidly growing satellite city). In addition, Asians are found in a couple of older suburbs adjacent to the north side of the central city – Skokie with 16,500 Asians out of a population of 64,800 and Des Plaines with 6653 out of 58,364. All of these suburbs provide nearby access to suburban centres of employment. Growth during 2000–2010 took place in the downtown and north side of the city, and suburban growth was concentrated in the western and near northern suburbs (Figure 7).
Comparisons with other northern metro areas
The purpose of this section is to compare the Chicago metropolitan area with 13 other major metropolitan areas in the North. A complete comparison would require a separate paper, but a brief comparison for the year 2010 can be done. The data compare the relative sizes of the three minority populations and the extent to which those groups are concentrated in the central city of the metropolitan area. The variables in the analysis are listed in Table 2 along with descriptive statistics.
Variables and descriptive statistics: 14 northern metro areas in 2010.
Notes: The metro areas are New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Kansas City.
Source: US Bureau of the Census.
Table 2 shows that the percentage of the total metro population living in the city of Chicago is close to the mean for all 14 metro areas. Also, the percentage of the metro population that is African American, the percentage of the African-American population living in the central city, and the percentage of the central city population that is African American are close to the means for the 14 metros. The Hispanic population of metro Chicago differs substantially from the mean for the 14 metros. In 2010 20.7% of the population of metropolitan Chicago was Hispanic, while the mean for the 14 metros was 7.9%. Metropolitan New York also has a high percentage of Hispanic population (21.7% in 2010), but the next-highest is Milwaukee with 9.5%. The Hispanic population made up 28.9% of the population of the city of Chicago in 2010, compared with just 12.1% for the group of 14 metros (and 28.6% for the city of New York). Metro Chicago also has a somewhat larger Asian population than the mean for the 14 metros (5.6% versus 2.9%).
The basic comparisons in Table 2 can be refined by controlling for the size of the central city and the relative size of the minority group in the metro population. The size of the central city varies from 11.4% to 46.7% of the total metro population. A larger central city should mean that a larger percentage of a particular group lives in the central city. However, if it so happens that a particular minority group largely is confined to a part of the central city, then population growth of the central city might mean that the minority group becomes a smaller percentage of the central city population. A larger relative size of the minority group should mean that the group will make up a larger share of the central city population. These ideas are tested and the results are displayed in Table 3. The basic finding of the tests displayed in Table 3 is that, based on the more refined comparisons with other northern metro areas, all three minority groups in metropolitan Chicago may be more suburbanised than might have been expected.
Regression analysis of minority population percentages: 2010.
Notes: Unsigned t values are in parentheses; critical value for 95% statistical significance is 2.145 for a sample size of 14.
The first column of regression results in Table 3 shows that the percentage of the African American population of the metro area living in the central city increases with the size of the central city (measured as the percentage of the metro population living in the central city). The estimated equation predicts that 62.9% of the African American population would be living in the central city of Chicago, but the actual percentage is 54.6%. Similarly, controlling for the relative size of the African-American population in the metro area and the size of the central city, the predicted value for the percentage of the central city population that is African American is 40.7% compared with the actual 32.9%. Both of these tests suggest a more suburbanised African-American population than might have been expected. Similar tests were run for the Hispanic and Asian population groups. The equation for the percentage of the Hispanic population living in the central city shows that it increases with the size of the central city as expected, but the predicted value for Chicago of 45.9% is greater than the actual value of 37.3%. This result suggests a more suburbanised Hispanic population than might have been expected. The test using the percentage of the central city population that is Hispanic yields the expected result that it increases with the relative size of the Hispanic population of the metro area. The predicted and actual values for this variable differ only by 1.5%.
The results for the Asian population bear some similarity to the results for the Hispanic population. The percentage of the Asian population of the metro area living in the central city increases with the size of the central city as expected. However, the percentage of the central city population that is African American has a negative effect on the tendency of the Asian population to live in the central city. The predicted value for the city of Chicago is 34.9% and the actual value is 28.0%, which again suggests a more suburbanised population than might have been expected. The last test shows that the percentage of the central city population that is Asian increases with the relative size of the Asian population in the metro area as expected, and the predicted and actual values for the city of Chicago are not greatly different.
