Cook County Treasurer's Office - 7/19/2022
WTTW/Channel 11
There is a straight line between the scaffolding of modern segregation and the tens of thousands of vacant or abandoned properties on Chicago’s South and West sides, helping to keep Chicagoans mired in poverty for generations and fueling the drop in the city’s Black population, according to a new study from the Cook County Treasurer’s office.
Many of the barriers erected by elected officials and civic leaders beginning in the 1930s to keep Black Chicagoans, Latino Chicagoans and White Chicagoans from living, working and playing in the same neighborhoods remain unchanged nearly a century later, thwarting efforts to prevent abandoned properties from turning into eyesores that blight neighborhoods, according to “Maps of Inequality: From Redlining to Urban Decay and the Black Exodus,” a study Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas’ office released Tuesday.
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