Voters in Chicago will consider a ballot measure Tuesday that progressive Democrats see as a solution to homelessness.

The proposal would allow the City Council to increase property tax revenue to help fund programs to get people off the streets. But the vote will be about much more than that.

The ballot measure has sparked debate about downtown’s sputtering recovery, the influx of migrants that has strained city services and political coalitions, and the wisdom of entrusting Mayor Brandon Johnson and his fellow progressives with more taxpayer money.

One topic is not disputed: homelessness is a problem in Chicago.

“Everyone in the city probably agrees: We have to do something about our housing crisis, about our homelessness,” said Farzin Parang, executive director of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago, which is leading the opposition to the proposal . The group says the new tax would deal another blow to an office real estate market still mired in a post-pandemic vacancy crisis.

The voting question is long and nuanced. If approved and implemented, it would reduce the transfer tax on properties sold for less than $1 million, but impose higher rates on homes and commercial buildings sold for more than $1 million. The additional money — supporters say it would be at least $100 million a year — would be spent on addressing homelessness, with the details of that spending to be finalized later.

Tuesday’s vote is the culmination of a longstanding goal for Chicago’s progressive movement, which over the past decade has dethroned moderate Democrats and transformed from a band of scrappy political outsiders into the City Hall establishment.

The election last year of Mr. Johnson, a former labor organizer who placed property tax change in his campaign platform, has amplified this shift.

“This is the result of organizing,” said Anthony Quezada, a county commissioner on Chicago’s Northwest Side, who supports the measure. “What happened in the city of Chicago is nothing short of a political revolution of sorts.”

But Chicago has changed in other ways since progressives first introduced higher tax rates for housing programs in 2018.

Homelessness has become more visible and larger tent camps are popping up in more places. The Downtown Loop, which was a bustling city before Covid, is still struggling with empty storefronts and rising office vacancies. And over the past 18 months, as Republican officials in Texas have sent thousands of migrants to Democratic-run cities, Chicago has been overwhelmed and the liberal coalition has crumbled.

More than 37,000 migrants have arrived in the Chicago area, and thousands of them continue to live in government-run shelters. As much as many proponents of the ballot measure have tried to focus the tax conversation on other issues, the immigrant issue has reframed the debate.

“You can’t trust that the city is going to use that money for the goals they set out to do — helping homelessness,” said Edward Boone, 69, a retired health care worker and Democrat who said he planned to vote against the tax. “Maybe they can talk about the homeless immigrants that are in town.”

Mr. Boone, who rents a home in the Hermosa neighborhood, said he worried the tax change could lead landlords to charge higher rents. He also said he was frustrated that the City Council authorized a vote on the tax issue, but not on a proposed ballot measure that would have asked voters if they wanted it. remain a ‘sanctuary city’.

Others see the tax change differently. Annelise Rittberg, 28, who recently participated in a march in support of the measure, said the stakes of the issue became clearer to her when the heat in her home near Humboldt Park, northwest of downtown, went out for a while this winter.

“That was just some inconvenience and the fact that I was in an environment that wasn’t safe,” said Ms. Rittberg, a political independent who works for a nonprofit. “And all I could think at that moment was: there are dozens of people living in the park across the street from my house, who also do not have access to a warm and safe place.”

Homelessness and housing affordability have long been challenges in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city. But these problems have manifested differently than in some fast-growing Western cities facing housing shortages. Chicago’s population, some 2.7 million residents, has been relatively stable in recent years, and some neighborhoods are littered with vacant homes.

Different ways of counting the homeless population have produced vastly different numbers. Annual city counting homeless people, conducted on a single day in early 2023, showed that approximately 6,100 people were living on the streets or in shelters. The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, a nonprofit that supports the tax change, estimated that about 68,000 people in the city were homeless in 2021, a figure that includes people “doubling up” in a unit or living temporarily with others.

But those counts were done before most migrants arrived. On Sunday, officials said nearly 11,000 of the estimated 37,000 migrants who have come to the Chicago area were still living in 23 shelters run by the city or state.

With the major parties’ presidential nominations already finalized, both sides of the tax debate have been scrambling to get their voters to the polls in what could be a low-turnout Illinois primary.

Increasing the transfer tax, also known as ‘mansion tax’, is not a new idea. Los Angeles voters approved a higher land transfer tax in 2022 to fund affordable housing and homelessness programs. A similar measure was approved by the voters in Santa Fe, NM, last year. Supporters in Chicago see the vote as an opportunity to reorder the city’s priorities.

