THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

The alderman, a licensed clinical social worker, has shouldered criticism for what some constituents and opponents see as a heavy-handed approach to the ward's issues like affordable housing. For his part, he attributes much of his style to his social work background, stating often that he is a believer in outcome measurements and problem-assessments. Windy City Times discussed Cappleman's first-term achievements, and his second term goals, with him recently. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Windy City Times: How is the campaign going?

James Cappleman: In 2011, we ran it like science, and we're doing the same in 2015. Anyone running for office knows you run like you're losing, and run to win. We're on target.

WCT: What work from your first term are you most proud of, and what are some of your key goals for a second term?

James Cappleman: The thing I'm most proud of is the Wilson 'L.' Prior to my election, we'd heard all kinds of promises from CTA. I think at one time, they were working with the state—Larry McKeon was the state representative at the time. They were getting as much as $25 million to rehab it. Under my administration, I really pushed, to rehab that and make it ADA-compliant. We got $203 million to rehab it, and we're getting a Purple Line [stop]. It's that Wilson 'L' rehab that's been a catalyst for a lot of other development and really exciting things that are happening in the ward, which is dovetailing on the entertainment district.

My focus for the next term will be the entertainment district, especially the Uptown Theater. The Urban Institute did a study that said rehabbing the Uptown Theater is an important piece of creating more economic development, which creates more jobs in the community, so we're focusing on that. However, that's in the northern part of the ward. The 46th Ward is very diverse economically and ethnically, so I also have to look at what's happening on the southern end.

WCT: How do you continue sustain development without running into gentrification problems, which have been an issue in the ward?

James Cappleman: One of the first things that I did was, when I first got elected, get a sense of the housing stock, which I really didn't know. … There are 77 community areas in the city of Chicago—Uptown community area, Edgewater, Ravenswood, Englewood. If you look at over half of those community areas—39 of those community areas—and you add up all the government subsidized units in those community areas, that sum total is less than what you'd find in Uptown. Uptown has the highest number of government subsidized units than any other community area in the city, hands down.

Then there is another way that we help people with their rents, called the Chicago Low Income Trust Fund. That pays rental subsidies for people who are between zero and thirty percent of the Area Median Income. If you look at the [number] of rental subsidies that are paid—how many units—in the 46th Ward, we have more rental subsidies in the 46th Ward than the combined total of 29 other wards in the city of Chicago. By far the 46th Ward has by far the most government-subsidized units, and under my watch, I made sure that we did not lose one unit of government subsidized housing. We haven't lost any.

One of the things that's very important to me is, I wanted to make sure that residents have a say in developments that happen, especially with large developments, developments that cost $10 million or more. I created a zoning and development committee made up of 30 different organizations. We had them spread throughout the ward and we looked at the population. The more dense an area, the more representatives in that area. The less dense, the fewer. We also tried to include all the chambers, the block and neighborhood organizations. And then we chose buildings that were 100 percent affordable. We chose condominium buildings. We have one person who owns a single-family home. Three percent of the homes in the 46th Ward are single-family. But we had this huge representation, and then when a when a proposal comes to the community, first it goes to the local neighborhood organization, and the chamber, and, after they give their feedback, it goes to the 30-plus member zoning and development committee, and they vote.

WCT: How safe do you perceive the ward to be?

James Cappleman: It's an interesting question because there's the perception and the reality, and both have to be addressed. There was this whole talk about the number of police, especially in Lake View. I know that when I looked at making decisions about the number of police, through number of other facts and figures, the percentage of the city's budget for public safety—for cities across the country, it runs between 30-70 percent, pretty wide range—is 66 percent. We're on the high end for the amount that we spend on public safety. That means for the every penny we spend on public safety, there are other things we cannot spend our money on. Then I looked at the number of police per capita, so we looked at the five largest cities in the country, so we looked at the ratio of police officers per 100,000 [people]. The city of Chicago ranks number one. So we have the highest number of police per capita. The third factor was looking at crime. Is it stabilized? Is it going down? Is it going up? I looked at property crime, quality-of-life crime and violent crime. I looked to the Chicago Tribune to get the facts. The Tribune, looking at their data of all three types of crime, from 2011 to 2014, said that … in all those areas, in Lake View and Uptown, the property, quality and violent crimes decreased by at least 30 percent over a 4-year time period, except Uptown, where violent crime decreased by 39 percent. The reason why it decreased 39 percent is because I worked my butt off to really make it decrease.

