Latisha Bolden came home from an eight-hour hospital shift in early March and found a notice from her landlord: she and her son would have to leave their Woodlawn apartment by the end of July. Comparable one-bedroom units in the neighborhood now run about $1,800 a month. She pays $1,200.
"I didn't see this coming at all," Bolden said.
She should not have been blindsided. Five years ago, Chicago adopted an anti-displacement ordinance for Woodlawn, a majority-Black South Side neighborhood of roughly 26,000 people, promising a safety net of housing programs, tenant protections, and affordable development. The ordinance was supposed to shield longtime residents from the rising costs everyone knew would follow the Obama Presidential Center, now scheduled to open June 19. Instead, a review of hundreds of pages of city records and dozens of interviews conducted by the Illinois Answers Project found the promises often fell short of reality.
Three of the ordinance's seven programs never got off the ground. Two million dollars earmarked for preserving or rehabbing affordable units went unspent. Not a single landlord filed the required right-of-first-refusal sale notices that were supposed to give tenants a chance to match outside offers on their buildings. And the neighborhood's median single-family home price has jumped from $72,500 in 2016 to $330,000 in 2025, a 4.6-fold increase since the Obama Center was first announced a decade ago.
The city calls the ordinance a success. Residents living with the results disagree.
The 2020 ordinance contained a suite of programs. The city set aside 52 vacant lots for new affordable housing. After five years, only one development, a 58-unit apartment building called Park Station Lofts, with 41 affordable units for households earning about $35,000 or less, was completed. A program that promised $1.5 million in city grants to buy or refinance multifamily properties in exchange for 30-year affordability agreements received zero applications. The city says the money was reallocated.
A $500,000 grant under the Renew Woodlawn Program, intended for a nonprofit developer, was never used. An $8 million Woodlawn Loan Fund financed 40 units by 2025, with another 18 reportedly being rehabbed this year. A $1 million home-improvement grant program reached 36 homeowners, each receiving up to $20,000. One development produced a total of three jobs for local residents.
Those are thin returns for a program the city has held up as a model. Taxpayers have already shouldered infrastructure costs tied to the Obama Presidential Center, and now the housing protections meant to accompany that investment look hollow.
Michael Cox, a Chicago Department of Housing spokesperson, defended the record in a January email.
"Programs with limited activity still provided critical insight, as they identified areas where deeper subsidy or alternative financing structures are needed."
That is a bureaucratic way of saying the programs did not work but the city learned something. Cox added that last month the city formed a working group of officials and residents to improve implementation. In April, officials announced funding for a $48 million project that would put 60 affordable apartments on the market.
Housing Commissioner Lissette Castañeda declined an interview request through a spokesman.
Perhaps the most striking failure involved the Tenant Right of First Refusal pilot. Under the ordinance, Woodlawn renters were supposed to get the first chance to match or beat outside offers on their buildings before a sale went through. Landlords were required to file notices with both tenants and the city.
Dozens of property owners have sold multifamily buildings in Woodlawn since the pilot began in 2020. City housing department records show that not one landlord filed the required notice. A former housing department employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they still do contract work for the city, said administrative issues plagued execution and that the pilot did not even have a dedicated staff person to oversee it.
Bolden's own building changed hands twice since she moved in during 2021. Close to a year after she signed her lease, a now-dissolved LLC sold the building to local investor Mike McCauley. Tenants publicly criticized McCauley for leaving them without gas for a week. Last June, McCauley sold to Maple & Oak, a family-owned company that has been buying, gutting, and rehabbing historic-looking multifamily homes throughout the west side of Woodlawn.
Neither the managers of the suburban LLC nor McCauley filed the required sale notices, according to the Department of Housing. McCauley could not be reached for comment.
Perry Pappas, speaking for Maple & Oak, told the Illinois Answers Project he did not buy the building intending to renovate and raise rents but was surprised by a city inspection requiring repairs. Asked about future rent after repairs, Pappas was direct: "we will do what the market calls for."