“We simply cannot and should not live in a place where an industry can make money from housing and real estate, while there are people who have no place to stay,” said Asha Ransby-Sporn, deputy campaign director for Bring Chicago Home. , a group leading efforts to pass the tax.

But the timing couldn’t be worse, according to opponents.

Jeff Baker, the CEO of Illinois Realtors, which opposes the tax change, said the referendum’s passage would “immediately inject even more uncertainty and downward price pressure” into Chicago’s struggling office real estate market. And he said that could ultimately lead to higher property taxes and rental prices, even for people who wouldn’t pay the higher real estate transfer tax directly.

“I think in the long run,” Mr. Baker said, “you’re looking at even more housing instability and even higher costs of living in the city.”

Elk, the largest member of the deer family, are probably most associated in popular culture with the dim-witted but well-meaning cartoon character Bullwinkle.

But that light-hearted image took a darker turn last week after an Iditarod sled dog racer in Alaska made headlines for shooting and killing a moose to protect himself and his dogs, one of which was injured during the encounter. (He was also punished for poorly gutting the carcass.)

Moose attacks on humans are uncommon, but they do occur in states with large moose populations. In Alaska, for example, as many as 10 are reported each year. And in Colorado, The Colorado Sun reports this in October that at least four people were injured in elk encounters in 2023.

Rock-solid statistics on fatal moose attacks on humans are not available, but wildlife experts agree that these are exceedingly rare, as human fatalities involving moose are almost exclusively the result of vehicle accidents. (One case of a fatal moose attack in Sweden was initially ruled a homicide, according to a 2017 Journal of Forensic Sciences report.)

Rick Libbey has been taking photos and videos of moose in the wild for 45 years. He said displays of aggressive behavior toward humans are abnormal and that moose are docile, peaceful creatures about 90 percent of the time.

“The problem is the other 10 percent of the time,” he said.

So if you find yourself in one of those 1-in-10 situations, what do you do?

Read the body language.

Mr Libbey said a moose that feels threatened or is considering attacking will show telltale signs of agitation.

If a moose’s ears are up, straight and cupped, everything is fine. But if his ears sit low against the back of his head, “that’s the first sign I don’t like this,” Mr. Libbey said.

The hair on the back of the moose’s neck and shoulders may stand up and the eyeballs may bulge.

However, the clearest sign of impending trouble — in the form of an animal weighing 1,000 pounds or more charging toward you — is when a moose’s tongue sticks out and licks its mouth, he said.

In that case, Mr. Libbey said, the question is no longer whether the moose will attack. “It’s going to happen,” he said.

Lee Kantar, a state moose biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, explained that the tongue is a way for a moose to collect scent on its receptors to gauge what it is dealing with.

Be aware of elk.

For nearly a decade, Mr. Libbey has split his time in the woods between New England and Alaska, capturing images he shares on various online platforms under the name MooseMan Nature Photos.

Mr. Libbey and his wife, Libby (yes, she is Libby Libbey), post videos of huge bull elk battling for supremacyoften during the rutting or mating season, which attracts millions of views.

The bulls, or bull elk, put their heads down and lock the racks as they advance, then retreat and then charge again, the clicking and crashing of their interlocking antlers rippling through the forest like a pair of dissonant castanets echoes.

The couple gives the lumbering giants names, such as Left Hook, Swagger or Grumpy, based on physical or personality traits.

A cow, a female moose, is just as likely to attack as a bull, especially if she senses that her descendants are in danger. “Mommy goes into protection mode,” Mr. Libbey said.

Mr. Libbey said he has been “bluff-charged” a few times in his decades of documenting moose. A cow once attacked Mrs. Libbey, who said she was taking cover behind a skinny “Charlie Brown tree,” but it was big enough to work.

If you are in the woods and confronted by an aggressive moose, try to get behind a tree, rock or other obstacle. The moose mainly wants you to go away and is unlikely to go very far after you, Mr Libbey said.

Henry Jones, elk project manager with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, advised against cornering an elk. Make sure there is an exit, he said.

If you fall to the ground, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game advises: “Curl up into a ball, protect your head with your hands and keep still. Do not move or attempt to get up until the elk is a safe distance away or it may resume its attack.”

Although its antlers, ranging from three to five feet wide, can be formidable, its legs pose the greatest danger. A moose will mount like a horse and strike forward with its powerful front legs, Mr. Libbey said.

How powerful? Mr. Kantar said he has seen images of a moose stomping a snowmobile to pieces.

Keep your dogs close.

If you walk your dog in places where moose are found, keep your pet on a leash, because moose see dogs as wolves and therefore as threats.

In general, moose aren’t scared, Mr. Libbey said, but he added, “Man, a wolf is the only thing that’s going to scare them.”

