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CHICAGO – The following report outlines the past two years of accomplishments under Mayor Johnson’s leadership. The accomplishments are broken down into sections: (1) Community Safety, (2) Community Schools, (3) Community Development, (4) Supporting our Young People, and (5) Fighting for Working People.   

  

1. Community Safety   

  

Crime Reduction   

Mayor Johnson has focused on building safer communities and driving down crime through the People’s Plan for Community Safety. Throughout the first two years of Mayor Johnson’s administration, shootings, homicides, and overall crime have gone down significantly.   

  

The People’s Plan for Community Safety is a community-led strategy that uses a people and placed-based approach to address historic disinvestment and work toward healing our communities. The Mayor’s Office of Community Safety worked with dozens of departments, agencies, foundations, community leaders, and other stakeholders to create nearly 20 cross-sector working teams under 9 different pillars to develop focused initiatives.   

  

Under the community environment pillar, we hosted many safe space activations in our focus block groups and surrounding areas, in partnership with Chicago Public Libraries (CPL), Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and Chicago Parks District. Under the economic opportunity and upward mobility pillar, we hosted multiple successful hiring fairs, including the 2024 Englewood Hiring Event in partnership with Chicago City Colleges (CCC), Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership (CCWP), Saint Sabina Church, and KRA Corporation, that resulted in nearly 150 on-the-spot hires.   

  

In response to a spike in robberies in late 2023, Mayor Johnson worked with Chicago Police Department (CPD) to launch the Robbery Task Force in April 2023. The Task Force brings together Chicago Police bureaus of Counterterrorism, Patrol, and Detectives to track down and apprehend robbery crews. After a year of work, the city has seen a dramatic 37% decrease in robberies and a 57% decrease in carjackings. The Task Force contributed to “historic lows” in robbery numbers, with the first three months 2025 seeing the fewest robberies of any quarter in decades.   

  

Reducing Gun Violence   

Reducing gun violence is a key piece of Mayor Johnson’s crime reduction strategy. In 2024, CPD increased the number of guns it took off the streets, recovering 12,733 guns throughout the year. As a result of Mayor Johnson’s holistic community safety strategy, Chicago hasn’t seen an April with fewer murders since 1962. The year-to-date murders are the lowest in more than a decade. Last month saw the lowest homicides of any month in a decade.   

  

To reduce street altercations from escalating, Mayor Johnson has worked with the County and the State to fund street outreach and Community Violence Intervention (CVI) groups in 2024 and 2025. To facilitate cooperation between street outreach workers and police officers, the Mayor’s Office has helped establish professional understanding agreements between CVI groups and CPD. Professional understanding agreements now exist in nine police districts. A recent study found that CVI groups helped to successfully drive down shootings by 41%.   

  

The Johnson administration is also pursuing all legal avenues to hold gun manufacturers and distributors accountable. In March of 2024, the City sued the gun manufacturer Glock for selling handguns that can easily be converted to machine-gun-style weapons. In July 2024, the City expanded that lawsuit to include Glock’s parent company and two local distributors. The City is continuing to pursue a case against a gun store in Indiana linked to hundreds of shootings in Chicago. These legal actions are part of the Johnson administration’s efforts to stem the flow of illegal weapons into Chicago through all means at our disposal.   

  

Constitutional Policing   

In the most recent report by the independent monitor, CPD made “significant strides” in compliance with the consent decree. CPD has reached some compliance with more than 90% of the consent decrees mandates. The department is now in full compliance with 16% of the consent decree, up from 9% in the previous report. This is the largest jump in compliance since CPD was put under the consent decree in 2019. This work is critical as Mayor Johnson has made constitutional policing and rebuilding trust between officers and residents foundational parts of his community safety strategy.   

  

Solving Cases  

Mayor Johnson promised to promote 200 detectives to increase the department’s ability to solve and clear cases. Through the first two years of his administration, CPD has met that goal, which has helped the department improve its clearance rate in 2023 and again in 2024. Under the Johnson administration, CPD restructured the schedules of homicide detectives across the city. Last year, CPD finished the year with the highest homicide clearance rate in a decade at 56%.   

