Chicago’s Surge in Violence Drives Exodus of Black Middle Class

The increasing number of homicides in Chicago — this year 232 murders have been reported so far — has provoked a gradual exodus of the Black middle class families, which hashurt the city’s tax base, Chicago Urban League President Shari Runner told  PBS NewsHour.

Due to the city’s alarming increase in violence, Runner told PBS that city officials must find innovative solutions to compensate for the city’s fleeting tax base.  

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“Particularly, in terms of how is it going to make that up and how it will acquire the resources it needs as a city to provide for it’s citizens,” Runner stated.  

The surge in violence has coincided with massive budget cuts targeting the city's poorest neighborhoods, as the officials try to tackle the city's massive fiscal deficit.

The PBS investigative report found that on average more than 10,000 african americans leave the city every year. Meanwhile, the number of blacks living in the suburbs is on the rise, the Investigative report found. 

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University of Illinois at Chicago urban planning professor Janet Smith attributed gun violence to the migration, especially for families with children.

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“When we map over population loss and look at where crime is, and we look at the fact that that population loss has a lot of children, you see a relationship,” Janet Smith told PBS. 

The city has recorded at least 232 homicides since the first of the year, compared to 142 last year.

The majority of violence is centered in the city's poorest neighborhoods on the south and west sides, located in predominately African American communities, with alarmingly high unemployment rates and a shortage of economic opportunities.