Chicago South Side residents say they're being displaced by Obama Center: Causing 'harm to Black families'

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Chicago residents are growing increasingly concerned about the damage the Obama Presidential Center will have on their community, as longtime South Side families are being displaced by soaring rent prices and unsustainable living costs which they blame on the former president's project.

The Obama Presidential Center hosted a ceremonial groundbreaking in September 2021, revealing a massive 19-acre plot that is designed to host a public library branch, playground, community centers and a museum that aims to revitalize the South Side of Chicago. It is being financed mostly through private donations.

But the ongoing $500 million project, which remains under construction, has reignited fears among longtime residents that the center will gentrify the community and that the positive "economic impact" promised by the former president will instead raise property values and make housing costs unaffordable.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (C) and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (L) join former U.S. President Barack Obama during a ceremonial groundbreaking at the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park on September 28, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. Construction of the center was delayed by a long legal battle undertaken by residents who objected to the center being built in a city park.  (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

An article published Monday by the Washington Post, titled "Chicago neighbors say Obama center is raising rents, forcing them out," examined the center's impact on neighboring communities, noting that median home prices have more than doubled since the center was first unveiled. 

The Post article, written by Marissa J. Lang, features interviews with longtime South Side residents who were priced out of their communities after spending decades in the same home and details a recent exchange between Brandon Johnson, one of the Democrats running to replace Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) in a runoff this week, with residents last month.

"We have to make sure, for families that live in the very communities where economic development is taking place, that landlords don’t see it as an opportunity to push the families out who have been a part of these communities for decades," Johnson said.

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"The Obama Center is not being built for Chicago," another resident replied. "It’s being built for the world. …[And the people of the world] don’t want us here. So what do you think is going to happen?"

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot listens as former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a ceremonial groundbreaking at the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park on September 28, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois.  ((Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images))

The WaPo report also cites Dixon Romeo, a South Shore native and community activist, who told reporters recently that residents don’t want "Obama’s legacy marred by the displacement of thousands of Black families."

"This is the community that sent him to the White House, and we should be the community that gets to stay and benefit from the presidential center," Romeo said.

Tahiti Hamer, 42, a single mother of three is among the longtime South Side residents who spoke to the outlet after being forced out of her home as rent became untenable.

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"In 2021, the same year the Obama Center broke ground, her landlord raised the rent by nearly 40 percent," the report reads.

"I’m a working mother who can’t afford to live in my own community that I’ve lived in for 42 years," Hamer told the Washington Post.

The report cites a February vote in which nearly 90 percent of voters on the South Side urged city officials to do more to create affordable housing and provide aid to protect renters and homeowners who live near the Obama Center. 

Chicago mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson hugs Rhoda Rae Gutierrez at campaign stop at 6th Ward aldermanic candidate William Hall's office Sunday, April 2, 2023. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Obama has said that the project isn't intended to displace residents, adding that its overseers are trying to balance boosting jobs and economic development to the area while maintaining and protecting existing affordable housing.

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"We’ve got such a long way to go in terms of economic development before you’re even going to start seeing the prospect of significant gentrification," Obama said in 2018. "Malia’s kids might have to worry about that. Right now, what we’ve got to worry about is you have broken curbs, and trash and boarded-up buildings, and that’s really what we need to work on."

The center is expected to open in two years.

"In political spaces, people can become numbers, experiences can become trends," longtime resident Priscilla Dixon, 62, told the Washington Post. "But the reality is that this is about real people, and we don’t want the Obama Center — the center honoring the first Black president — to be another page in the long history of displacing Black people or doing harm to Black families."