Fifth Ward residents voted May 4 to select neighborhood infrastructure projects funded by $1.3 million in aldermanic “menu money,” In These Times reports in the third installment of a series on the process.

Street lights and a community garden on 71st Street got the most votes, with other winning projects ranging from sidewalk repairs and security cameras to public murals.

Ald Leslie Hairston was one of  three aldermen implementing participatory budgeting this year, four years after it was introduced here in the 49th Ward, and thirty years after the concept was pioneered by the Workers Party in Brazil.

A core of volunteer community representatives spent months winnowing down 150 ideas raised in brainstorming sessions last October into specific, feasible projects.

Only 104 residents turned out in the 5th — more than 400 voted in the 45th and 46th, and 1,427 voted in the 49th — and volunteers later discussed ways of improving outreach and turnout next year.

In New York City, where participatory budgeting was introduced on a small scale last year, organizers have succeed in boosting the participation of low-income residents — far above their turnout rate in local elections — as ITT reported in a previous installment. That article charts the history of participatory budgeting around the world, where it’s been deployed with varying degrees of success.

Maria Hadden of the Partipatory Budgeting Project points out that, while voter turnout matters, the opportunity throughout the process for residents to “develop a community voice and learn how to use it” is just as important.

“When I’m driving around the city, I’ll say, ‘Oh, they’re doing this here,’ or ‘they’re doing that there,’” one participant told ITT.  “I’ve always wanted to be a ‘they.’

“Communities always have things put upon them,” said Angela Sims, an intern with UIC’s College of Urban Planning, who volunteered for the project. Participatory budgeting “can bridge the ‘they’ and the community,” she said.

Series author Joel Handley will lead a panel discussion of the lessons to be learned from the Chicago experience for the Illinois Humanities Council on June 11 at the Cultural Center; more information here.

Pictures taken by Jill Stewart.

Illegal evictions of tenants from rental buildings are most common in a “foreclosure belt” stretching across Chicago’s South and West Sides, according to a new report (pdf).

The Lawyers Committee for Better Housing reports that banks routinely violate state and federal laws protecting tenants in buildings in foreclosure.  The “most egregious cases” are concentrated in 20 low-income black and Latino communities where more than 10 perecent of the rental stock is impacted by foreclosure, the group reports.

Stretching from South Chicago to  Chicago Lawn, from Englewood to Brighton Park, up to North Lawndale, Austin, Garfield Park and Humboldt Park, and out to Belmont Cragin and Avondale, these communities constitute Chicago’s “foreclosure belt,” according to the report.

In these communities, the “mass destruction of rental units” has created a downward spiral of blight and disinvestment.

“Illegal constructive evictions that lead to building vacancies and boardups have a clear solution: enforce the already existing laws that protect tenants living in foreclosed buildings,” according to the report.  More at Newstips.