  

Supporting Victims and Survivors  

In June of last year, Mayor Johnson expanded the Emergency Supplemental Victims’ Fund to 15 community areas to provide financial assistance to victims and survivors and their families after fatal and non-fatal shootings. To date, this expansion has provided financial assistance to more than 600 families across the city.   

  

To expand our ability to reach victims and survivors, the Mayor’s Office partnered with City Colleges of Chicago and CDPH to launch a pilot program to train Victim Advocates. The city celebrated the graduation of the first cohort in December 2024.   

  

Office of Reentry  

In December of last year, Mayor Johnson announced the launch of the Office of Reentry, led by Director Joseph Mapp. The Office of Reentry hosted its first convening, Building Bridges, Breaking Barriers: A Unified Path to Hope and Reentry. Over 300 Chicagoans attended as we highlighted the importance of collaboration and ensuring our returning residents get the support they need.  

  

Gender-Based Violence  

In response to a spike in gender-based violence incidents, the Mayor’s Office is committed to prioritizing prevention and response strategies for victims and survivors of gender-based violence. Mayor Johnson recently announced the Safe Housing Pilot Program to support survivors of gender-based violence in city housing.   

  

Mental Health Services   

As part of Mayor Johnson’s holistic community safety strategy, the administration prioritized the expansion of mental health services. By providing mental health professionals with the resources that they need, CPD officers can focus on their core mission of addressing crime and violence. Since taking office, Mayor Johnson has successfully reopened or expanded mental health services at three sites and significantly expanded mental health professionals responding to emergency calls.   

  

In May 2024, Mayor Johnson announced plans to reopen the shuttered mental health clinic in Roseland and to add mental health services at a library in West Garfield Park and a clinic in Pilsen. This was the first planned expansion of public mental health clinics in more than three decades in Chicago.   

  

In June of last year, Legler Library in West Garfield Park added mental health services. West Garfield Park has an unmet serious mental health treatment need of 72%, significantly above the citywide rate. In November of last year, Mayor Johnson added mental health services to the Pilsen South Ashland Health Hub in the Pilsen neighborhood. Finally, in January of this year, Mayor Johnson reopened the shuttered mental health clinic in Roseland on the Far South Side. The clinic offers low-barrier mental and behavioral health services regardless of insurance status to all Chicagoans.   

  

In October 2024, Mayor Johnson transitioned the Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement (CARE) team to be fully staffed by CDPH behavioral health clinicians and CDPH emergency medical technicians (EMTs) responding to 9-1-1 calls identified by dispatchers as having a mental health component. The Mayor led the expansion of the CARE program, adding additional staff and doubling the number of community areas covered by CARE. The Johnson administration also added a Citywide Special Cases team that responds to mental health crises in all Chicago communities.   

  

When the CARE team responds to an individual in crisis, they offer de-escalation, mental health assessment, referrals to community services, and transport to community-based destinations as appropriate. The CARE team conducts follow-up at one, seven, and 30 days with all individuals that they encounter. Since its inception, CARE has successfully de-escalated thousands of encounters with Chicagoans experiencing mental health crises. These encounters have resulted in the use of force in less than 0.1% of incidents.   

  

Overdose Prevention   

In 2022, there were more opioid-related overdose deaths in Chicago (1,397) than homicides and traffic crash fatalities combined. Sixty-five percent of those fatalities were among Black Chicagoans, and 78 percent were men.  

  

In the fall of 2023, Mayor Johnson leveraged a $17M CDC grant to bolster overdose prevention services across the city. Utilizing these funds, CDPH launched a telemedicine hotline for treating Opioid Use Disorder (MAR NOW) in collaboration with Illinois Department of Human Services, Department of Substance Use Prevention and Recovery, and the Public Health Vending Machine Pilot Program in five locations: Uptown Library, Garfield Community Service Center, Harold Washington Library, 95th/Dan Ryan Red Line CTA Station, and the Roseland Community Triage Center. Over 20k products have been distributed from CDPH vending machines from November 2023 to March 2025.  

