“If you don’t build it, they can’t come.”
That’s not a misquotation of the mysterious voice that spoke to Kevin Costner in the 1989 hit film, “Field of Dreams.” In that sports fantasy blockbuster, Costner’s character builds a baseball diamond in the middle of his Iowa farm in response to hearing: “If you build it, he will come.”
His field of dreams brought the ghosts of baseball legends, including Chicago White Sox great “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, to play the game they loved. It even brought the ghost of the father of Costner’s character to play a game of catch with his son in the film’s climactic scene.
No, the quote above isn’t from that iconic movie, it’s what I imagine might roll through the minds of those who finance and build housing in Chicago.
If you don’t build homes and apartments on Chicago’s South and West sides, the Black communities there can’t grow. The same goes if you don’t provide loans to buy or renovate property or refinance home loans there. And if you don’t build affordable housing in other parts of Chicago, you won’t attract Black residents.
I’m being facetious, but take a quick look around. Where do you find affordable housing? And where is there great resistance to it? Where is the city growing? And where is Chicago losing population? The answers should give us pause.
In our real-life drama, there are no ghosts emerging from the cornfields. Instead, Black Chicagoans continue to disappear, venturing elsewhere for what they can no longer find at home. According to the 2024 American Community Survey, Chicago’s estimated Black population was just over 702,000 — that’s 114,000 less than the 2020 census count and about 480,000 less than the count in 1980.
Many have posited ideas for why Chicago has witnessed such a rapid decline of Black residents. Violence, poor schools, a sluggish job market and inequality are among the ones often cited. Another reason some Black neighborhoods may be thinning is because there just aren’t as many places to live.
Among Chicago’s community areas, the South Side’s Englewood, Douglas and West Englewood lost the most housing units between 2000 and 2020, according to my analysis of census data. Collectively, those communities lost more than 6,700 housing units during that span. Englewood and West Englewood have witnessed the sharpest declines in population since 2000 — down 42% and 38%, respectively — according to data from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. The Douglas population has decreased by more than 20%.
Meanwhile, the four communities that make the city’s Downtown and the areas immediately surrounding it have thrived. The Loop, the Near North Side, the Near West Side and the Near South Side have witnessed the highest growth in housing units and population since 2000, the data shows. Those communities saw a collective growth of more than 72,000 housing units from 2000 to 2020. And while they haven’t been known for residential development, the population has boomed in the Loop and the Near South Side. The Loop’s population has more than doubled since 2000, and the South Loop’s has more than tripled in that time. The population in both the Near North Side and the Near West Side has grown by more than 46% since 2000.
They have embodied the notion that building breeds growth. But on the South Side, disinvestment just breeds more disinvestment.
As Black communities lose their people, they’re struggling to hold on to other precious resources. Grocery stores, pharmacies and other vital institutions are boarding up or packing up and leaving just as fast as Black residents. For sure, there are positive signs of development here and there, but not enough to erase what appears to be a slide of net loss without an end in sight.
Back in February, after seeing that 2024 Black population estimate, I wrote about all of the available land and property in Black Chicago. It’s relatively cheap compared to what you’ll find in other parts of the city. Restoring the diminishing housing stock in Black neighborhoods seems to be the clearest path to reverse things. All we need is the will, I wrote.
But, for decades, the interest and the will simply hasn’t been there. And maybe that’s not a coincidence.
Alden Loury is data projects editor for WBEZ and writes a column for the Sun-Times.