Residents of Chicago’s south suburbs deal with crushing tax increases

Property taxes in the south suburbs have recently skyrocketed in the highest increase in three decades, with the Chicago Sun-Times recounting the story of one homeowner whose tax bill more than quadrupled between installments. Black residents in these communities have been impacted the most, further highlighting inequalities in the Cook County tax code. The number of different bodies levying taxes on residents, coupled with declining population, is responsible for increasing bills.

Professor Christopher Berry tells the Sun-Times that this current tax infrastructure is not sustainable. He says:

“We can’t have a situation in which the government continuously, and in the long run, grows faster than the private economy. I do think that’s essentially the concern in a lot of the southern suburbs... that the tax base is shrinking, the spending is going up, and those two things cannot continue to happen simultaneously for very long before a jurisdiction goes bankrupt or people move out.”

Berry argues that boosting the private economy in these suburbs is essential to resolving the problem, working to support these communities before it's too late.

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