Chicagoans complain that Obama Center causes 'harm to black families,' gentrifies South Side

As construction ramps up on Chicago's $500 million Obama Presidential Center, so to have concerns that the project will harm the South Side residents it originally promised to help.

Many longterm Chicagoans have expressed fears that the center will cause their rent to increase, and eventually gentrify the entire neighborhood.

Nearly 90 percent of voters in the area said "yes" in a recent referendum on the issue of whether the city needed to create more affordable housing and provide financial support to those living in the vicinity of the site.

"What happens in communities where there is economic development is families get pushed out because of property value raises," mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson said during a community meeting.

"We have to make sure, for families that live in the very communities where economic development is taking place, that landlords don't see it as an opportunity to push the families out who have been a part of these communities for decades."

Longtime resident Dixon Romeo suggested that he and other Chicagoans "don't want the Obama Center ... to be another page in the long history of displacing Black people or doing harm to Black families," pointing out that, "the city is the only one that can stop that."

Whether his warnings are heeded depends on who becomes the next mayor.

When the site was chosen nearly a decade ago, the Obama Foundation assured residents that it would only create opportunity, not hardship.

"It feels natural for Michelle and me to want to give back to Chicago and to the South Side in particular," Obama said, calling the center their way of "repaying some of what this amazing city has given us."