By the end of winter, moose have used up their fat reserves and no longer want to expend energy wading through deep snow. While elk look for the path of least resistance by heading to beaten or groomed trails, skiers, snowmobilers and sledders have a better chance of encountering one, Kantar said.

Generally, things go haywire when someone “is stupid” and gets too close to a moose, Kantar said.

“The safest distance,” he said, “is to use binoculars.”

The president of Manhattan's New School is about to lose an extraordinary asset: a five-story townhouse in the West Village that has served for decades as the official residence of the university's head.

The school, which projected a Budget deficit of $52 million is asking for $20 million for the home in fiscal year 2024 as it tries to stabilize its finances. The sale comes as shaky student enrollments, inflation and other forces threaten smaller colleges in New York City and across the country. To stay healthy, some have tried to sell real estate to shore up their balance sheets.

The New School building, in a residential block on West 11th Street, is especially valuable. It has also become a symbol of administrative bloat and arrogance for some at the university, a historically progressive, century-old institution with about 10,000 students.

Nearly 90 percent of the New School's faculty are part-time adjunct professors, some earning only about $6,000 per course, union leaders said. Dwight A. McBride, who resigned As president of the university last summer, he earned a total of $1.4 million a year, according to the federal government tax forms.

“We can't even imagine what it would be like to live in a $20 million house,” said Annie Larson, a labor leader who is also a knitwear designer and adjunct professor at the Parsons School of Design, the largest of the several colleges of the New School. “The inequality is unbelievable.”

When news was announced at a recent faculty meeting that the house would be put on the market, those in the room erupted in applause, said Sanjay Reddy, chair of economics at the university. He independently analyzed the school's finances and welcomed the decision.

It was quite a shift from the resentment that erupted during a grueling strike by part-time teachers for better wages in 2022, which saw classes halted for three weeks, and the anger that accompanied the school's decision to dismissed 122 administrative and other staff in October 2020.

“It's mostly symbolic,” said Dr. Reddy on selling the house, 'but I think it's still very important because every million counts. As they say: a million here, a million there, and soon you'll be talking about real money.

In New York City, major, well-funded research universities such as New York University and Columbia have expanded their real estate portfolios and transformed blocks and neighborhoods. But as the number of students attending college has dropped in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and as the New School and other less wealthy institutions fight for students, more and more students have turned to real estate sales as a way to close budget deficits and encourage donations. .

A sleek new building of 34 floors rent apartment complex recently opened on a former playing field on Long Island University's Brooklyn campus, built through a university deal with a private developer. St. Francis College in Brooklyn sold its campus on Remsen Street in Brooklyn Heights for $ 160 million in 2023 and moved to new quarters in downtown Brooklyn.

And while the City University of New York still owns hundreds of buildings, it also recently decided to sell the homes of some university presidents.

Last year, CUNY sold the president's home at the College of Staten Island for $1.3 million, and in 2022 it sold a $2.3 million apartment used by the president of Medgar Evers College. It is now in the process of selling similar properties in Queens College and Lehman College.

A CUNY spokeswoman, Kathleen Lucadamo, said the sales “were driven by CUNY's decision to relinquish presidential residences as part of presidential recruitment packages.”

Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at NYU, said the steps made sense for the schools.

“Their job is to provide facilities for students to learn, not for presidents to live in,” he said. “We are well past the age of afternoon tea at the president's mansion.”

The New School for Social Research was founded in 1919 by a small group of leading American intellectuals and educators who wanted to study the social problems of the 20th century in a different way than was possible in traditional universities.

The school has since grown into several colleges, including the Parsons School of Designits most financially successful university, the Mannes Music School and the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts.

In the absence of a large endowment, the New School is heavily dependent on tuition revenue. Located in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country, it charges at the top end of U.S. schools, with an estimated total annual cost of $85,000 for a full-time student living on campus last school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Almost all students receive some form of financial aid.

To keep its classrooms filled, the New School has been less selective than some of its better-known neighbors, admitting 57 percent of those who applied for fall 2022, compared to 12 percent at NYU, the report shows. statistics. More than a third of the students in 2022 were International.

Half of the students who came to the school in 2018 did not graduate within four years, as the statistics show.

The university has also spent heavily on paying down debt, after borrowing more than $300 million to build a building new flagship building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street. The school had high hopes that it would generate significant revenue from student dormitories, but that did not go as well as planned, said Dr. Reddy.

Several students interviewed at the school said Wednesday they were frustrated with the way the university seemed to be handling its money. Despite the fancy new building and tuition of just over $50,000, students were asked to pay for things like art supplies and tickets to concerts in music criticism classes.

