Mayor Brandon Johnson addresses the news media on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024. (Heather Cherone/WTTW)
Mayor Brandon Johnson vowed to spend every penny of the federal relief funds officials promised to use to strengthen the city’s tattered social safety net and provide direct aid to Chicagoans struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Johnson’s renewed promise to use the influx of cash from the federal government to repair the damage caused by the pandemic came in response to a WTTW News story that was the first to examine two years’ worth of reports from city leaders to federal officials documenting how Chicago has spent the city’s $1.9 billion share of the federal relief package known as the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA.
“I’m going to spend all that money, I can assure you of that,” Johnson said.
In all, Chicago spent just 29%, or less than $160 million, of what city officials said they would spend on a host of programs including affordable housing, mental health, violence prevention, youth job programs and help for unhoused Chicagoans through Dec. 31, according to the most recent reports filed with the U.S. Department of the Treasury as required by federal law.
Chicago’s entire budget for the federally funded programs is approximately $550 million, records show.
Johnson promised to use the funds – which must be budgeted by the end of this year and spent by the end of 2026 – in communities that need them the most.
“We’re going to make sure that the communities that have been impacted the most by gross disinvestment, that those dollars reach those communities,” Johnson said after Thursday’s City Council meeting. “We’re going to make sure that resources actually get to the neighborhoods and to the people who are most impacted by, unfortunately, the long history of disinvestment in this city.”
Johnson said he had full confidence in Budget Director Annette Guzman to spend all of the city’s share of federal COVID-19 relief funds before the deadlines set by the federal government in the most effective way possible.
The city spent an additional $1.2 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds to shore up Chicago’s pandemic-devastated budgets from 2021 through 2023, with approximately $250 million left unspent as of the end of 2023, according to the Treasury Department reports.
Guzman told WTTW News she is conducting an analysis of the program that is expected to be complete by early spring.
