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Most likely leaving. There are some things I like, but it's not enough to keep me here. Moved here from VA back in '09; I never intended to stay here this long and never had a strong desire to settle down here.
Sounds to me like most of Illinois problems is due to Chicago and all of its costly liberal programs and urban problems.
It goes beyond Chicago. Il has more levels of government than any other State. According to the IL Policy Institute IL has 6,963 units of local government besting the runner up by 1,800!!!
Think about that. IL has more Government units than any other state. How much more you might ask...well drum roll check this out. For every 100,000 citizens IL has 54 units of local government. To take that in context residents of Texas have 20, Californians have 12, NewYorkers 18 and Floridians 9. It is sor tof a what the kittens moment. we have more than double the amount of government units per citizen than Texans and three times as many as NewYorkers.
All these levels of Government not only pillage your wallet but they enact regulations that drive up compliance costs making IL uncompetitive for business but also impeding personal liberty and freedom.
Moreover, IL is one of the few States where the government actively competes with the private sector for business and turns the taxpayer's dollars against them forcing business owners to subsidize their own competitors.
My point is, it goes beyond Chicago. It is state wide. Government is the enemy, it is the problem.
If I was living there, I'd probably stay. Simply because aside from NYC, SF and Boston, there are no other cities in the US that offer fine arts, walkability, rail transit, fine architecture, connectivity and a concentration of members of the creative class. Further, no other cities outside those three offer transit-connected access to institutions of the calibre of UofC or Northwestern.
It's true that the property taxes are going to rise, but it's also likely that the pensions will be renegotiated to make them viable. Even with the taxes necessary to right the ship, Chicago is decent value for money given what it offers people like me. And there's a good chance that once the ship has been righted, the taxes will be attenuated.
I suppose that if the CSO and Joffrey Ballet upped pegs, and along with the theatre companies and creative community, decamped for elsewhere, I'd sell up and leave -- likely to one of the more expensive cities mentioned above.
But right now, saving a few grand in taxes is nowhere near enough to make me leave for the south, the planes or the mountain west. You simply couldn't pay me to live in a place where I'd need a car, and where car-centric urban design reigns supreme. No way, no how. I want a high minimum wage, rights for workers and a culture of improving public infrastructure. (Other than freeways.) The free availability of guns makes me uneasy. I prefer to have a concentration of women's health clinics like Planned Parenthood with easy access to mass transit. And even though I'm firmly Anglican/Episcopalian, I want a thriving and safe LGBT community with full rights to pursue happiness.
TL;DR: I'd stay and cough up the taxes, unless it looked like Chicago was going to lose its creative community, in which case it'd mean moving to NYC, SF or Boston. Certainly nowhere else.
We are torn but it's more to do with lifestyle, really (urban versus rural) than with the day-to-day impact of the state's and city's troubles. I try the thought-experiment fairly often of trying to ascertain how the things that are hyped in the media (crime, pension, budget, etc.) are actually affecting my own experience in daily life. I am not saying that I hide my head in the sand, but I am trying to get a handle on the distinction between media input and real-life-experience input. The things I find unpleasant have more to do with not liking gritty streets, noise pollution, traffic, and finding the size of the city kind of off-putting sometimes. BUT, in daily life, our neighborhood (Beverly) is for the most part safe (certainly on crime maps, it looks pretty pristine compared to many other neighborhoods), the streets are green with trees and lawns and gardens, our house is paid for, and our property plus income taxes are, combined, now lower than the property taxes alone are on the house we sold in Austin, Texas in 2011. I also love Lake Michigan a lot, lot, lot, and (again, after Austin) I love not having water worries, or enduring bad summers (the worse one being 2011, with 90 days over 100 degrees). (Hot summers like that are every bit as confining as a Chicago winter, though admittedly you don't have to shovel or slip on icy sidewalks.)
