For Chicago Homeowners, It’s All Pain, Little Gain

For Chicago Homeowners, It’s All Pain, Little Gain
(Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune via AP)
Early in 2019, a real-estate website predicted that Chicago’s housing market would be one of the nation’s worst over the next year. Chicago-area home prices, among the slowest to recover from the 2009 housing recession, were being suppressed by various factors, including escalating property taxes. Now it’s clear from a new study just how much of a burden those taxes have become. Over the past 20 years, they’ve risen about four times faster than the rate of local inflation and more than twice as fast as Chicago-area wages, eating up more and more of the average homeowner’s disposable income. And there’s more to come, thanks to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s latest budget, which raises Chicago property taxes again. Much of that money, moreover, isn’t targeted to better services but simply to pay off the city’s and Chicago school system’s enormous debt. For local homeowners, it’s all pain, little gain.
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