Safer CTA includes more police presence

I write regarding the recent Sun-Times story partly headlined online “Top cop bullish on study calling for hundreds more officers.” As a lifelong rider of mass transit and the parent of a daily CTA passenger, I urge that we do not overlook the need for increased police presence on the Chicago Transit Authority.

By comparison, New York City has significantly more sworn law enforcement personnel assigned per rider to its transit system than Chicago.

Importantly, the newly passed Northern Illinois Transit Authority Act calls for addressing law enforcement regionally. The CTA operates in nearly 40 suburbs, Metra maintains its own police force that requires ongoing evaluation and Pace Suburban Bus relies on local municipal police. Fortunately, the Cook County sheriff and Illinois State Police are now engaged and will carry more immediate responsibility under the act. In response to federal concerns, the CTA recently increased police hours, added sheriff’s deputies, implemented more rigorous fare-card checks and installed high-barrier gates.

Finally, safety is not solely about policing. We must continue to prioritize social services, homelessness outreach, cleanliness and Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility. The addition of transit ambassadors at stations — a proven model in other major cities — is included in the new transit law, effective this summer.

Kirk Dillard, chairman, Regional Transportation Authority

Chicago’s housing hurdles

Chicago approved the fewest housing permits per capita among the ten most populous metro areas in the country in 2023. The average wait time between application and approval exceeds 80 days. The city is short 225,000 affordable rental units, and rents have climbed 35% since before the pandemic. A recent survey found housing was residents' top concern — above crime and education.

All of this is connected. Chicago doesn't have an affordability problem so much as a supply problem, and its permitting record is a direct cause. When building is slow, expensive, and a legal maze, builders simply build less. Once that happens, rents climb.

Into this vacuum, some politicians have offered a villain: algorithmic pricing software used by landlords to set rents. It's a satisfying story because technology, artificial intelligence and algorithms are all politically dirty words right now, but banning a pricing tool doesn't add a single unit to Chicago’s housing stock.

It doesn't shorten an 80-day permit window, and it doesn't untangle the regulatory knot that makes construction here more expensive than almost anywhere else in the country. It's the political equivalent of blaming the thermometer for the fever.

Mayor Brandon Johnson's “Cut the Tape” initiative and Gov. JB Pritzker's “Missing Middle” report have both identified over 100 ways to make it easier to build housing. That's encouraging on paper. But the city's instinct still runs toward giveaways rather than getting out of the way — selling vacant lots for $1, offering subsidies, leaving the underlying regulatory labyrinth intact.

Cash assistance means very little if permitting delays and legal costs remain the same.

Other cities have shown what actually works. Minneapolis scrapped single-family-only zoning in 2018 and has seen meaningfully lower rents relative to comparable cities since. Austin added roughly 50,000 rental units between 2023 and 2024 and watched average rents fall more than 20% from their peak.

Chicago has the land, the infrastructure, and political acknowledgment that a housing crisis exists. What it lacks is the willingness to follow through. Housing policy needs more "yes" and less "no,” and right now, Chicago is still mostly saying no.

Elizabeth Hicks, head of external affairs, Consumer Choice Center

Elgin’s rental licensing program is a success

Concerning Chicago's proposed mandatory inspection program for rental units, I can point out that the city of Elgin has had a rental licensing program for years, and other suburban communities have implemented similar programs as well. I have conducted thousands of rental inspections while working as a property maintenance officer.

There are many conscientious landlords who maintain their rental properties in a responsible manner, and there are some who, either through naivete or neglect, seem to feel their properties will maintain themselves.

The rental program isn't terribly intrusive, and it certainly isn't a cash grab. Some landlords came to value it as a tool, informing them of needed repairs they may not have been aware of or had been postponing. There is a fee, but there are incentives for proactively keeping up with maintenance issues that waive fees and inspections for a year or two. And of course, landlords who were reluctant to correct violations were compelled to do so.

My opinion is that Elgin's rental licensing program has been successful, mainly because of the following result: Bad landlords got better or they got out. And Elgin's housing stock improved.

Shawn O'Leary, Elgin

Tip system works

I’ve worked in the hospitality industry for four years, currently as a server at Bronzeville Winery. This career has given me valuable skills, flexibility and most importantly, the ability to earn a strong, reliable income.

There is a growing disconnect between what policymakers claim and what workers like me actually experience. The narrative that tipped workers aren’t making enough simply isn’t true. In Chicago, every tipped worker is legally guaranteed to make at least the full minimum wage. In reality, most of us earn well above that. This has always been the case, and claims to the contrary are misinformation that ignore how the system actually works.

Most City Council members looked at the stats and heard our voices when they voted to freeze the wage for tipped workers at its current level.  Phasing out the subminimum wage for tipped workers would result in fewer hours of operation. For me and all other Chicago servers, that means fewer work hours available on the schedule. A higher mandated hourly wage doesn’t help when there aren’t enough shifts to work and doors close.

Since the “tip credit” phase-out began, support roles have been disappearing, leaving servers and managers to juggle multiple positions at once while trying to deliver excellent service. It’s exhausting and unsustainable.

