Paul Joice

What do you mean by #1? This is the first I've heard of them planning RIFs for the new FY.

Chicago artist Tonika Lewis Johnson among 22 winners of coveted MacArthur ‘genius grant’ The Englewood native, whose work focuses on inequity in Chicago, is among this year’s class of MacArthur Fellows. The list of international fellows receiving the $800,000 prize includes several artist...

Congrats to Tonika Johnson on a well deserved MacArthur genius grant! The folded map project is incredibly powerful, and her book Don't Go (with Maria Krysan) is outstanding. chicago.suntimes.com/art/2025/10/...

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

It is insane how she keeps describing Chicago as a "war zone", when the only warlike things happening here are all DHS operations

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

East Garfield Park
Chicago, Illinois

You recommend it? Of the abundance related books of the past year I've read Abundance and Why Nothing Works, wasn't sure if it would be worthwhile to also read Stuck (and Demsas's book of essays).

This is a nice working paper showing that traffic noise creates a pretty large externality. Near major roads, people are willing to pay ~6-10% more for homes after a sound barrier is built.

They estimate that traffic noise has an aggregate externality of $110 billion!

Wrong link?

So many people worked so hard for a real ADU reform. This ain't it. If a bill passes 46-0 maybe it compromised a bit too hard.

Agree. This is not a serious pro-housing policy. Very disappointing.

Spotted in the wild in Hyde Park! #BuildTheTunnel @starlinechicago.bsky.social

Some thoughts about policy work daniel-kay-hertz.ghost.io/some-thought...

This is by Greenline Homes, they've done a lot of great infill projects helping to revitalize the Woodlawn neighborhood (reinforcing efforts of POAH under HUD's Choice Neighborhoods program).

6537 S Rhodes Ave, Chicago, IL 60637 - 4 beds/3.5 baths (MRED as Distributed by MLS Grid) For Sale: 4 beds, 3.5 baths ∙ 6537 S Rhodes Ave, Chicago, IL 60637 ∙ $619,000 ∙ MLS# 12467604 ∙ The Home You've Been Waiting For! Tired of being priced out of the hom...

Went to an open house tonight for a really cool property. All-electric, super high efficiency, casement windows, solar panels. Love the layout with an accessible ground floor ADU, perfect for an in-law suite. This is the ultimate urban "single family home". redf.in/anZg41

Solving Chicago's lead pipe problem Better answers for one of the city's most difficult challenges

Great piece on replacing lead service lines in Chicago. This is personal for me. I lived in Flint in 2014-15 during the lead water crisis. Then moved...to the place with more lead pipes than anywhere else in the country. Oops. open.substack.com/pub/citythat...

State reps in Illinois only make $90k!!

Which grant?

As for the property tax, I was thinking of a new building on vacant land, so the abatement of incremental increases would be netting out the value of the new building.

You asked why 40 years. By 40 years, you basically have to replace everything except the structure itself. So 30-40 years can be thought of as the effective life cycle of a building.

40 years is essentially the useful life of a building, so maybe that approach is meant as a backdoor land value tax. Exempt the building value for its full useful life, and what's left is land value.

Woodlawn neighborhood SFH+ADU house tour sneak preview

RSVP to see on 9/23

www.eventbrite.com/e/sfh-adu-el...

I was especially struck by the story of Britt, who longed for a housing choice voucher, finally got one... then lost it. She, and so many people in this book, get so close to their dreams (or at least some stability) but they just have no margin for error.

10/14 - Brian Goldstone: There is No Place for Us by Build Coffee & Books Get tickets and support Build Coffee & Books by becoming a member

I'm excited for this event in Chicago! @brian-goldstone.bsky.social book is excellent. Such a rich portrait of the consequences of the housing crisis for real people. Very often upsetting but worth it.

withfriends.co/event/238616...

When the facts are available and their meaning obvious, people who want power over you must eventually demand that you ignore what you see, what you know.

"Freedom", wrote Orwell, "is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

... I looked out the window at my office, a few hours after the tweet, and there is the ICE car!

ICE tweeted this today. The scene looked familiar...

This is good. I thought Teles' recent abundance heuristic paper was great, but dark abundance was not something I recognized as remotely related to abundance.

You should read this. "Abundance" is a broad and cross cutting ideology. Don't get mad at the broad idea because you have issues with one flavor of it. www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/u...

Here's what he has to say about that.