Commissioner Gainer tells us about the work of the Cook County Land Bank Authority, which addresses the large inventory of vacant residential, industrial and commercial property in Cook County. Bridget and David want to raise awareness of the work that the CCLBA does and how people can take advantage of the program to build homes.
A unique program at the Cook County Correctional Center aims to prepare inmates for life outside the jail. On Monday morning, many women inside the jail were smiling for the camera — and then within minutes they got a CityKey. It is a government issued ID to use in Chicago. Without an ID in this city or this country, you don’t exist. You can’t get an apartment, you can’t go to the food pantry, you can’t get social service help," said Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer. That’s why Commissioner Gainer wanted to bring this municipal ID printing event to Cook County Jail, where a lot of inmates don’t have identification.
Nearly 1,000 people gathered at this year’s Scavenger Sale auction, aiming to nab one of the more than 30,000 local properties up for sale. The sale is the first step in a complicated process of trying to take over a tax-delinquent property so it can be restored, benefitting its community while returning it to the tax rolls. But many of the lots that go up are snapped up by hedge funds and large institutional buyers, or they stay unused for years, if not decades, while going through the sale again and again.
But Land Bank Chairwoman and Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer says the Illinois Constitution and the property tax system has made it almost impossible to redevelop property, and the Land Bank steps in to be a consistent pipeline of property for small developers.
“People can plan a business knowing that there’s going to be a consistent pipeline of this property,” Gainer said. “If I’m a developer, I can say, ‘OK, I know that I can get five houses every year from the Land Bank, because I know that they’re filling this pipeline. The Land Bank will still be a very active buyer in the scavenger sale because we have been the most effective mechanism to get property out of the scavenger sale into development and paying taxes than anyone else in the last 20 years.”
In 2010, Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer noticed something out of the ordinary—calls were coming in more frequently about constituents challenged with losing their homes. Aware of the housing market collapse and predator loan practices by banks, long-time home owners were seeking assistance from their public officials.
“People were calling me, they’re getting letters from the bank. People were worried if they had to move out that day—a lot of uncertainty. To be honest, the banks didn’t really know what to do."
Five years ago, when Bridget Gainer, vice president of global public affairs for professional services firm Aon, looked out her window, she could see Harold Washington College, a community college that is part of the City Colleges of Chicago system. “But we never engaged there, never hired anyone, never really had much to do with the school,” she says. “We thought, ‘Let’s try to bridge that gap.'”
Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer and her four sisters traveled to Washington, too; she’ll be addressing the crowds in Chicago on Saturday.
Last year’s marches helped usher in the #MeToo movement that saw powerful men lose their jobs over sexual harassment. The theme this year is a march to the polls, urging women to take part in the political process for the issues they place top of mind.
“If we want to have a say about those things, we need to step up and run for office,” Gainer says.
Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer honored Equality Illinois at this month's Cook County Board Meeting on Jan. 9, 2018. Gainer invited Equality Illinois CEO Brian Johnson and staff member Elise Malary to receive an official resolution honoring Equality Illinois and recognizing its 2018 Gala, the Midwest's largest LGBTQ formal celebration.
Gainer also passed a resolution honoring the Chicago Women's March to the Polls and the TIME'S UP Movement.
But to Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, the marches have already spurred concrete change, including encouraging more women to run for political office.
In 2014, 19 women in Illinois ran for statewide or federal elected office; this year, 29 women are running for office at that same level, said Gainer, who founded the political organization Cause the Effect in 2014 to bring more women into civic activism and politics.
Gainer, who has backgrounds in finance and community organizing, started the Land Bank and immediately worked to streamline the legal process and clear properties. Once the Land Bank identifies a property for reactivation, it takes just under eight months to clear a property of all outstanding liens and bring it to market in a simple manner.
Since I got to the board, I’ve tried to use this guiding principle: What does government have to do—because we’re the only ones, or the best ones, to do it? For the county, that’s running the jail, running the rest of the criminal justice system—the court system, the public defender, and all of that—the collection of taxes and assessment, and the public health system.
One of the things I’ve worked on since I came to the board, and have been joined by others since then, is ways to handle nonviolent offenders differently.
"We fulfilled a commitment, and that's important when you're using (public) funds," said Bridget Gainer, the Cook County Commissioner who chairs the land bank. "But more important is that 80 percent of these homes are returned to homeownership, and 65 percent of our developers are black and Latino, from the communities, so the money is recirculating in the neighborhoods we're working in."
Nearly 300 women gathered at “Cause the Effect,” the second annual young feminist conference, to talk about what stops change and how to beat those obstacles.
“We had a conversation around two years ago that it’s only the boys who get their voices heard or put in the paper,” Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, D-Chicago, said. “I told them that if they think this is the last time that will happen it’s not, but they can do something about it.”
“Silence is no longer an option when it comes to the violence in Chicago,” said Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, who founded Off The Sidelines Chicago in 2015, inspired by U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s national movement encouraging women to bring their ideas to action.
“What better voices to help magnify than those of the women out in the streets working every day to make their communities safer?” Gainer said at the monthly issues-focused discussion that had drawn concerned women from as far away as Hinsdale and Alsip.
Gainer said 26 students are on the program now, with a second wave of 26 set to arrive in January. All work Monday through Thursday, but then attend Harold Washington College, where they're obtaining associate degrees in business-related fields, she said.
"At the end of the year, they have a degree and a place in the company, and hopefully it will be a permanent place."
Gainer said participants were recruited through Harold Washington and groups such as the Urban League. Of the 26, 20 are Latino or African-American, and half are women, she said, all making around $30,000 a year, plus full fringe benefits and free tuition.
Gainer is behind the Aon Apprenticeship Program that’s connecting City Colleges students to office jobs. She hopes other companies will follow suit.
It’s not about having a fancy degree, she said. “But really, the skills required may just need someone who can be trained and who’s smart and ready to work.”
The sale takes place all week. Properties in townships including Oak Park, Orland, Bremen and Barrington were sold Monday. Other townships, like Palatine, Rich and Hyde Park will be added on Tuesday. Delinquent taxes throughout rest of the city will be sold off Wednesday and Thursday.
Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer says tax sale system goes back a generation, and should be scrapped.
The owners of tens of thousands of homes and properties in Cook County who’ve fallen behind on their taxes have only a couple more days to settle their debts – or they could wind up paying a lot more.
Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, 10th District, is working to build awareness about a property tax sale coming up on Monday where delinquent taxes can be sold off to private buyers, who can then charge property owners exorbitant interest rates until their debt is paid off.
