May marked the halfway point of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s four-year term. In honor of the milestone, Johnson, an Austin resident, sat down with Austin Weekly News to outline what he’s accomplished so far in his neighborhood and the strides he still hopes to make – all while his local community shapes his citywide administration.
“The influence that Austin has had on my leadership has been centered around family and community as a whole. I’m going to show up for all of Chicago because that is the spirit of Austin. The strength of our neighborhood is quantified in the pride of our parts, the pride of our schools, the pride of our commercial corridors,” Johnson said. “One of the things that’s remarkable about the Austin neighborhood is its soulfulness, its profound community roots that are deeply tied to the vibrancy of Chicago.”
Johnson said perhaps one of the things that has changed the most in Austin since he became mayor – the first from the West Side in nearly a century – is community safety.
“When I ran for office, the number one concern that people had was community safety, and I took it head on,” Johnson said. He added that homicides, robberies and vehicular carjackings are down citywide.
In 2022, Chicago saw 30,988 violent crime victimizations, according to the city’s violence reduction dashboard, which accounts for fatal and non-fatal victims of shootings, robberies, car hijackings, aggravated batteries and assaults. After Johnson took office in May 2023, the number for that year was 35,146. In 2024, there were 32,649 victims of violent crime. Those numbers also decreased specifically in Austin from 2023 to 2024, from 2,298 to 2,158.
Johnson largely credits this drop in violent crime to his People’s Plan for Community Safety, which invests resources in people and places that need it most, including on blocks in Austin and West Garfield Park. The plan targets root causes of violence, like poverty and trauma, by creating career opportunities and affordable housing, plus supports people through youth outreach and community violence intervention. Since launching the plan at the end of 2023, Johnson’s administration has hosted several safe space activations and hiring fairs in West Side neighborhoods.
Another large change Johnson sees in his community is an increase in youth employment – not entirely separate from a decrease in crime.
“I believe that our attention to young people is one of the reasons why violence is going down in Chicago,” Johnson said. “As we give more opportunities to young people, like through our summer youth hiring, we’ll continue to see the strengthening of our community.”
Johnson has expanded youth employment in Chicago for the last three years. In 2024, the city hired 1,672 young people from Austin for One Summer Chicago, the program that provides jobs to young people – the largest number employed from any Chicago neighborhood. This year, Austin is on track to accomplish the same feat as nearly 1,700 young people have been employed so far. Throughout the city this year, Johnson hopes to hire for 29,000 summer employment jobs, a 45% increase since he took office.
With these efforts, Austin is changing physically too. On the day of his interview with Austin Weekly News on May 23 at Urban Essentials Cafe, Johnson came from a ribbon cutting marking the completion of the first part of Soul City Corridor – a stretch of Chicago Avenue in Austin that now has wider sidewalks, new landscaping and lighting. With two more portions of Chicago Avenue that still need construction, this celebration marked the start of infrastructure improvements that Johnson hopes will transform the street into more of a business district.
“People want more economic development. They want our major corridors to be flooded with investment,” Johnson said about something he hears often from his neighbors. “Austin is the entry point to the city of Chicago coming from the west. It’s the first and last impression, depending on which direction you’re going.”
Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development’s Small Business Improvement Fund provides up to $250,000 for storefronts and businesses. During Johnson’s administration, Austin businesses MacArthur’s Restaurant, Austin Laundromat, Chromium Industries and T&C Fitness Club each got such funds.
A large contributor to economic development on the West Side, Johnson’s $1.25 billion Housing and Economic Development bond – the largest investment in those areas in Chicago’s history – helped fund the Austin HOPE Center, which Lurie Children’s Hospital and Stone Community Development Corporation broke ground on last summer to provide clinical care to young people on Chicago’s West Side.
On Madison Street in Garfield Park, City Colleges of Chicago and state funding is financing the 3,000 square-foot expansion of Malcolm X College’s West Campus. In the same area, ground broke on the Sankofa Wellness Village last September. The K Entrepreneurship Hub, a part of the village at 4400 W. Madison St., is the economic wellness component of the village.
“Along Chicago Avenue and Madison Street, between mental health, affordable homes and economic development as a whole, we have shown up for the people of Austin,” Johnson said, adding that these are “all trending in the right direction. Investments are up and violence is down.”
But Johnson also acknowledges there’s more he can do to create a safer Austin – what he says remains one of the neighborhood’s most urgent needs. And a big part of that is creating more affordable housing in the area, plus ensuring that Austin residents can keep living in their homes.
To address the latter, Johnson said his administration is moving into the next phase of the federal resources they secured under the Biden administration to repair infrastructure that “unfortunately has been ignored, quite frankly, which caused the flooding in 2023.” He added that he is working to secure additional resources for families affected by the flooding, like funding to pay for home repairs and providing down payment assistance for homeowners.
Johnson said he and his wife wouldn’t have been able to buy their home in Austin, where they are raising their three children, without investment from government programs under the Bush and Obama administrations, which helped finance a down payment on his house.
“Investing in people is how we build a stronger Austin,” Johnson said. “If we’re putting neighborhoods and families first, you can never go wrong.”
“Austin has helped shape my world views because it’s a resilient community,” Johnson added. “The resiliency of my administration is really tied to how Austin remains resilient to protect our families, protect our businesses, protect our schools, protect our values – and taking that confidence and perspective citywide. I’m working to build the safest, most important city in America. And if we can do that in Austin, we can do that anywhere else.”
