How is trust in the local government formed or harmed?

When considering how residents may conceive of their trust with the city, it is important to first distinguish between local government and planners. I refer to the local government as the aldermen and their staff, while planners are referred to separately. In many cases planners are working with and/or through the local government in the work they do, but they are distinct. First, we will examine: how is trust in the local government (whether they have residents’ best interests in mind and their ability to follow through with their plans) formed or harmed?

  • “Reckoning is necessary, reckoning is urgent, and make no mistake, it is about disrupting systems of oppression..I have love for Chicago deep in my soul, yet I’m often reminded that me and my people, my elders, my ancestors, have been poisoned and discarded for decades. I have reckoned with this traumatic past to relocate the love and commitments I have to transforming this city of ours.”

    Emila Chico (We Will Chicago Kickoff)

  • “In the 1950s, there was the Indian Relocation Act. What they did was they went on to the reservations…and give some of the tribal members $100 and a one-way bus ticket to the nearest large city. They said that there would be housing services, jobs, and everything, but once they got here, there was nothing. There were some jobs, but there was no housing. So, they have to try and find what they could…and so that's why the American Indian Center was developed in 1953.”

    Adelita

  • “Thankfully, the city of Chicago and the Department of Housing did a survey of all the projects that they have done in the city. And they realized that they've really not done anything for the Native American community. And so, they reached out to the American Indian Center…to say, ‘We would like to help you get housing,’...They've helped us all along the way to make sure that this project is a wonderful part of our community, but working with our Native American community there, they still don't believe it's going to happen. You know what I mean? Because we were promised housing 50 years ago, and we're just now getting it. So, until we actually break that ground, they just still do not believe it's gonna happen, although we're pretty far down the road. They've been promised so much, and then the rug has been taken away from under them, so it's still hard for them to trust anything that the government says."

    Adelita

  • “Our community was not pushing back against people who were in need of shelter. But you [the city] continue to ignore what we need in our community. And now, you're going to ask us to bear an additional burden, but you're still not recognizing your community homelessness, people in need of mental health services, people in need of this and in need of that. Why can't we talk at that level? It ain’t about people. It is about the disinvestment that has occurred in our communities.”

    Ruth (South)

  • “I feel that the aldermen have to be more accountable to their constituents. They group a certain group of constituents and say, ‘Well, they're happy.’ But what about the other 90%? I truly think that as communities in Chicago, we need to know where the money is going, because we pay the taxes in our community. We need to have a seat at that table that says where those monies will be spent. And I think we need to move more into a council level with our Aldermen. Not the way that I feel aldermanic powers and prerogatives are, is that the alderperson feels like ‘This is my kingdom, the Ward, and this is what I dictate will happen.’ That can be right. And so, I know, the city of Chicago historically has had the alderperson rule, but I do think that it needs to morph into a more inclusive process where you make sure that the voices of your constituents are represented.”

    Ruth (South)

  • “What kind of further erodes the trust is that you have these decisions that get made. And then because you’ve had changes and city leadership, there's no continuity. So, a decision that was made under one administration cannot be explained by another administration. And so that also further erodes the trust. And I think it's not necessarily because the current administration can't speak to that decision, but it further underscores that the decision wasn't made as a result of informed policy, but for other reasons. That really exacerbates the lack of trust that people have.”

    Naomi (South)

  • “Sometimes the city does not meet us eye to eye. On a local level we've had turmoil with aldermen, there's been a re-designation of the ward…I guess it’s the city that does that and I’ve heard some very bad reasons why they do it. But um you know, that's kind of above my head. I don't really get it. But we had our previous Alderman where we were like the bastard stepchild because we, our ethnic community, did not vote for him. And he tried very hard to win us over but failed. And then the line was redrawn. I don't know if he had the power to have done something about that or not. I don't know. It is odd. It was really strange. We really have not had the best of trust with city hall. In some cases, there were aldermen that I adored, and I trusted, and there have been those that I wouldn't trust with a 10-foot pole…I’ve had good and bad experiences with the aldermen.”