  

In May of 2024, CDPH launched its Summer Strategy to Combat Opioid Overdoses, focused on community outreach, education, and connection to treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD), including same-day access to medication treatment. That summer, CDPH and the West Side Heroin/Opioid Task Force launched an intensive 10-week door-knocking campaign covering the 1,300 blocks on the West Side that experienced at least one overdose-related EMS response the previous year. Outreach workers provided information and resources to the areas most impacted by opioid overdoses. In part, as a result of this work, drug overdoses in Illinois dropped for the first time since 2018.   

  

Addressing Homelessness  

Mayor Johnson has also made addressing homelessness and housing insecurity a priority as part of his holistic approach to community safety. Through a partnership with the State of Illinois, Mayor Johnson more than doubled the number of shelter beds for unhoused residents from 3,000 to 6,800 beds. The unified shelter system, known as the One System Initiative, has allowed the City to reduce the waitlist for families seeking shelter services in Chicago from weeks to less than a day.   

  

Mayor Johnson’s “housing first” approach has helped thousands of unhoused Chicagoans secure stable housing. Mayor Johnson’s $29.5M investment in Rapid Re-Housing in FY25 provides rental assistance and supportive services for households experiencing homelessness for up to 24 months. This funding supports 1,000 individuals and families in housing at any given time and will add 360 households through Accelerated Moving Events in 2025.  

  

1. Community Schools    

  

Strong Neighborhood Schools   

Mayor Johnson has focused on improving neighborhood schools as part of his vision for transforming the school district so that every family in Chicago has a world-class public school in their neighborhood. This vision is in line with two-thirds of Chicagoans who say the City should prioritize neighborhood schools. While previous administrations had shuttered dozens of schools across the South and West Sides, Mayor Johnson has fought for additional resources for Chicago’s neighborhood schools.   

  

Under the Johnson administration, a national study found that CPS students ranked first in the country in reading recovery, following the COVID-19 pandemic. Black students’ scores grew even more than the District average. Combined with math scores, CPS ranked third in the country in post-pandemic gains.  

  

Boosting Funding for Public Education  

Since taking office, Mayor Johnson has embarked on two citywide listening tours focused on high school students, visiting 38 schools and meeting with more than 900 students to better understand their needs. In his effort to boost funding for public education, Mayor Johnson directed more than $226M in his first year and a record $300M in TIF surplus to CPS as part of last year’s budget. With additional support the City lends to CPS, the Johnson administration has invested over $1B into the school district.   

  

Teachers Contract   

Mayor Johnson spent months bringing the school district and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) together to land a historic contract that supports parents, teachers, and students. The deal was approved by both parties without the need for a strike vote for the first time in 15 years. This contract codifies a long list of transformative improvements for CPS parents, students, and educators, including:   

• Doubling the number of libraries and librarians for our schools;   

• Smaller class sizes for all grade levels, especially for kindergartners;  

• Ensuring social workers and nurses serve students in every school, every instructional day;  

• More than tripling of the number of Sustainable Community Schools, from 20 to 70;  

• Provides CTU, CPS, City, and sister agency coordination for the first time to provide housing support, Section 8 vouchers, rental assistance, and affordable units to CPS families in need;  

• Protections for academic freedom, Black history, and culturally relevant curriculum for the first time, as well as Sanctuary Schools for undocumented students, and LGBTQ+ safe schools;  

• An additional $10 million annual investment in sports programming.  

  

City Colleges of Chicago   

Mayor Johnson has worked closely with City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) Chancellor Juan Salgado to improve enrollment and programming at CCC. As a result of this focus, overall enrollment has increased from FY23 to FY25 by 14.9%. Among credit enrollment, Black male enrollment has seen the most dramatic increase at 23.1%, followed by Black women (19.3%) and Latino men (17.3%). Early college enrollment has seen an impressive increase of 32.1% as well.    

   

With the substantial growth of its nationally recognized engineering program, City Colleges launched its School of Engineering in partnership with the Grainger School of Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The City Colleges School of Engineering will offer students the chance to complete two years of an engineering degree at four additional City Colleges locations.   

   

In March of last year, Mayor Johnson and CCC announced the return of a full nursing pathway to Kennedy-King College (KKC) in Englewood, including an associate degree in nursing and a licensed practical nursing program operated by Malcolm X College at KKC, and a basic nursing assistant program and general education courses operated by Kennedy-King College. Mayor Johnson also announced an expanded partnership between University of Chicago, UChicago Medicine and City Colleges/Malcolm X College to build two new facilities in Washington Park – the UChicago Medicine Clinical Labs, owned and operated by UChicago Medicine, and the Malcolm X College South Campus, owned and operated by City Colleges which includes the first clinical lab tech program in Chicago.   