Concentration of poverty: City of Chicago, 1970–2010
Since the 1960s scholars and many others have warned of the harmful effects of urban neighbourhoods dominated by poverty. Chicago experienced a devastating riot in 1968 on the west side of the city, and some of the scars are still visible almost 50 years later. William J Wilson (1987) quantified the concentration of poverty and its negative effects. His study of the city of Chicago found that, between 1970 and 1980, the number of community areas with a family poverty rate of 40% or more increased from one to nine, and two of those community areas in 1980 had family poverty rates in excess of 50%. He later found (1996) that in 1990 there were 11 community areas with family poverty in excess of 40% and six in excess of 50%. McDonald (2004) found that this increase in the concentration of family poverty had reversed in the 1990s. As of 2000 there were six community areas with family poverty in excess of 40%, and just one in excess of 50%. A more recent study by McDonald (2016) finds that the raw numbers had not changed in 2010; six community areas in Chicago had family poverty in excess of 40%, and one was in excess of 50%. Since Wilson (1987), many have studied the concentration of poverty, most notably Jargowsky (1997, 2003). The purposes of this section are to discuss briefly why concentrated urban poverty is serious problem, and to take a closer look at concentrated poverty in Chicago. The community areas of city of Chicago are shown in Figure 9.
Chicago community areas.
The hypothesis being advanced is that, given an overall poverty rate in an urban area, it is better to have the poverty population dispersed than concentrated in a few neighbourhoods. Jargowsky (1997: 3–6) summarised the reasons that include:
- Harmful social and economic conditions; lack of positive role models and institutions, self-destructive values and behaviors, and crime.
- Exit of middle-class households to the suburbs, resulting in loss of businesses and tax base, increase in housing vacancies and abandonment, and underfunding of schools.
- Poor quality of life for residents who remain.
The causes of concentrated urban poverty include changes in the metropolitan economy (deindustrialisation, suburbanisation of jobs, and changes in demand for labour resulting in fewer good jobs for those with limited education), economic segregation as a result of the flight of the middle class from certain urban neighbourhoods, and the level of racial segregation. However, the level of racial segregation in itself may not cause concentrated poverty because, for example, in Chicago the level of racial segregation declined modestly while the concentration of poverty increased sharply from 1970 to 1990.
For the sake of discussion, suppose that, as Wilson (1987) suggested, a family poverty rate of 40% is a critical dividing line. The selection of this number is arbitrary, but the analysis in this section lends some credence to the choice. There are two hypotheses. The first is that population loss creates a community with a high poverty rate because people with incomes above the poverty level move away. And second, hypothesise that a community with a high poverty rate experiences further population decline as the social and economic problems mount. These ideas can be tested using the Chicago data. There was only one Chicago community area (Oakland on the south side) with a poverty rate in excess of 40% in 1970 (44% actually). This community area had a racial makeup at or above 98% African American in 1970 to 2000 (and 94% in 2010). In 1970 this community area had a population of 18.3 thousand and contained 752 units of public housing out of 5400 occupied units. In 1980 the family poverty rate jumped to 61% as the population declined to 16.7 thousand. People had begun to exit the community. A poverty level of 61% evidently led to a huge drop in the population for 1990 to 8.2 thousand. At that point the family poverty rate was 70%. The total number of housing units had dropped to 4335, of which only 2770 (64%) were occupied. Both the population and the family poverty rate declined after 1990. The population fell to 6.1 thousand in 2000 and 5.9 thousand in 2010 and the family poverty rate in those two years were 45% and 39%. These changes stem partly, but only partly, from the change in public housing policy that included demolition of high-rise ‘projects’ and dispersal of the residents that began in 1999. The foregoing is just the story of one small unfortunate community. However, a more systematic test of the two hypotheses is possible.
Eight community areas had increases in family poverty in the 1970s that brought them to or over the 40% threshold. In 1970 those eight had a population of 416,000, of whom 377,000 (91%) were African Americans. The family poverty rates in these community areas varied from 28% to 37% and averaged 33%. The family poverty rate increased in all eight, and in 1980 varied from 40% to 51% and averaged 44%. The population of these eight had declined from 1970 to 1980 to 292,000, a decline of 29.7%. The African-American population was 270,000. In short, population decline in the prior decade took place along with the increase in the poverty rate to a level at or above 40%. The decline in the population of these eight areas of 124,000 was 34.4% of the decline for the entire city of 358,000. These eight areas contained just 11.2% of the city population in 1970. The African-American population of the eight fell by 107,000 over the decade of the 1970s. The African-American population in the rest of the city increased from 725,000 to 918,000 at the same time. In other words, as the African-American population of the city was increasing by 7.8%, these eight community areas were losing 28.4% of their African-American population.