Anyway, we may eventually move (we discuss it often). We have a vulnerable, demented parent who is getting very good care here and it seems too disruptive to move her, so that plus the expense and upheaval of moving are anchors right now. But if we do move, it will be because I'm fundamentally a country mouse, not a city mouse (despite having been born and raised in Chicago).
If I was living there, I'd probably stay. Simply because aside from NYC, SF and Boston, there are no other cities in the US that offer fine arts, walkability, rail transit, fine architecture, connectivity and a concentration of members of the creative class.
It's true that the property taxes are going to rise, but it's also likely that the pensions will be renegotiated to make them viable. Even with the taxes necessary to right the ship, Chicago is decent value for money given what it offers people like me. And there's a good chance that once the ship has been righted, the taxes will be attenuated.
I suppose that if the CSO and Joffrey Ballet upped pegs, and along with the theatre companies and creative community, decamped for elsewhere, I'd sell up and leave -- likely to one of the more expensive cities mentioned above.
But right now, saving a few grand in taxes is nowhere near enough to make me leave for the south, the planes or the mountain west. You simply couldn't pay me to live in a place where I'd need a car, and where car-centric urban design reigns supreme.
This is a great post and you make some good points above. Chicago does have the great walkability, mass transit, fine arts/architecture and a concentrated living area next to a beautiful freshwater ocean. Drives me crazy when they say Houston could pass Chicago as 3rd largest city when Houston is just a massive sprawl and nothing like Chicago, NYC, SF or Boston. Millenials want to live in cities that offer what Chicago has so that's why McDonalds is moving downtown and you see highrise after highrise going up offering rentals. I've been a landlord for 4 years and everyone wants to live downtown near the El and be able to walk everywhere. I barely use my car anymore and only keep it cause I'm a landlord. And Chicago population may be shrinking but an economist studied this and found that while families are moving out (3-4 people) single millenials are moving in. So we're really losing kids for singles in the areas close to downtown.
You make a good point too about taxes rising a few grand. Is it worth giving up this city and lifelong family/friends just to save a few grand? Illinois already has the highest median property tax rate (more than NY) and Chicago has the highest sales tax rate 10.25%. How much higher can taxes go??? The answer is very high to fill the $111 billion pension hole. Chicago property taxes increased 50% and that only resulted in $500M to fill the $111 billion funding hole. Pensions can not...i repeat...can not be renegotiated without a constitutional referendum or bankruptcy. Chicago already tried to lower pension benefits and the Illinois Supreme Court said "No".
Are you with the Joffrey Ballet? I have a friend who's in the company.
For me I'm at that age where I'm close to settling down and starting a family which may require a move to the burbs at some point. Nothing against people in the burbs but that just sounds awuful. I'll be giving up all that Chicago has to offer while still keeping the debt. So that's what's driving my thought process to stay or move in the next few years.
If I was living there, I'd probably stay. Simply because aside from NYC, SF and Boston, there are no other cities in the US that offer fine arts, walkability, rail transit, fine architecture, connectivity and a concentration of members of the creative class. Further, no other cities outside those three offer transit-connected access to institutions of the calibre of UofC or Northwestern.
It's true that the property taxes are going to rise, but it's also likely that the pensions will be renegotiated to make them viable. Even with the taxes necessary to right the ship, Chicago is decent value for money given what it offers people like me. And there's a good chance that once the ship has been righted, the taxes will be attenuated.
But right now, saving a few grand in taxes is nowhere near enough to make me leave for the south, the planes or the mountain west. You simply couldn't pay me to live in a place where I'd need a car, and where car-centric urban design reigns supreme.
This about sums it up for me too. I have lived in many car-centric places and I just can't anymore. I don't want a car to be my only viable option. I need the arts/creativity, walkability, and transit to thrive as a person. Further, forsaking a couple grand isn't reason to forsake my sanity.
As someone who is gay, a welcoming community is also vital to myself and my spouse and one in which is priceless.