We looked at the 46th Ward master plan. … That's our assessment of the ward—it's always changing. So with the 46th Ward Master Plan, on public safety, I said I would focus on problem areas, problem buildings in those problems areas and chronic offenders in those problem buildings in those problem areas. What we found was there were a very small number of people who commit the vast majority of crimes.

I've heard all kinds of things about where I stand on people living in the park and not eating. I've met with some of the social services. Right now we have Salvation Army going out there. They do a good job of providing clothing and getting people their ID so they can get benefits. … Also North Side Housing, and the Night Ministry does that same thing, and Catholic Charities does it, and Thresholds, Heartland Alliance, C4, Uptown Baptist Church, Cornerstone and Evangeline Angelican Church does that. They're all going out there and helping the same people.

My effort has been not to get rid of social services in the area. My effort was to get them to coordinate and collaborate with one another. … So, I'm asking the city to create a plan where we map out where these services are, regardless of where they're getting their funding and seeing what we can do to encourage more collaboration and coordination, and let's look at what areas of the city that their are complete gaps in services, and what we can do to address that.

WCT: What do you perceive as the most pertinent issues for the LGBT community right now?

James Cappleman: Transgender, transgender, transgender, especially youth and seniors. I still have friends who are transgender whose biggest dilemma is, where do I go to the bathroom? That's a sad state for us all. … I remember a story—I was eating lunch in St. Joseph's hospital and I was called to go to the outpatient surgery right away because a man was threatening to cut himself, and I needed to stop it. This was 1995. I went out there and I saw this person sitting in the waiting room, very quiet. This person was wearing a wig and they said this was the person. In speaking to her, she said, "I have CMV retinitis," an HIV-related disease we used to see a lot, and they wanted to do some surgery so she could get the medication for her eye. While she was doing that, the psychiatrist said, "I promise you that while you're under … we're going to castrate you."

She saw this as, "My chance to be a woman." But this was a Catholic hospital, and they cannot castrate males, and the hospital would not do it. The first thing I did was [tell the staff], "You need to refer to her as she—would you please stop using the masculine pronoun." They kept arguing with me. I said, "She is identifying herself as she. You call her she." Then we referred her to a place where she could get her reassignment surgery. I'm very proud of that, but we have so far to go.

WCT: A disproportionate number of homeless youth are LGBT. What can be done to help them?

James Cappleman: A huge disproportion, which speaks to the awful things the LGBT community goes through in the coming out process. It was awful for me coming out. It's still really bad. … Just as I'm focused on making sure that we have very clear outcome measure to get people stabilized and enabling them to live life to the fullest manner possible, I think we need to do the same thing for the LGBT community. My challenge is creating very clear outcome measures for social service agencies. … It has to be something that's very measurable.

WCT: What can the city do to stem new HIV infections and make sure that people with HIV/AIDS are properly cared for?

James Cappleman: Again, I'm focusing on outcome measures. Here's one of the things I discovered. I'm not going to name the social service agency—I'm not going to ever attack a social service agency. As a social worker, it's against my values, plus it's unethical. But there was one social service agency that was getting [Community Development Block Grant] funding for HIV testing. I spoke with the agency and asked, how many people are they testing? They gave me the numbers, and I asked, how many of those people test positive, and they gave me the percentage. It was about three percent. Okay, that's what we expect. Of those people who test positive, how many go on to get medical treatment? They said, "We don't track that."

I said, "What good is testing with no follow up, and no medical care?" It's a huge impact on [clients] emotionally. … I want to make sure there is follow-up when they do test positive, and help them to negotiate sex. And help them obtain a more positive self-image, because there's this blame culture that exists, which is crazy. But this also helps them get needed healthcare. For me, that would be a huge start.

Also, we need—in the school system—to talk more openly about how to negotiate sex. But do it in a way that's affirming for parents, who want the best for their children. … The other thing is, we need to help kids learn to identify healthy ways of relating to each other, and respectfully. I found one of the best ways to advocate for kids is to advocate for parents, in the role of being a child's provider, protector and nurturer. That's very important—you need to reinforce that relationship, no matter how dysfunctional that may be, because that's who that child looks at, as the main support in their life. As that's strengthened, that gives the child more support.

For more information, see www.citizensforcappleman.com .

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