   

In November 2024, Mayor Johnson attended the groundbreaking for the expansion of Malcolm X College West Campus, which will add a 3,000 square foot multi-purpose space. The expansion will add student meeting and recreational spaces to the West Campus.  

  

1. Community Development   

  

$1.25B Housing and Economic Development Bond   

In April 2024, City Council passed Mayor Johnson’s $1.25B Housing and Economic Development bond, the largest public investment in housing and economic development in the history of Chicago. The historic investment allows the City to transition away from the over-reliance on TIF district to finance affordable housing and economic development projects. Two months after its passage, Mayor Johnson announced the first two projects to receive bond funds: the Austin Community Health Hub and a community farm in West Englewood. These projects bring jobs, development, and health services to disinvested communities. Mayor Johnson attended the groundbreaking for the Austin Community Health Hub.   

  

Mayor Johnson has leveraged HED bond funds over the past year to boost small businesses, health care services, and community development. Mayor Johnson recently announced a new round of small community development grants. A full list of grantees can be found below:   

  

Medium and Large grantees:  

• After School Matters Orleans Teen Center   

• Austin Community Health Hub   

• Carole Robertson Center   

• Growing Home Urban Farm Enterprise Expansion Project   

• Mayfair Arts Center Repair, Renovation, Expansion Phase 2   

• Sunshine Community Center   

• TCA Health's Nutrition Innovation Center   

• Ujima Hive   

• The K Entrepreneurship Hub  

• The Re-Up  

• Black Ensemble Theater  

• Blue Azul  

  

Small grantees:  

• Artists Book House   

• Belmont Tavern   

• Cherish the Moments Pediatric Therapy LLC   

• Haymarket Center   

• It Takes a Village at River City  

• Luckycat Cafe  

• POD39 Studios   

• RRM Visions LLC   

• Skylark Bar & Restaurant   

• Tacotlan Restaurant  

  

Affordable and Social Housing   

Mayor Johnson has made the construction of affordable housing a critical piece in his strategy to make Chicago more affordable for working people. As of March 2025, more than 3,940 units of affordable housing have been built, rehabilitated or preserved under the Johnson administration, with an additional 1,821 under construction and 4,622 in the pipeline over the next 18 months.   

  

In April 2024, Mayor Johnson announced plans to revitalize the LaSalle Street corridor in the Loop with mixed-income residential uses and other neighborhood-oriented amenities. As of May 2025, six adaptive reuse proposals consisting of 1,765 units of mixed-income housing have been advanced for City financial assistance and received approval from the Community Development Commission for nearly $321 million in Tax Increment Financing (TIF) support. Collectively representing more than $900 million in total investments, the projects will repurpose more than 2 million square feet of vacant space, including the creation of 538 homes that will be affordable to residents earning an average 60% of the area median income. Mayor Johnson recently attended the groundbreaking for the first office-to-residential conversion at 79 W. Monroe.    

  

Last week, City Council passed Mayor Johnson’s landmark Green Social Housing ordinance, making Chicago the first major city in the United States to implement the social housing model. Utilizing funds from Mayor Johnson’s Housing and Economic Development bond, the City will create a revolving loan fund operated by an independent non-profit to spur mixed-income housing development across the city.   

  

Cut the Tape   

In December 2023, Mayor Johnson signed Executive Order 2023-21, requiring 14 City departments to evaluate existing development processes and propose solutions to remove bottlenecks and accelerate review and approval timelines. In April 2024, Mayor Johnson released the Cut the Tape report, outlining more than 100 recommendations to streamline processes to catalyze growth in housing and business development. Three months later, Mayor Johnson announced the launch of the Cut the Tape Task Force with 50 leaders in the development community to provide expertise to the City in its efforts to cut bureaucratic red tape. On May 19th, Mayor Johnson will provide an update on a number of improvements to processes that the City has made over the past year.   