I'm no liberal or an Illinois apologist, but I don't think the sky is falling like some here make it seem.
My last job was at a software company that made products and services for the investment banking industry. Chicago was probably the second biggest market for our clients and competitors outside of NYC. These jobs pay very well, and they often simply don't exist in places like TN or FL. We didn't have a single FL client out of 100+ US clients. If you were in Chicago and wanted to stay in the industry, you couldn't move to Tennessee - there would be no local opportunity there for you.
There are other industries that mainly exist in major metros like SF, Boston, NYC, Chicago, etc., as well as elite jobs in industries that may have a presence elsewhere. In spite of all its problems, Chicago/IL is probably the most affordable of that bunch.
If you're Joe average running an average business or with an average job, you can probably find a better deal elsewhere, but for the elite and certain sectors, Chicago is still probably the most affordable metro.
compactspace, It's more than a few grand in taxes. A similar $500K home in the burbs of Atlanta, Nashville, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, etc, will have a $10K+ per year property tax differential (not including the higher sales tax, toll roads and other nickel and diming Illinois provides). Think about what that would add up to after 10 or 20 years of investing w/ compound interest!
If I was living there, I'd probably stay. Simply because aside from NYC, SF and Boston, there are no other cities in the US that offer fine arts, walkability, rail transit, fine architecture, connectivity and a concentration of members of the creative class. Further, no other cities outside those three offer transit-connected access to institutions of the calibre of UofC or Northwestern.
It's true that the property taxes are going to rise, but it's also likely that the pensions will be renegotiated to make them viable. Even with the taxes necessary to right the ship, Chicago is decent value for money given what it offers people like me. And there's a good chance that once the ship has been righted, the taxes will be attenuated.
I suppose that if the CSO and Joffrey Ballet upped pegs, and along with the theatre companies and creative community, decamped for elsewhere, I'd sell up and leave -- likely to one of the more expensive cities mentioned above.
But right now, saving a few grand in taxes is nowhere near enough to make me leave for the south, the planes or the mountain west. You simply couldn't pay me to live in a place where I'd need a car, and where car-centric urban design reigns supreme. No way, no how. I want a high minimum wage, rights for workers and a culture of improving public infrastructure. (Other than freeways.) The free availability of guns makes me uneasy. I prefer to have a concentration of women's health clinics like Planned Parenthood with easy access to mass transit. And even though I'm firmly Anglican/Episcopalian, I want a thriving and safe LGBT community with full rights to pursue happiness.
TL;DR: I'd stay and cough up the taxes, unless it looked like Chicago was going to lose its creative community, in which case it'd mean moving to NYC, SF or Boston. Certainly nowhere else.
As others have already pointed out, great post. I get taxes are high but our household income would easily fall by the amount we would be saving in taxes (probably more) by moving south and we would be foregoing all the Chicago metro has to offer. Love the city, don't mind the weather (winters are a bit long but I love having 4 seasons and global warming seems to be having an impact on the severity of the winters of late), and love having family and friends nearby (roots are here). Great jobs for my wife and I so I really can't even imagine what it would take for us to leave. For us at least, the issue of high taxes is overblown and it's still considerably cheaper to live here than other great cities like NYC, Seattle, SF, and Boston.
As others have already pointed out, great post. I get taxes are high but our household income would easily fall by the amount we would be saving in taxes (probably more) by moving south and we would be foregoing all the Chicago metro has to offer. Love the city, don't mind the weather (winters are a bit long but I love having 4 seasons and global warming seems to be having an impact on the severity of the winters of late), and love having family and friends nearby (roots are here). Great jobs for my wife and I so I really can't even imagine what it would take for us to leave. For us at least, the issue of high taxes is overblown and it's still considerably cheaper to live here than other great cities like NYC, Seattle, SF, and Boston.
Fair point, but doesn't make a difference to me. In my field (IT), I make the same no matter which city I pick.
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