If you read the 312 regularly, you know the question under every story we cover is not whether the left and progressives are RIGHT about what's happening in politics, but whether we have the machine that makes sure people know about it.

What happens when someone tries to build that kind of narrative machine inside city government, where every institutional instinct says be neutral, be inoffensive, be boring?

Ugo Okere (he/him) is the Director of Public Affairs at the Chicago Department of Housing, where he's been changing how the department communicates — making videos that explain housing programs and junk fee bans, and getting people to actually watch them. Before DOH, he worked in the mayor's office and as policy director at Raise the Floor Alliance, a labor rights organization. He's been in the role since May.

An excerpt ran in this week's issue. This is the full conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.

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312: For people who don't know you — organizers, activists, people who just found out the Department of Housing exists — tell me a little about yourself.

Ugo: My name is Ugo Okere, my pronouns are he/him, and I am the Director of Public Affairs for the Chicago Department of Housing. Folks who know me in the city know that a lot of my work has been in either government or community-related work. Prior to this role, I worked in the mayor's office, and before that I was the policy director for a labor rights organization called Raise the Floor Alliance. A lot of my work has been about being in different spaces in Chicago's progressive movement, focused on labor rights and either policy or advocacy in some way. So it means a lot to be here at the Department of Housing, where my role is communicating the work and the interests of the department to the public. I've been here since May of 2026.

312: The videos you've been making since you got to DOH are some of the first videos I've seen from any Chicago city government department that feel proactive and consistent — that are actually trying to get people to understand what the Department of Housing does. Walk me through making them.

Ugo: When I started in this role, I did a scrub of everything — social media, press — to understand what our presence looked like from a communications perspective. And what I realized was that I really wanted to make sure we're able to communicate with working people in a way that is clear, accessible, understandable, and interesting.

Governments are conditioned to communicate in very neutral, inoffensive, generally nondescript language. Intrinsically that makes sense, right? You want to be received well by the broadest swath of people. But government is not inherently neutral. Governments pass and advocate for laws, and their aim, in my opinion, should be to work for working people across the city of Chicago. And it cannot do that if it cannot communicate in a language that interests, or is accessible to, the people it serves.

Communication doesn't have to be boring. It doesn't have to be sterile. In fact, I think that does a disservice to residents — because that's information they will not stop and read. If it's boring and sterile, they will not watch it, they won't learn, and they won't understand what government needs from them, but also what government can do for them. So I wanted to focus on putting out content that is engaging enough to make someone stop, watch, and care about what's in front of them. And the way you do that is by talking about things that mean something to working people.

312: How do you think about hooks, and how to stand out?

Ugo: When it comes to hooks, it's usually a moment of inspiration that hits when you're thinking about the original idea — whether that's the HomeGrown video, for the homebuyer purchase assistance program, or the Protecting Renters Ordinance.

With the renters ordinance, the first thing I thought was: the thing people are probably going to care most about is the junk fee ban. It feels like the most nakedly egregious thing renters have to deal with, and it often comes up in an unexpected way, in a really unclear way. So I was thinking — what feels like a truly terrible way to get that news, if not a random text from your landlord? "Hey, I'm gonna need this. I'm gonna need that."

So I thought: what if we had this text exchange between me and this, quote-unquote, bad landlord, who's suddenly asking me to pay all these fees — and then it shifts into the actual information you want to share. It was about taking an experience I know working people across this city have, and making it apparent in an engaging, funny way that makes someone stop and go, "wait, what is he being texted about?"

312: Let me step back: what does the Department of Housing do? What should people know about it?

Ugo: We lead with a mission of housing for all. A big part of what we do is help finance and develop affordable housing across all 50 wards, to address the housing crisis head-on by expanding the housing stock we have — and making sure that stock isn't just housing for the sake of speculation, but housing added so working people have a place to live and stay. We also preserve existing affordable housing, and the affordability of it.

Another part: we have parts of the department dedicated to the rights of renters — people who live in homes but may not own them. Under this administration and this commissioner, that's something we've focused on heavily, including using our policy team to develop an ordinance aimed at protecting renters across the city.

And fundamentally, we promote homeownership — people being able to purchase and own a home, whatever that looks like. It's 2026. We're in the middle of a housing crisis, and it's important to recognize that not every single person's life is the single-family home with a white picket fence, two parents, a kid, and a dog. Some people want to live in a cooperative. Some people want a condominium. There are all these different ways folks can experience homeownership, and what we really focus on is making sure people can find a place they can call home.

312: A lot of 312 readers have told me that they follow national politics closely, but find local politics to be kind of a black box (and I often feel the same way). Knowing all the corners of Chicago government you've worked in, what do you think people should understand about it?

