The 2024 Bring Chicago Home referendum, a referendum which called for raising transfer taxes on properties that sell for more than $1 million in order to fund programs to help the homeless failed, thereby dealing a major setback to Progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson's agenda.
While proponents poised the tax as a means to solve homelessness, opponents cried foul, seeing the problem as an excuse to raise taxes on businessowners, landlords, and migrants who had been struggling durring and after the pandemic.
Moreover, such proposals have tended to lack popularity. Here, the New York Times highlighted how a similar proposal to fight homelessness—championed vociferously by Governor Gavin Newsom—barely passed in California
But in the end, this result was a blow to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's agenda, likely shelving one of the proposals that were central in his victorious 2023 campaign.