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Juhyun Jung - Team leader
Lane Hartwig
Kunwoo Lee
Nam Gyu Lee
Youngjo Choi
Jan, 2024 ~ Apr, 2024
Our overall goal of this project is to relate information regarding income and education to TIF districts in Chicago. By further analysis, we aim to determine any inequalities that may have arisen alongside TIFs. We hope the results of this project can further inform Chicago citizens of possible inequalities present in the current tax system of the city. The background research conducted mainly focused on the inconsistencies in how TIF funds are handled. The TIF Illumination Project was a valuable resource to further understand how much is collected and spent by TIFs and the large difference between those amounts. For example, 2022 TIF revenue totaled $960 million while the expenses were only $362 million. Previous studies on TIFs were also researched to further understand how TIFs have already been analyzed. Most studies focused on jobs and property values, so we instead chose to consider other factors that could contribute to socioeconomic success. Overall, from these studies, it seemed that the positive effects of TIFs came at the expense of other taxing districts, like public schools. Based on our findings, there are substantial increases in the median income of TIF districts that are predominantly white, while other races are not affected significantly. This further substantiates the claims of critics that tax increment financing is racist and possibly stimulates gentrification.
We want to relate information regarding income and education to TIF districts in Chicago. By further analysis, we aim to determine any inequalities that may have arisen alongside TIFs. Furthermore, we want to emphasize the “but for” clause of whether a TIF should exist at all by using factors of socioeconomic success. We hope the results of this project can further inform Chicago citizens of possible inequalities present in the current tax system of the city.
The project consists of four primary components: data collection, preprocessing, analysis, and visualization. For the data collection, we used the Chicago Data Portal website to obtain city boundary geodata in GeoJSON format (Chicago Data Portal). We also sourced our demographic data from the U.S. Census data website, the information used was filtered by block group and downloaded in CSV format (Census Bureau Data). To analyze the data, we used principal component analysis and clustering methods to uncover statistically significant information. We created a novel visualization from our results to display our findings understandably.
It is essential to identify and comprehend inequalities caused by TIF districts to keep the public informed of the decisions made by the politicians they vote into office. Citizens must be able to make informed decisions and be able to participate in discussions and decision-making processes related to TIF districts in their communities. The majority of critics of TIFs argue they lack transparency (Jacobs, 2020). Therefore our project will play an important role in civic and ethical proportions.
Regarding TIF districts, as of 2022 from the TIF Illumination Project, 131 districts collected around $960 million, while TIF account expenses totaled only about $362 million (Tresser). While by the end of 2022, TIF districts were still holding $2.5 billion (Tresser). There are also clear examples of TIFs being used to subsidize development in “non-blighted” areas, like neighborhoods in North Chicago where the majority of the wealth is already heald (Jacobs, 2020).
Previous studies of TIFs have primarily focused on jobs and property values to assess the effects thus we believe it’s important to consider other factors that could contribute to socioeconomic success (Kim, 2023). It has also been proposed that the inclusion of the types of projects that occur could also be useful and is a potential consideration for future work (Kim, 2023). Overall though based on previous studies, it seems the positive effects for TIF district residents may come at the expense of other overlapping taxing districts (Kim, 2023; Weber et al., 2008). For example, nearly 50% of property tax revenue collected by TIFs would otherwise go to CPS (Jacobs, 2020).