  

New Investments   

Under the leadership of Department of Planning and Development (DPD) Commissioner Ciere Boatright, major planned investments continue to pour into the city of Chicago. DPD shepherded more than $11 billion in new projects through the Plan Commission process in 2024, outpacing the total for 2022 and 2023 combined. In 2025, more than $8 billion has already been approved by the Plan Commission, representing 34,000 construction jobs and more than 10,200 housing units. Since the mayor took office, DPD’s small, medium, and large grant programs allocated more than $400 million toward more than 600 business development projects, supporting $1.7 billion in private investment across the city.    

  

Highlights of these developments include the 440-acre Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park on Chicago’s Far South Side. The IQMP will be anchored by the world’s first commercially useful quantum computer and other facilities for quantum technology and microelectronics innovation and scale-up. The campus could have an estimated $20B economic impact. The 1901 Project located in the Near West Side neighborhood will bring another $7B in private investment to the West Side. These projects align with Mayor Johnson’s commitment to driving investment, jobs, and development to the South and West Sides.   

  

Revitalizing Vacant Lots and Cracking Down on Degenerate Landowners  

Mayor Johnson leveraged HED bond funds to launch the Missing Middle pilot program, an initiative to convert vacant lots into owner-occupied housing. The program includes approximately 40 North Lawndale lots being readied for 100+ units of Missing Middle housing and an additional 54 lots available for redevelopment in Chatham, South Chicago and Morgan Park. Lots are sold to qualified housing developers in clusters, with completed homes to be made available at market rates for owner-occupants. To facilitate development, each lot is priced at $1 with up to $150,000 in construction assistance available per unit. The Johnson administration has also recently listed 400 vacant lots for sale, valued at $26M, in an effort to spur development and return vacant lots to productive use.   

  

The Department of Housing (DOH), under the leadership of Commissioner Lissette Castañeda, has also played a critical role in revitalizing vacant lots throughout the South and West Sides. Through DOH’s City Lots for Working Families (CL4WF) program, which allows developers to apply to build single-family homes to expand affordable homeownership, the Johnson administration has committed 500 lots to United Power for Action and Justice’s “Reclaiming Chicago” campaign.   

  

To address the root cause of the problem of vacant lots, the Department of Law established the Special Collections Unit (SCU) in 2024, a dedicated team of attorneys within the Law Department’s Collections, Ownership, and Administrative Litigation Division. Its mission is to combat the growing issue of vacant lot owners who neglect their properties, allowing them to become hazardous eyesores that undermine community safety and economic stability.    

   

The SCU takes an aggressive approach by securing substantial legal judgments against the companies and individuals responsible for these properties. It then enforces those judgments by seizing and liquidating both business and personal assets, including the properties themselves. Additionally, the SCU pursues legal agreements or injunctions to prohibit these owners from conducting business within the City in the future, reinforcing the message that neglectful land ownership will not be tolerated.    

   

To date, the SCU has initiated litigation against individuals and entities collectively responsible for thousands of neglected lots, seeking millions of dollars in damages. The SCU aggressively pursued and eventually took down the “worst landowner in Chicago”, securing an $11.5M  settlement and returning more than 800 properties across the South and West Sides to the market. After discovering an illegal junkyard had been operating in Englewood for more than a decade, the SCU sued the property owner and secured a court order to clear the lot. On May 6, pursuant to the court order, the City cleared the lot, bringing relief to Englewood residents.   

  

Since its creation, the SCU has successfully collected over $1.5M and secured court orders and judgments totaling more than $11M.    

  

Protecting our Environment  

Mayor Johnson has moved a strong environmental justice agenda throughout his first two years in office. Mayor Johnson’s first budget fulfilled his promise of reinstating the Department of Environment (DOE), led by Commissioner Angela Tovar to protect Chicagoans from the harms of pollution and environmental racism.   

  

Mayor Johnson recently visited the Double Black Diamond solar facility, a massive solar farm that has helped the City of Chicago become one of the largest cities in the country to transition to 100% renewable energy for City-operated buildings and facilities.   