What happened next to these eight community areas? Did the high rate of family poverty lead to more population loss and increase in family poverty? The short answer is ‘yes’. All eight experienced increases in the rate of family poverty from 1980 to 1990. The range for these poverty rates is 46% to 64%, and the average is 54%. All eight lost population, and the total loss for the eight was from 292,000 to 221,000 (24.3%). The African-American population fell from 270,000 to 199,000 (down 26.7%). This loss of 71,000 African Americans in areas with 24.6% of this population accounts for 63.4% of the total decline in the African-American population of the city between 1980 and 1990. In the decade from 1990 to 2000 these eight areas fell in population from 199,000 to 164,000 (down an additional 17.7%). But recall that this is the decade in which the population of the city increased by 4%. However, the loss of 35,000 African Americans from these eight areas was only 21.1% of the total loss of African-American population in the city from 1.05 million to 888,000.
Two more community areas in 1990 joined the ranks of those with family poverty at or above 40%. Both of these are African-American neighbourhoods (96% or higher) on the south side of the city. The family poverty rate increased from 34% or 36% to 41% or 40%. In the decade prior to 1990 these two areas fell in population from 64.9 thousand to 52.8 thousand (down 18.6%). In the subsequent decade, the population of the two fell from 52.8 thousand to 43.6 thousand (decline of 17.4%) even as the population of the city was increasing by 4%. The African-American population of the two areas fell from 52.4 thousand to 42.6 thousand. But let us add together the losses of African-American population in all 11 of the areas with family poverty at or above 40%. Including Oakland with a loss of 3.1 thousand, the loss is 48.0 thousand, or 42.8% of the total loss of African-American population in the city in the 1980s. The 11 community areas contained 24.4% of the African-American population of the city in 1990.
The decade of the 1990s brought the deconcentration of poverty that has been mentioned. As Jargowsky (2003) showed, this was a trend across the nation, and the same holds true for Chicago. All of the 11 community areas with family poverty at or above 40% in 1990 saw declines in this poverty rate. The range of family poverty rates for the 11 was 40–70% in 1990 with an average of 49%, and the range in 2000 was 29–54% in 2000 with an average of 39%. Two of these community areas were affected by the growth of middle-class households near the downtown area. Near West Side had a reduction in the percentage of African-American population from 67% to 53%, a slight increase in population, and a drop in the rate of family poverty from 52% to 30%. Near South Side experienced housing construction near downtown, an increase in population from 6.8 thousand to 9.5 thousand, a decline in the percentage African-American from 94% to 64%, and a drop in family poverty from 61% to 30%. More discussion of the resurgence of the downtown population is found below in section ‘Downtown housing development’. The other nine community areas remained predominantly African American (86% or above) and experienced population loss from 229,000 to 191,000 (16.7%). However, all nine saw significant declines in the rate of family poverty. The range for these nine was 40% to 70% in 1990, with an average of 53%. The range in 2000 was 29% to 54%, with an average of 41%. In other words, the decline in family poverty was just as large in the community areas that were not targets of downtown development as the declines in those two that were targets. What was going on?
McDonald (2004) proposed three reasons for the change in outcome for these community areas. One factor was the vacating of public housing units in advance of their demolition that began in 1999. Another factor was the fundamental change in the welfare programme in 1995 to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme. TANF has a time limit of 60 months of assistance, and requires recipients to work or to be undergoing education or job training. The strong economy of the 1990s helped recipients and former recipients find work. A third factor is the substantial expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. A full-time job at the minimum wage of US$5.15 in 1999 would have yielded pay of US$10,300, which would be supplemented by US$3888 from EITC benefits. An income of US$13,688 would have put a family of four just over the poverty line of US$13,423. Basic statistics for the 11 high-poverty community areas are shown in Table 4. The poverty rate declined by 14% as the percentage of households on public assistance fell by 24% and the number of employed females increased by 8.4%.
Eleven high poverty community areas: 1990 to 2000.
Sources: Chicago Fact Book Consortium (1995) and Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
The first decade of the new century saw little change for the six community areas with family poverty at or above 40% in 2000. These six remained predominantly African American (94% or higher). The range of family poverty was 40–54% in 2000 with a mean of 46%, and the range for 2010 was 39–55% with a mean of 44% in 2010. The population of the six fell from 140,000 to 113,000, a decline of 19.3% compared with a decline in the city of 6.9%. However, the more relevant comparison is the decline in the African-American population of the city of 15.7%. Overall we see that, since 1990, high poverty areas not adjacent to downtown experienced continued population declines even as the rates of family poverty declined and then stabilised.
