Tax Dollars And Sense

A lot of people think that the quality of life and infrastructure in Chicago has really improved over the last few decades. But the use of tax-increment financing, an economic development tool used to target "blight," has increased wildly over the last decade. So either "blight" is finding its way into most of our neighborhoods, or this program is egregiously misused. I wonder which one it is...

Check out this video made by the The Chicago News Cooperative, showing how the TIF program has expanded dramatically over the last ten years:

TIFs Over Time from Chicago News Cooperative on Vimeo.