Mick Dumke, ProPublica

Chicago Housing Authority officials say the Chicago Fire will pay up to $40 million for 23 acres of prime land in a gentrifying neighborhood. But they've not disclosed details, like how they agreed to that price.

Despite being years behind on obligations to build more homes, the city’s public housing agency gets permission to sell, lease and swap its property in gentrifying neighborhoods.

More than 30,000 people wait for homes from the Chicago Housing Authority. Meanwhile, a site that’s gone undeveloped for two decades is set to become a Chicago Fire practice facility.

As Black-owned banks disappear, politicians are under increasing pressure to save them. Big deposits are a ready solution, but sometimes they burden the banks more than they help.

Despite government intervention and new owners, GN Bank fights for survival while customers worry about losing their homes.

In 1963, a Black politician named Ben Lewis was shot to death in Chicago. Clues suggest the murder was a professional hit. Decades later, it remains no accident authorities never solved the crime.

Wallace’s Catfish Corner, a fish and soul food restaurant on the West Side, was a neighborhood staple. Now the building is boarded-up and unused. Its messy history shows the challenges of rebuilding an area devastated by disinvestment.

A half-century after Chicago’s uprisings in 1968, a once-thriving retail strip in East Garfield Park still suffers from broken promises, bad policy and neglect.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has repeatedly ordered Chicago’s river bridges raised to keep people out of downtown. She said the move was to protect businesses and residents. But it is also a symbol of the city’s divisions.

Combative and, at times, dismissive, Chicago’s first-term mayor gathers power as she leads the city’s fight against the coronavirus.

Without new oversight and accountability, City Hall cannot “escape corruption, mismanagement and waste,” the city watchdog says.

In the campaign to succeed Rahm Emanuel, candidates Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle talk neighborhoods and look for votes.

While aldermen are focused on ward issues, Chicago mayors have seized control of the legislative and oversight process at City Hall.

Commissioners are set to pass a law banning the database and requiring it to be destroyed.

Many welcomed the announcement that the sheriff took the database offline. But the office has resisted calls to destroy it immediately or publicly explain other details of its plans.

Archived letters to former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley bring up familiar concerns about unrest, policing, political divisions and “propaganda.”