By: Ashmar Mandou

Unhappy over the decision to build the new Chicago Fire training facility in the Roosevelt Square neighborhood, members of the Coalition to Protect CHA Land, Chicago Housing Initiative, and Lugenia Burns Hop Center filed a federal lawsuit last week. The lawsuit aims to challenge the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) approval of the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) plan to lease 23 acres of public housing land for the construction of the Chicago Fire training facility, which broke ground late April.

“CHA should be creating new housing for the thousands of families in need in Chicago – but instead they gave up valuable public land to a billionaire and his soccer team,” said Kate Walz, associate director of litigation of the National Housing Law Project. “To add insult to injury, HUD evaded its own civil rights obligations by approving this deal at the expense of low-income Black households and persons with disabilities.” 

The City of Chicago, the Chicago Fire FC Owner and Chairman Joe Mansueto, Alderman Jason Ervin (28th Ward), and Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) CEO Tracey Scott joined community members at the Jane Addams Family Resource Center to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Fire’s new performance and training facility in the Roosevelt Square neighborhood on April 25th. The new facility will feature a 53,000 square-foot, two-story performance center, two-and-a-half hybrid grass pitches, and three synthetic turf pitches, providing a world-class training environment for the Fire’s professional and Academy players and staff. However, members of the Coalition to Protect CHA Land, believe in an already rapidly gentrifying area, the new facility will add to the burden of scarce opportunities within the community and stated the plan “violates CHA’s fair housing obligations.”

“It’s a shame that in order to get the government to work for low-income and working families, we have to sue. And this billionaire didn’t have to lift a finger to get public housing land for his private endeavor. The city sought him out,” said Rod Wilson, executive director of the Lugenia Burns Hope Center. “We hope that with this lawsuit, there begins some accountability with CHA and HUD. All the things wrong with CHA over the past decades have been due to lack of oversight and accountability from HUD.”

The new facility will be built on CHA land and, as part of a long-term lease agreement, the Fire will finance the development of the multi-million-dollar facility and provide an $8 million community investment, according to Chicago Fire representatives. The Coalition and community groups, through their attorneys at Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, National Housing Law Project and Legal Action Chicago, presented HUD with evidence that CHA’s proposal would worsen the affordable housing crisis. “HUD was created to carry out the federal commitment to housing people no market can house. The CHA is not housing enough people. Instead, it’s trading land for cash while not using the money it has to produce promised units or maintain its existing housing. HUD needs to step in and compel the CHA to do its job,” said Don Washington, executive director of the Chicago Housing Initiative.