They said some dorms suffered from mold and other classrooms also needed work. Many sympathized with the professors who had gone on strike.

“There's an interesting priority of, you know, a lavish building rather than paying employees,” said Sawyer Strain, 20, a sophomore studying strategic design and management at Parsons.

Dr. McBride, who is now a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, was replaced this summer by an interim president, Donna Shalala, a former Clinton Cabinet official. Dr. Reddy said Ms Shalala had expressed interest in curbing costs that had not previously been considered, including the sale of the house where she lives.

As they search for a new president, the school is looking for someone with “financial acumen” and “a track record of continued fundraising success,” the school said. public vacancy. The salary range is between $750,000 and $1.1 million.

A New School spokeswoman, Amy Malsin, said the school had a plan to overcome the current problems. “We are confident in our ability to stabilize the university's finances and are taking all necessary steps to ensure that outcome,” she said.

Camille Baker reporting contributed.

It would be a difficult task for anyone making their first argument before the Supreme Court.

As an attorney representing a group of Colorado voters seeking to keep former President Donald J. Trump off the ballot, Jason Murray, 38, faced a skeptical majority in a high-stakes argument that could determine the outcome of the presidential election.

He also appeared before two of his former bosses: Justices Elena Kagan and Neil M. Gorsuch.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, he clerked for Judge Gorsuch, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, and later clerked for Judge Kagan for a year, ending in 2014.

The pair often face each other in ideologically charged cases on issues such as abortion, voting rights and affirmative action. But both Judge Kagan, a liberal nominated by President Barack Obama, and Judge Gorsuch, a Trump appointee who has helped shift the court to the right, seemed concerned about the implications of the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to expel Mr. Trump to close the primary vote. . Each of them bombarded Mr. Murray with a scathing barrage of questions.

Judge Kagan pressed the implications of allowing Colorado to ban Mr. Trump, wondering what would happen if the state at the center of the case were instead a swing state like Michigan or Wisconsin.

“Perhaps most boldly put, I think the question to ask is why should a single state decide who becomes president of the United States,” Judge Kagan said. “That seems quite special, doesn't it?”

Mr Murray responded that it was “not unusual for issues of national importance to be raised by different states.”

That answer did not seem to satisfy Judge Gorsuch, who intervened.

“Do you agree that state power here over the vote to elect federal officers should come from some constitutional authority?” Justice Gorsuch asked.

Mr Murray tried to deflect it: “Members of this court disagree on that.”

“I'm asking you,” Judge Gorsuch shot back, laughing emphatically.

The exchange lasted almost five minutes.

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., known for his questions about intrusive mortgages, pressed Murray about a situation in which a president had incited an insurrection but remained in office.

“During that interim period, would it be permissible for military commanders and other officers to disobey orders from the president in question?” Judge Alito asked.

When Mr. Murray telegraphed uncertainty, Judge Gorsuch immediately intervened.

“Why – why – why – why not? You're saying he's disqualified the moment this happens,” Judge Gorsuch said. “But if he is actually disqualified, why should anyone take his cue?”

After Mr. Murray insisted it wasn't that simple and tried to make his argument, Justice Gorsuch sounded a note of exasperation.

“Put that aside,” Justice Gorsuch demanded. He continued, “I think Judge Alito is asking a very different question, a more pointed question and a more difficult question for you, I understand that, but I think it deserves an answer.”

What followed was a sharp exchange, even by the standards of the normally sharp, rapid-fire arguments.

Mr. Murray tried to shift the hypothesis by suggesting what might happen if the president, instead of participating in an insurrection, had violated another term of office, such as being under 35 years old.

Justice interrupted him, “Please don't change the hypothetical situation, okay?”

“I'm…” Mr. Murray tried to speak.

'Please don't change the hypothesis. I know. I like doing it too, but please don't do it, okay? justice rebuked. That time the audience didn't laugh.

Many major U.S. companies — including some of the country's largest consumer brands — say they are taking steps to eliminate child labor in their domestic supply chains, amid revelations that children are working in U.S. manufacturing and food production.

As hundreds of thousands of migrant children have crossed the southern border without their parents since 2021, increasing numbers have found themselves in dangerous, illegal jobs in every state, including factories, slaughterhouses and industrial dairy farms, The New York Times said in a report. series of articles.

As they exhausted themselves, children have been crushed by construction equipment, torn into industrial machinery and fallen from rooftops.

Now McDonald's says it is requiring private inspectors to check night shifts at slaughterhouses that supply some of the meat, where children as young as 13 were cleaning heavy machinery. Ford Motor Company suppliers now must scrutinize employees' faces when they arrive at work. Costco is having more audits conducted by Spanish-speaking inspectors.