Public housing in Chicago
A discussion of housing in Chicago must include a look at public housing. This section is a brief look at the major change in public housing policy that has occurred. This change in public housing policy, in which most of the high-rise ‘projects’ in the city were demolished, has played a role in transforming the housing market in and around the downtown area and other communities as well. See Hunt (2009) for a detailed examination of public housing in Chicago. With 33,000 units Chicago had by far the second-largest stock of public housing (second to New York with 64,600 units). No other city has undertaken the large-scale demolition of units that has occurred in Chicago.
The Plan for Transformation called for demolition of 18,500 of the 29,300 units for families (including some units in scattered sites) and renovation of 5800 family units and all 9500 senior units. With construction of 9200 new units, at the end of 10 years CHA would have 24,700 units in all, slightly more than the 23,000 units occupied in 2000 by legitimate tenants. Management of all CHA units has been turned over to private firms. Both renovation and construction of new units also are by private firms. Most of the new units are included in mixed-income developments constructed by private firms. Funding comes from a variety of sources including the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit programme, CHA federal funds, and other sources. Demolition of the existing projects meant that legitimate tenants would be provided with housing vouchers, and then offered an opportunity to move back into the new or renovated units at some time in the future. Strict requirements for moving back into these new projects include drug testing and an employment or ongoing job training. The net effect so far is to move public housing tenants into other neighbourhoods where housing voucher units are available. Those neighbourhoods largely are African-American areas on the south side. The Plan for Transformation has engendered a great deal of controversy, which is recounted in Bennett et al. (2006) and Hunt (2009). As of 2016, 16,000 units had been demolished, but only 4300 new or renovated units had been completed.
Downtown housing development
No discussion of housing in Chicago can omit the remarkable development of the downtown area. Residential development has occurred in several downtowns around the county (e.g. Philadelphia), but a study of this topic would require another paper. Downtown Chicago can be defined as consisting of three different community areas, the Loop, Near South Side and Near North Side (see Figure 7). Near West Side, the area immediately to the West of the Loop, sometimes is included in the enumeration of downtown. The Loop is the main commercial and governmental centre for the metropolitan area, but it also has become a residential neighbourhood (or rather it includes a collection of residential neighbourhoods). Near South Side was a high-poverty area that is included in the previous section, but its northern part has been transformed into a middle-class neighbourhood of downtown workers. And Near North Side contains North Michigan Avenue shopping district and many hotels. This community area has by far the largest population of the three. It contains wealthy, middle-class and poor residents. It was home to the Cabrini-Green housing project until it was torn down, but also includes middle-class condo Sandburg Village and ritzy Astor Street and Lake Short Drive. Near West Side contains the West Side Health Sciences District and the University of Illinois at Chicago. It was largely a high-poverty African-American community area until roughly 1990, at which time it began to be transformed into an area in which new housing was being built, older private housing renovated and public housing demolished.
Basic population and housing data for the four community areas in Table 5 show that the population of the downtown area consisting of the Loop, Near South and Near North areas increased by 50,300 (62.3%) from 1980 to 2010. Three factors would seem to provide some explanation. The cost of commuting to downtown has increased because traffic congestion in the metropolitan area has become worse. Second, downtown has developed an agglomeration of housing and population-serving businesses. Third, while overall employment in the downtown area moves up and down with the business cycle and has not changed very much since 1980, the composition of employment has changed substantially away from manufacturing and in favour of finance and services.
Population and housing in downtown Chicago.
Source: US Bureau of the Census.
Near West Side has undergone enormous changes. The population was 126,610 in 1960, but in the 1960s huge amounts of land were cleared by the City of Chicago under the urban renewal programme to make way for the new campus of the University of Illinois and for future housing and other developments. By 1970 the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle had opened (in 1965) and the population of the area had dropped to 78,703. After 2000 all of the 6731 public housing units in the area were demolished and partly replaced by 1467 public housing units in mixed-income low-rise housing developments. One summary is that, from 1980 to 2010, the population of the Near West Side that was neither African American nor Hispanic increased from 8600 to 32,400. It is clear that public policy regarding public housing has played a major part in the transformation of the Near West Side into a portion of the new downtown housing market.