  

On Earth Day, Mayor Johnson joined Cheryl Johnson, daughter of environmental justice pioneer Hazel Johnson, to tour the Altgeld Gardens community in an effort to highlight the Hazel Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance. Later that week, on Arbor Day, Mayor Johnson attended the ribbon-cutting for the Green Era Campus, the site of a self-sustaining anaerobic digester which has already diverted 40,000 tons of food waste.   

  

Mayor Johnson has also worked with Department of Streets and Sanitation (DSS) Bureau of Forestry to improve the tree-trimming and tree-planting systems throughout the City. The City recently celebrated the milestone of 60,000 new trees planted since 2022. Under the leadership of Department of Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Cole Stallard, DSS transitioned from a request-based system to an area trim system to ensure that every block gets its trees trimmed on a regular schedule. Under this new system, since April 2023, the City has trimmed 180,000 trees across the city, a significant increase from the previous two years.   

  

1. Supporting our Young People  

  

Youth Jobs   

Since taking office in May 2023, Mayor Johnson has made youth investment a cornerstone of his administration, pledging to create more jobs, elevate youth voices, and deepen community-based opportunities. Mayor Johnson has expanded youth summer employment for three consecutive summers. The 29,000 young people that the City anticipates hiring this summer represent a 45% increase in youth summer employment since Mayor Johnson took office.   

  

The standout accomplishments related to youth engagement in 2024 are highlighted in the City’s Youth Impact Report:   

• 106,860 youth served through the Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS)’s 18 program models;   

• 155 youth-focused “kickback” events planned by youth throughout the city through the My CHI. My Future. (MCMF) Safe Spaces program, attended by more than 16,750 Chicagoans;   

• 97% of youth employees agreed that participating in the kickbacks made them feel closer to their communities;   

• Over 2,000 year-round youth jobs created through DFSS programs like Safe Spaces and the Chicago Youth Service Corps;   

• Mayor Johnson’s Micro-Grants program distributed $600,000 to youth-serving community-based organizations;   

• My CHI. My Future. platform connected over 50,000 youth to more than 45,000 opportunities;   

• The Peacekeeper Pilot program, in collaboration with GoodKids MadCity, employed 100 youth to receive training and promote safety in their communities;   

• The DSS Laborer’s Trainee Pilot provided 70 recent CPS graduates with hands-on job training; 55 were hired full-time into union roles.   

  

1. Fighting for Working People  

  

Labor Peace   

In his first two years, Mayor Johnson has settled contracts with the Chicago Police Department, Parks District workers, and Chicago Public School educators and support staff. Mayor Johnson’s background in labor has helped settle contracts for an estimated 51,000 workers without a labor stoppage over the past two years.   

  

Transformative Legislation   

Mayor Johnson advanced policies that benefit teachers and service workers working in the city of Chicago. The Administration reached an agreement with Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union to support Chicago’s teachers by providing 12 weeks of paid parental leave, bringing them in line with other City workers.  

  

In a generational win for Chicago’s workers, Mayor Johnson championed and passed the Chicago Paid Time Off ordinance, effectively doubling the number of guaranteed paid days off for an estimated 1.2 million workers. The Chicago Paid Time Off ordinance guarantees up to five days of paid time off and five days of paid sick time for all of Chicago’s workers, making it the most progressive paid time off legislation at the municipal level in the United States. The ordinance went into effect on July 1st, 2024.  

  

In an effort to address the restaurant industry’s staffing crisis, Mayor Johnson also spearheaded the One Fair Wage ordinance to abolish the subminimum wage over the next five years, making Chicago the largest U.S. city to independently phase out the sub-minimum wage. Mayor Johnson created the city’s first “Chicago Workers’ Rights Week” to ensure that working-class Chicagoans understood their new rights under the Johnson administration.   

  

Mayor Johnson recently announced a historic investment into the early learning workforce to boost the pay for over 3,000 early childhood educators across Chicago. This investment brings early learning educators closer to parity with K-12 educators.   

  

Legal Action  

Mayor Johnson has also deployed his Department of Law to fight for working people nationally. In April 2025, the Johnson administration joined a nationwide coalition to sue the Trump administration in an effort to stop the unconstitutional firings of federal workers. On May 9, a federal judge ordered an immediate pause on the mass layoffs of federal workers. This lawsuit has been described as the “broadest effort to halt the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal government.”  

  

  

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