Glynis James-Watson moved from the affluent northern suburb of Evanston, Illinois, to the less well-off south suburb of Harvey in 2021. She had just graduated from seminary and hoped the move would lead to a pastor position.
“I felt a call to move down here,” James-Watson said. “I’ll put it like that.”
The job she was hoping for did not materialize, but she’s still glad she moved. She lives in Harvey, a city in Chicago’s south suburbs sprinkled with a few abandoned buildings from an industrial past. Although there are facets of the way the city is run that James-Watson finds frustrating, she likes living in her neighborhood. She likes her brown brick house and said her neighbors are welcoming.
“Everything was going well. And you know, the payments were well within my means,” James-Watson said. “I had no issues up until recently.”
Recently, James-Watson received her second tax bill installment. The increase was even more than the median for the area. Her bill was $8,170.39 — seven times the $1,066.97 she paid for her first installment bill earlier this year.
“I was … I was flabbergasted,” she said.
Many homeowners in Chicago’s south suburbs echoed James-Watson’s sentiment upon discovering their property tax bills went up significantly this year. Depending on how steep the hike, those higher tax bills can have serious economic repercussions for homeowners. This is the case in Chicago’s south suburbs, where a record-high tax increase took many residents by surprise. Property tax bills rose nearly 20% for the median homeowner there – the largest increase in three decades.
Without intervention, some experts warn that many of Chicago’s south suburban communities have a dark economic future ahead of them.
Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas said this is a common reaction to the latest property tax installment. She said the reasons for the increase are complex.
“Most people don’t know that they paid to 14 different governments,” Pappas said. “They have no idea.”
Each jurisdiction bills differently. Additionally, homes in the south suburbs were recently reassessed. Other economic trends contribute to the property tax increase, such as residents tending to move out and commercial investment in these neighborhoods decreasing over time. That means property taxes are rising when property values are not. Services like public schooling are paid for through the bills the government issues its citizens, or levies.
“The levy is just another word for the total tax bill of a jurisdiction,” University of Chicago Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation’s Chris Berry said. “That is how much property taxes does a particular jurisdiction collect.”
Berry likened a levy to a community bill that’s divided among homeowners in a jurisdiction. The more people who live there, the more people amongst whom to divide the load. When some people move out, those who remain pay more.
The situation in Chicago’s south suburbs is not tenable, he said.
“The tax base is shrinking, the spending is going up, and those two things cannot continue to happen simultaneously for very long before a jurisdiction goes bankrupt or people move out,” Berry said.
Adding to the mix is that the the tax collection rate in this region is suffering: From 2023 to 2024 there was a more than 27% increase in the number of tax delinquent residential properties in the south suburbs. That means those taxes are not getting collected.
The tax increases most severely impact Black residents in the south suburbs. Of the 15 suburbs with the largest property tax hikes, 13 are home to mostly Black residents like James-Watson. In these suburbs, homeowners saw their property taxes rise at least 30%.
Berry said it’s elected officials and residents who have the power to turn this around: “In the short run, it’s the job of the elected officials who determine the levy. Each of the jurisdictions determines its own levy. I would say, in the long run, it’s really the job of the voters to determine this if they are unhappy with these trends.”
Still, some of the reasons that taxes are higher, including recent adjustments in property assessments and depressed commercial activity, add up to opportunities for this part of Chicago.
“The western suburbs, the northern suburbs are already built,” said Bo Kemp, who runs the Southland Development Authority, a nonprofit.
He thinks developers and government shouldn’t overlook Chicago’s south suburbs. “We present ourselves as the best opportunity for that kind of growth, and growth that can be done in a way that maintains the legacy residents who’ve been here for 10, 20, 30, 40 years.”