Servers are telling city leaders that eliminating the "tip credit" system will reduce our opportunities and increase our workload while ultimately lowering our take-home pay. We need solutions grounded in reality. Listen to the workers who live this every day and support policies that preserve jobs, protect hours and maintain the tip credit system that actually benefits us.

Cierra Milsap, server, Bronzeville Winery

Banning nicotine pouches could increase smoking

We're three Illinoisans in our 20s to 40s who use nicotine pouches — products like ZYN, Rogue, Velo — and we’re raising the alarm about a proposed bill to ban flavored tobacco.

As currently drafted, the bill would ban flavored nicotine pouches in Illinois starting June 1.

While introduced as legislation that bans “flavored tobacco,” the bill goes much further and hits nicotine pouches, too.

Numerous tobacco and medical researchers — most prominently Rutgers University — have also found that pouches are "a possible step toward reducing or quitting more dangerous forms of nicotine delivery."

Flavors can help; most smokers who have switched to pouches say so. Pouches that taste like tobacco are understandably less appealing (would you choose a tobacco flavor for gum at the supermarket checkout?). Mint, citrus, coffee and similar flavors appeal to adults, not kids.

Yet pouches in flavors like these would be banned by the bill, even though adult consumers like us use flavored pouches to reduce risks to our health.

If flavored pouches disappear from store shelves, some people are going to go back to smoking. That's not a talking point; we’ve already seen this with data relating to flavored products in a 2021 Yale School of Public Health study.

Lawmakers should follow the science and ditch the bill before they risk making public health in Illinois worse.

Alexander White, Oak Forest
Jeff Robinson, Mount Greenwood
Rafal Duha, Chicago Ridge

A poem for current times, war

NOK (Next of Kin)

No one yet told their dad or mom
They're never, ever going home
High school; boot camp; deploy; bombed
Remains are here, they're all gone

Heard them stop in the driveway
Black SUV, government plates
Chaplain walks slowly to the door
She screams, faints, falls to floor

We remember first, the last to die
The rest forgotten, dead for lies
Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Now die for oil, Israel, in Iran

NOK visits haunt the U.S.A.
New generation down the drain
Grief crashes like a tidal wave
Cold white stones; ranks, dates, and names

Nathan Kempthorne, Rogers Park

JD Vance’s real talk

In 2016, JD Vance wrote to his former law school roommate Josh McLaurin: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a—hole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler. How's that for discouraging?”

Before a ceasefire was put in place, President Donald Trump threatened that a “whole civilization will die tonight.” Destroying a whole civilization is something Hitler tried to do.

Alan Rhine, Glenview

Art of distraction

In my opinion, Donald Trump knew in advance about Melania’s public statement denying close ties to Jeffrey Epstein. It’s even possible he — or a member of his team — was part of the crafting of her remarks, most of which I suspect were lies.

This is likely another deliberate trick of distraction to shift the focus of attention away from the president's declining popularity and cascading problems. It's the generation of more chaos and confusion which, of course, have been Trump's m.o. and rhetorical strategy.

Do we really think the White House would allow Melania to speak without any vetting? The White House knew this story would titillate the media and perhaps dominate at least one news cycle speculating about whether she was lying and if the president knew.

How ironic that other stories previously were used to distract from the Epstein Files; yet now Epstein is being used to take the focus off other problems.

I predict that, as we get closer to the November election, Trump's rhetorical strategy will be to intentionally splatter the media landscape with more absurd and irrational stories. That’s the goal.

Richard Cherwitz, professor emeritus, University of Texas at Austin

Playing politics

There is not a single case in which U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros doesn’t involve politics in his decision-making. Full Stop. Period. Zero. And anyone who says otherwise, is misstating reality. And anyone who states otherwise is, like Donald Trump, an armchair expert who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Period.

Dave White, Rogers Park

Big bucks take fun out of college sports

It is fun to watch March Madness basketball and root for your favorite team. The specter of money, however, looms over the entire enterprise and college sports, in general.

Teams stock their rosters with players obtained through the transfer portal and by name, image and likeness, or NIL, offers. Some players play for three or four schools. Some actually receive a pay cut when they turn pro.

Those players who do not make the big bucks could be tempted to fix games because of the numerous available gambling sites or by association with unsavory characters.

Coaches are paid millions each year and are on a rotating merry-go-round. The TV networks thrive on advertising dollars. The "student-athlete" is no more. All praise to the mighty dollar.

Philip S. Witt, Northbrook

Say aloha to Hawaiian coffee

I’d like reader Mike Sienkowski, who recently wrote about coffee and tariffs, to know that coffee is definitely grown in America tariff-free. Hawaii is part of the United States, and Hawaii grows and produces the very finest coffee. While Kona coffee grown on the Big Island of Hawaii is the most famous, other Hawaiian islands, also, produce terrific coffee. If it can’t be found in a local store, it can always be ordered direct from the Hawaii coffee growers. Try it!

Margie Stone, Deerfield