Build on vacant land in Black neighborhoods to stop exodus of Chicagoans

I was stunned when I first saw the number: 702,617.

I stared at it for several seconds, as if it might change the longer I looked.

Was this real? Could it be this low, this fast?

It was only an estimate. But the non-Hispanic Black population for Chicago was just over 700,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey. And, if you consider the margin of error — plus or minus 18,589 — Chicago’s Black population could be anywhere from about 721,000 to 684,000.

I’ve been researching and writing about Chicago’s Black population loss for several years, so I wasn’t shocked to see that the trend is continuing. But there was something about seeing that figure so close to sinking below 700,000 that shook me.

In 1980, the city’s Black population reached its peak at just under 1.2 million.

That means Chicago is on the verge of having seen its Black population plummet by half a million in a span of less than 50 years — essentially, more than 10,000 Black folks every year.

No other American city can make that claim.

The intractable problems that have contributed to the decline seem insurmountable.

The oasis of jobs that attracted millions of African Americans from the South, during the first and second waves of the Great Migration, to cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City and Philadelphia has long since dried up. In Chicago, deindustrialization’s greatest losses were witnessed on the city’s South and West sides. Manufacturing had been a stable source of employment for Black Chicago. No other industry has replaced the jobs and steady wages that went away once the factories closed.

The result: Chicago's Black unemployment rate was 14.5% in 2024, census data shows, the highest among the nation's largest cities.

Even after court rulings were issued to end restrictive covenants, and federal laws were passed to end housing discrimination, inequities and injustices remain. White flight, bank loan denials and other forms of disinvestment continue to take money out of the pockets of Black residents by diminishing their property values. Meanwhile, predatory lending, red light and speed camera tickets and disproportionate property taxes suck up much of what’s left.

The result: median Black wealth in Chicago is $0.

The list goes on and on.

But we’re not completely powerless to invigorate growth and development in Black Chicago.

There are some things over which we have much more control.

We can start by building or creating more places to live in Chicago’s Black spaces. We haven’t done a good job thus far of maintaining the housing stock in Black neighborhoods. For instance, majority-Black census tracts were the only spaces in Chicago to witness an overall decline in housing units between 2000 and 2020, according to my analysis of census data. In addition, those Black areas saw a decline in occupied housing units and an increase in vacant units during that span.

But there are ways we can do better.

Chicago’s city-owned land inventory includes nearly 13,000 properties that are already owned by the city. Nearly two-thirds of those properties are located in Black communities, which have, collectively, seen a decline of more than 90,000 Black residents over the past decade, my analysis shows.

In addition, the city gets at least 5,000 reports of vacant or abandoned buildings every year. Since 2019, the largest number of complaints have been for buildings in Roseland, West Englewood, Englewood, West Pullman, Austin, Greater Grand Crossing and Auburn Gresham. Those communities were all ranked among the top 10 for Black population loss over the past decade, according to my analysis. Collectively, those communities lost more than 60,000 Black residents.

Years ago, in a previous job, I had a chance to sit in on a meeting with planning and development officials from Chicago, San Francisco and New York City. They were exchanging ideas, challenges and best practices. After the Chicagoans droned on about how tough it was to create housing and development opportunities here, their out-of-town colleagues expressed jealousy. They marveled at all the available land in Chicago on which to build and create.

Where we saw shortcomings, they saw opportunities.

We can slow — and maybe even reverse — the city’s loss of its Black communities.

We have the land. We have the vacant property. Now, we just need the will.

Alden Loury is data projects editor for WBEZ and writes a column for the Sun-Times.