That one sentence captures the gap between the ordinance's aspirations and the market forces it was supposed to restrain. Obama loyalists have benefited handsomely from the presidential center project, but the residents nearest to it are watching their housing costs climb while enforcement mechanisms sit idle.
The numbers tell a stark story. Data from DePaul's Institute for Housing Studies show that prices on single- and multifamily homes on the east side of Woodlawn have doubled since 2019. In East Woodlawn, the median single-family home price reached $440,000 by 2025. Four near-identical newly built homes on South Ellis Avenue sold for nearly $1 million each. One home currently listed for more than a million dollars was built in 2019 on a lot that used to be owned by the city.
In 2024, less than a third of the area's housing stock was considered affordable, half of what was available 15 years ago.
April Jackson, an associate professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois Chicago, said the bigger problem is developers seeking large payouts and tearing down multifamily homes to make way for what she called "McMansions."
Marcus Gill, a Woodlawn homeowner and community organizer, pointed to the new construction as evidence that residents' fears had come true. "It's a huge catalyst," he said of the Obama Center. Gill did receive a city grant to fix his backyard fence, one of the program's modest successes, but the broader picture is one of a neighborhood being reshaped around him.
Bolden's neighbor Twanda Barlow, who lives in the same three-story building, said a new owner is planning a rehab that will force her to move. Unlike Bolden, Barlow has no interest in staying. Rents have gone up, she said, without significant neighborhood improvement. "It's not worth it at all."
Ald. Jeanette Taylor, who represents the 20th Ward, has watched the displacement firsthand. She criticized the ordinance as weakened by political compromise and lacking continuous funding.
"What you have is a watered-down version of what the community knew would protect us. So it failed."
Dixon Romeo, executive director of community organizing group Southside Together, has fought for housing protections in Woodlawn since the Obama Center was announced in 2015. He called the ordinance a step in the right direction but said the city failed to follow through.
"The city did not do the work... to implement it well."
Romeo added: "From 2015 until 2026... we've seen a lot of people get evicted. We've seen a lot of people get displaced." Meanwhile, the Obama Foundation has sought 100 unpaid volunteers for the center even as its CEO earns $740,000.
The Foundation itself has described hopes that the center would produce an economic boom and is hosting monthly "community tourism preparation" sessions. It says it supports the city's housing work through the Woodlawn ordinance and a second ordinance, passed last year, covering East Woodlawn and South Shore. City officials say they have learned from the Woodlawn programs as they implement the newer law.
Days after Bolden got her notice, 31-year-old Kyana Butler stood with about 20 others at a news conference after learning the owner of her building, the Chaney Braggs building, where she has lived since she was about three, was listing it for sale. She wanted the same neighborhood continuity for her young daughter.
"I want to stay," Butler said. "I don't want to be forced out."
What happened in Woodlawn is a familiar cycle in cities governed by progressive leaders who promise protections they never adequately fund or enforce. The ordinance looked good in a press release. It checked every progressive-policy box, tenant rights, affordability mandates, community hiring, grant programs. But the machinery behind the promises was hollow: no staff to run the right-of-first-refusal pilot, no applications for a $1.5 million grant program, $2 million sitting untouched, and zero compliance filings from landlords over five years.
The Obama Presidential Center was always going to change Woodlawn. That was the stated goal, an economic catalyst on the South Side. The question was whether the city would protect the people already living there. The center's grand opening is weeks away, complete with celebrity fanfare. The residents who were promised a shield from displacement are still waiting for one that works.
Bolden, for her part, has been looking at other apartments. She said she had no idea the building had been sold, either time, until after the deals were done. The ordinance that was supposed to give her first right of refusal existed only on paper.
Government that writes laws it never enforces is worse than government that writes no laws at all. At least then, nobody is fooled into thinking help is on the way.