    Stacey (North)

  • “Just before he left office, he designated that our block would be zoned parking. City ordinances require that you educate the community and ask for consent, none of which was done. So we just woke up one morning…it’s like, wait a minute. Totally imposed on us…I don't trust the local government. I think politicians are politicians. You hope they have the best interests of the general community at heart, and they can't prioritize one person, although they should at least listen. I guess that's where I'm coming from.”

    Rebecca (North)

  • “I've been lucky in this neighborhood. The aldermen we've had have been very willing to work with the community. And there were no under the table deals. There were no instances of everybody hating an idea, but all of a sudden, the alderman approved it. Nothing like that has happened in my decades here in this neighborhood. And I know what's happened in other neighborhoods. I know people live through it. But that's one reason you have to be very careful about who you elect as Alderman."

    Jerry (North)

Quantitative Considerations

“Although data on trust in planners specifically has not been collected, the city of Chicago has data that explicitly measures the amount of trust residents have in their local government. I took this data from the Chicago Health Atlas, and plotted it in Figure 16, which shows the percentage of people in each community area who say they trust their local government. The average percent of people who say they trust the city across community areas is 43.6% with a standard deviation across community areas of 11.1%, indicating that most people across the city of Chicago do not trust the local government. There appears from this graph to be a slightly higher proportion of residents who trust in the local government on the North side of Chicago. On the North side of Chicago, the average trust level is 49.6%, with the values for these community areas ranging from 34.5%-68.5% (standard deviation of 7.6%). This average lowers to 42.3% in the South, with community area values ranging from 22.9%-70.6% (standard deviation of 12.5%).

It is the lowest in the West with an average of 38.3% from community areas values between 23.1%-52.9% (standard deviation 9.2%). This finding is significant for two reasons. First, the average levels of trust in the South and West parts of the city are lower than the city average, while the average levels of trust in the North are higher. Second, the South contains the community area with the highest level of trust, the community area with the lowest level of trust, and the highest levels of standard deviation. These patterns, and this larger North, West, South divide could be influenced by many factors, one of them being the degree of Hardship experienced by the South and West sides of the city.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the Hardship Index is a score that denotes a series of neighborhood concerns with poverty, vacancy, trash, etc. We also saw in that chapter that Hardship was disproportionately concentrated on the South and West sides of Chicago. In Figure 17, I compare the Hardship Index and degree of trust in the local government for each of the community areas in Chicago, and there is a significant negative correlation between the amount of Hardship a neighborhood experiences and its degree of trust in the local government.

This means that neighborhoods experiencing greater hardship are less likely to trust the local government will do what’s right for the community. This makes sense given the relationship between the local government, the decisions that led to these disparities, and chronic levels of hardship on the South and West sides such as the persistence of vacant lots, closed schools, etc. This connection between hardship and lack of trust resonates with Putnam’s observation of less trust among Black and financially burdened communities (Putnam 2000). Residents, even those that were not alive during these government missteps, hold these instances close as a part of their history, and speak of the enduring impacts of these events on current levels of trust in their communities.

Conclusion

In summary, mistrust is formed through the concentration of hardship, historic wrongdoing, the lack of continuity between or poor performance of city aldermen. Trust in local government is low across the city, particularly on the South and West sides where this historic wrongdoing was concentrated and where the challenges of disinvestment and hardship persist. Even among those who already have very low expectations for or trust in local government still seem to be impacted by disappointment to the extent that it reinforces their lack of trust in the local government.

Those who have had positive experiences with their aldermen, and therefore a positive sense of trust, are still aware of the negative associations commonly held about the local government. Another closely linked experience that residents have which impacts their trust, is their experience with planners—that is, those who are explicitly working to change the physical landscape of the neighborhood, with or without the input of the residents in the area. These experiences we will turn to next.