CHICAGO—Samuel Corona’s environmental organizing career started over coffee. He was only supposed to talk with Peggy Salazar, then executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, for half an hour. Their conversation lasted three hours instead.
Corona sought out Salazar over a decade ago because he wanted to learn more about how local industry in his Chicago neighborhood was affecting his children’s health.
“I never had asthma. Their mom never had asthma. But because of our environment and our air, in the summertime the air got so thick that my kid had to take an inhaler,” Corona said.
That pollution, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development found in 2022, is part of a discriminatory pattern in which the city kept polluting industries out of predominantly white neighborhoods at the expense of predominantly Black and Latino communities. But this month the Trump administration notified the city and the organizations whose civil-rights complaint prompted the finding that it will no longer enforce the voluntary agreement the city made to address the problem.
City officials say they’re still committed to the terms of the agreement. The Southeast Environmental Task Force and the two other organizations that filed the original complaint, all signatories to the agreement, say they will hold Chicago to that promise.
“HUD declaring to the world that they’re no longer going to pay attention to it doesn’t mean the document doesn’t exist. It doesn’t undo the signatures on the page,” said Robert Weinstock, one of the attorneys for the complainants.
He contends the withdrawal notice was faulty and the city is still obligated to follow through. HUD said it was withdrawing a letter of concern from 2022, but the Biden administration had instead issued a letter of findings that outlined the results of its investigation, Weinstock said.
“All that this HUD letter from Aug. 6 does is announce that the Trump administration is not going to be an ally to environmental justice communities in Chicago,” he said. “We knew that before we received this letter and now we see that it’s been announced through, frankly, pretty sloppy work.”
HUD told the city and complainants that it will discontinue monitoring of the voluntary compliance agreement to “prioritize enforcement activities that address real concerns regarding fair housing.” The agency did not say when monitoring will end. Weinstock said he saw no coherent legal rationale to explain the decision, and neither he nor housing lawyers he spoke with had ever heard of HUD making such a move before.
“There’s nothing in HUD’s rules that allow HUD to withdraw a letter of findings,” Weinstock said.
The agency did not respond to requests for comment.
The office of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson released a statement the day after the letters were sent expressing continued commitment to the terms of the agreement.
“While the federal government retreats from its responsibility to protect vulnerable populations from environmental harms, the Johnson administration will not waver,” the statement said.
Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, federal agencies can withhold funding if they find that recipients are discriminating—a powerful tool. Indeed, despite initially resisting HUD’s 2022 findings, the city entered a voluntary compliance agreement with the agency and the complaining parties in 2023 to avoid having millions in federal funding withheld. Terms of the agreement included enhancing the city’s neighborhood-level air monitoring and passing legislation requiring the city to consider the cumulative impacts of pollution in a community when deciding whether to allow new facilities.
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Although financial pressure to stick to the agreement may be gone, public pressure isn’t.
“We don’t think this changes anything,” said Iyana Simba, city programs director with the Illinois Environmental Council, a citizens group that supports environmental policy efforts in the state.
“Even while the federal government has decided to step back yet again on environmental issues, we’ve gotten commitment from the city that they’re going to continue to work for cumulative impacts because they still have that obligation to the community.”
The cumulative impact ordinance has been publicly endorsed by 15 alderpeople on Chicago’s city council. A co-sponsor of the legislation, Alderwoman Maria Hadden, has urged the mayor to recommit to passing the bill in light of HUD’s retreat.
“It’s up to them,” said Corona, who started volunteering with the Southeast Environmental Task Force after his fateful coffee date and is now an environmental justice community organizer with Alliance of the Southeast. “If the federal government fails, who’s next? They are the next ones that are supposed to be here.”
In January, the complainants’ attorneys sent a letter to HUD pointing out the city’s lack of progress toward the agreement’s goals. Since then, the cumulative impact ordinance was introduced and the city has installed 243 of 277 planned monitors as part of a new network of air-quality sensors largely concentrated in the areas most affected by pollution.
Cheryl Johnson, executive director of People for Community Recovery, one of the signatories of the voluntary compliance agreement, said it’s nice to be working with the city instead of fighting. If more pressure is needed, though, she said advocates are ready.
“I respect that, where we at today with the current administration,” Johnson said. “But I would never get comfortable and relax with this administration when it come to my health, my community health and the public health.”
A community survey developed by the Alliance of the Southeast and partner organizations found nearly 90 percent of the more than 200 respondents across the city supported the cumulative impact ordinance.
“As a community that has a long, extensive history in organizing and support, I think that’s given me a lot of hope,” Corona said. “When I’m overwhelmed and feel like I can’t tread water no more, my neighbors are usually my flotation device.”
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