Companies rely on private auditors to check for safety and labor problems at their suppliers, but those inspectors have repeatedly failed to detect persistent child labor violations, The Times reported in December. Inspectors left factories in the afternoon, even though children are usually hired to work at night. They examined the paperwork to verify the ages, but children tend to submit false documents. And they focused on workers hired directly by factories, although children are often brought in by outside employment agencies or contractors.

Along with McDonald's and Costco, Starbucks, Whole Foods and PepsiCo are revising the types of audits they require of their suppliers. The changes include improving assessments of night shifts and services provided by external contractors, such as cleaning companies, and moving away from advance notice of audits.

“We have been actively developing our focus on the risk of migrant child labor at home,” Whole Foods said in a statement.

Spanish-speaking auditors said recruiters courted them as companies rushed to hire workers.

“Investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor and the New York Times into child labor at U.S. companies have shown that the United States is not a low-risk country for human rights for brands and retailers,” reads a recent job posting from the accounting firm Arche. Advisors. “In the US we cannot complete all the work requested.”

The company's CEO, Greg Gardner, said in an interview that his company had seen a nearly 50 percent increase in its domestic audit activity, including requests to look specifically at child labor. “We're doing a type of audit that we've never done before,” he said. “This is the biggest change I have seen in 29 years.”

After children were found working for a Ford supplier in Michigan, the automaker said it was stepping up controls and requiring thousands of manufacturers to look more carefully at workers even after they were hired. Guards will inspect employees before each shift to ensure their faces match their ID cards. “Ford has strengthened our global supplier code of conduct based on lessons learned,” said Bob Holycross, Ford's chief sustainability officer.

Suppliers also add safeguards.

The Northwest Dairy Association said it is hiring auditors to interview night shift workers at about 300 dairy farms. On some of these farms, children operated industrial milking machines in violation of labor laws and were sometimes seriously injured, The Times found. The association, a major producer, supplies milk for brands such as Nestlé, Costco's Kirkland label and Safeway's private label Lucerne through its Darigold marketing arm.

Smithfield Foods, the country's largest pork producer, said it would bring in auditors annually to audit night shifts at 41 slaughterhouses. The company also has posted signs in Spanish and other languages ​​around its factories emphasizing age requirements.

Tyson Foods said it had added unannounced sanitation audits and instructed security officers to keep an eye out for young faces. Yet some shareholders are to press for stronger action.

Perdue Farms, where a 14-year-old's arm was mutilated while working for a cleaning company at a Virginia slaughterhouse, said it has added age verification audits for contractors. After The Times reported last year that children hired by an outside employment agency were working on Cheerios and other household products at the contract manufacturer Hearthside Food Solutions, the company said it had started requiring employees to prove their age with a certificate issued by the government issued photo ID.

Packers Sanitation Services, which last year paid a $1.5 million fine from the U.S. Department of Labor for sending children to clean slaughterhouses, has gone even further. It has ordered hiring managers to reject applicants if they look too young to match the ages in their documents, even if they pass every other form of screening.

Some companies choose to hire night shift workers directly, rather than using contractors, to avoid potential violations. These include global meatpacker JBS, where high school students brought in by Packers Sanitation suffered chemical burns. This work will now be done internally, by unionized employees.

The Times' December report focused on deficiencies in audits conducted by UL Solutions, one of the nation's largest companies that monitors workplaces for labor violations as part of a so-called social audit. The company is schedule an initial public offering, with a target valuation of $5 billion. This year, UL is exploring selling its social audit business before its initial public offering, according to three people familiar with the talks. UL Solutions declined to comment.

Accountants expect that child labor will be an important point of attention for companies this year. In January, Amazon convened companies including Target, Disney and PepsiCo to discuss ways to eliminate underage workers from U.S. supply chains. Another summit, sponsored by Walmart and aimed at improving social audits, is planned for March.

The nonprofits Verité and AIM-Progress, which promote responsible labor practices, are retraining 600 U.S. suppliers and staffing agencies. The initiative is funded by 12 companies, including some that The Times reports have profited from migrant child labor: McDonald's; General mills; the snack food giant Mondelez, owner of Oreo and dozens of other products; Cheez-It's owner, Kellanova; and Unilever, the company behind Ben & Jerry's. The new guidelines direct providers to ensure that all children found to be working receive social services and are not simply dismissed.

“They should also look at what they're paying people,” says Shawn MacDonald, CEO of Verité, “and why they're having trouble finding people outside of children who are willing to take on this work.”