Summary and conclusions
This study has presented detailed data on the trends in the housing market of metropolitan Chicago, with attention paid to the three main minority groups – African Americans, Hispanics and Asians. Overall the population of the metropolitan area has grown only modestly since 1970, and the central city has declined. The suburban population has grown rapidly, and that growth includes all three minority groups. Comparisons with 13 other large northern metropolitan areas in the USA suggest that suburbanisation of these three minority groups has been greater than might have been expected. The African-American population of the central city has declined sharply and now almost one-half of this group resides in the suburbs. This population in the metropolitan area has been in decline since 2000. The degree of segregation of African Americans remains high, but is somewhat lower in the suburbs. The Hispanic population has been growing rapidly. The suburban Hispanic population far outnumbers their counterparts in the central city; 61% of Hispanics reside in the suburbs and are located in satellite cities, a few inner suburbs and many other locations. The Asian population is much smaller than the other two major minority groups, but it too has been growing rapidly. The suburban Asian population far exceeds the group’s central city population so that 73% now live in the suburbs. The development of housing in the downtown area has tended to offset the population decline in the city. Downtown added 50,000 residents from 1980 to 2010, and most of the new housing is occupied by non-Hispanic whites who work in the downtown area. In addition, most of the notorious high-rise public housing has been torn down and the (nearly all) African-American residents moved out with housing vouchers to other African-American neighbourhoods.
Since the 1980s urban modellers have moved away from the monocentric model of the city in favour of some sort of polycentric model that includes significant centres of employment out in the suburbs. We have seen that African Americans and especially Hispanics have been attracted to the satellite cities of Waukegan, Elgin, Aurora and Joliet, which are growing centres of employment. And we found that some Asians are attracted to the newer ‘edge cities’ of Schaumburg, Naperville and Oak Brook. In short, people move to where the jobs are, as they always have. As first identified by Kain (1968) in a study of metropolitan Chicago for 1956, the mismatch between residential and employment location still applies for African Americans in the inner city. But the problem seems to have been mitigated in part by the growth of the suburban African-American population. The exception to this statement is the relative lack of employment opportunities in the southern suburbs, the place to which many African Americans suburbanised. The map of employment subcentres from McMillen and McDonald (1998) shows the lack of modern employment subcentres in the southern suburbs. So one finding of this study is that ‘opening up the suburbs’ to African Americans does not necessarily solve the spatial mismatch problem.
Footnotes
Appendix
Population of metropolitan Chicago: 1970–2015 (1000s).
| Area | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2010 | 2015 a |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (est.) | ||||||
| Metropolitan area | ||||||
| Total | 7883 | 8053 | 8182 | 9098 | 9461 | 9517 |
| African-American | 1346 | 1547 | 1532 | 1675 | 1626 | 1602 |
| Hispanic | n.a. b | 634 | 896 | 1495 | 1959 | 2030 |
| Asian | n.a. b | 144 | 254 | 387 | 533 | 567 |
| City of Chicago | ||||||
| Total | 3363 | 3005 | 2784 | 2896 | 2696 | 2713 |
| African-American | 1102 | 1188 | 1076 | 1054 | 888 | 853 |
| Hispanic | n.a. | 422 | 535 | 754 | 779 | 785 |
| Asian | n.a. | 69 | 104 | 126 | 148 | 154 |
| 16 high poverty areas c | 753 | 555 | 428 | 384 | 346 | 345 |
| Suburban Cook County | ||||||
| Total | 2129 | 2249 | 2321 | 2481 | 2499 | 2515 |
| African-American | 79 | 158 | 225 | 336 | 378 | 395 |
| Hispanic | n.a. | 68 | 159 | 318 | 466 | 496 |
| Asian | n.a. | 42 | 84 | 134 | 174 | 189 |
| Rest of inner suburban ring | ||||||
| Total | 1921 | 2229 | 2448 | 2939 | 3309 | 3321 |
| African-American | 162 | 197 | 224 | 270 | 326 | 312 |
| Hispanic | n.a. | 133 | 181 | 375 | 608 | 632 |
| Asian | n.a. | 31 | 66 | 118 | 192 | 202 |
| Outer suburban ring | ||||||
| Total | 470 | 569 | 629 | 782 | 957 | 968 |
| African-American | 3 | 4 | 7 | 15 | 34 | 42 |
| Hispanic | n.a. | 11 | 21 | 48 | 104 | 117 |
| Asian | n.a. | 2 | 5 | 9 | 19 | 22 |
Notes: a2014 estimates from American Community Survey, courtesy Chicago Metropolitan
Agency for Planning.
Hispanic and Asian populations not enumerated consistently with later censuses.
Predominantly African American community areas with 30% poverty or higher.
Rest of inner suburban ring consists of DuPage, Kane, Lake, and Will Counties in Illinois and Lake County, Indiana.
Outer suburban ring consists of DeKalb, Grundy, and McHenry Counties in Illinois, Jasper, Kendall, Newton, and Porter Counties in Indiana, and Kenosha County, Wisconsin.
Source: US Bureau of the Census.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.