Ugo: It's so important for folks to remember that government is made up of real people. Real people are in here making decisions, making political choices — people on City Council — that are going to impact your day-to-day life.

The thing about following national politics is that a lot of the time, what we see in Congress is gridlock, or change that harms working people. At the city level, you have an opportunity to make change a lot quicker than you can federally. So it's really important that people are engaged with local government — everything from your alder to your mayor — because they're the ones making decisions every single day that impact your life.

Not everybody can spend all their time on the trappings of every single committee meeting. That's not what I'm asking folks to do. But pay attention to what your elected officials and your government are doing — because sometimes it's not bad things. Sometimes it's really good things. Sometimes your government is trying to pass an ordinance that would support renters and ban junk fees. Sometimes it's trying to pass legislation that would increase your wages. Those are moments where it's important to know what your government is doing for you. And it's also important to know when your government is doing things you don't agree with — and to get involved, so they understand that enough people have banded together to say: this is the wrong thing to do, and we should not go in this direction.

312: With all that in mind — tell me about the Protecting Renters Ordinance.

Ugo: The Protecting Renters Ordinance is a five-pronged piece of legislation.

Number one, it creates a rental registry, so people have access to information about their building before they sign the lease — and so the city understands who actually owns the property, and the investors involved. For far too long, LLCs have become a more popular way to own property, which means owners get to hide behind the loose regulations of LLCs while they neglect or abuse their tenants. It's really important that we put a stop to that and hold bad landlords accountable.

Number two, it codifies and makes permanent the right-to-counsel program — eviction defense support for folks going through the eviction process. Ninety percent of landlords have access to a lawyer. Only ten percent of renters do. This piece evens that playing field, so people have defense going into a really scary and difficult situation like an eviction proceeding.

Number three, it streamlines the Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance — the premier ordinance, in existence for forty years, that regulates the relationship between landlords and tenants — and makes its language clearer. And it bans junk fees: whether it's a move-in fee, a guest fee, or some silly fee that doesn't have any actual demonstrable cost.

Number four, it creates a Bureau of Rental Housing Services — a new bureau in the Department of Housing to enforce and protect the rights of tenants, coordinate inspections, and also make sure there's a space for supporting and educating landlords on their responsibilities as building owners.

And last, it creates just cause for eviction, which exists in other parts of the country — requiring that landlords have a reason for evicting a tenant or not renewing their lease. The reality is there are 10,000 no-fault evictions in Chicago every year — evictions through no fault of the actual tenant. If you have done everything right in your lease agreement, you should still have a place to stay at the end of the day. Making someone leave, whether through eviction or a lease non-renewal, is deeply disruptive and comes at a deep cost to that person. And we're not taking anybody's property rights away — a landlord can still choose not to renew someone's lease without cause. It would just require supporting that tenant with relocation assistance.

312: People really want to be doing better communications. They know there's a model. But it's hard to get buy-in organizationally — and even with buy-in, it's hard to make time for content that's good and has an actual point of view. How have you approached that, coming into Department of Housing? How do you make space for that culture shift?

Ugo: It goes back to what I said before: governments are conditioned to communicate a certain way, but the ways government has been historically conditioned are not conducive, now, to getting information out. If the only way you're doing it is a press release, a static Instagram post, a flyer on a community billboard — you're not going to be accessible to the people you're actually trying to reach, and I think that does them a disservice.

And I'll mention other cities here — Zohran has done a really good job of communicating what government is doing for people in a way that's interesting, unique, and meaningful to the people receiving those services. It makes them understand what government does for them. For too long in this country we've tried to villainize government, tried to make the concept of government or bureaucracy an inherently bad thing — when the point of its existence is people. Working people. So we need to make the kind of communications that emboldens people, that elicits trust. And to do that, you're going to have to make some culture shifts.

It's been successful so far. Since I started in May, we're up 1,000 followers on Instagram alone. That's 1,000 more people seeing the work of the Department of Housing, who now care about the Protecting Renters Ordinance and the HomeGrown purchase assistance program and everything else we're looking forward to talking about. So: come in with a plan, an idea of what you want to see, why you want to make those changes, and how it's going to benefit not just the department but the people of the city of Chicago.

312: One thing I've really appreciated: you have landlords on camera talking about why the Protecting Renters Ordinance matters — which most people would call unlikely. And longtime DOH staff, serious policy people, saying "yeah, I'm down to be in this video." How do you think about inviting people into something that's a little different, maybe even a little risky?

Ugo: How you bring people in is indicative of how you bring them along. It's not enough to just say, "hey, I want you to be in this" — especially if it's something the department hasn't done before. There's going to be a natural inclination not to want to.

For the landlord video specifically: if you're a landlord who isn't doing anything bad to your tenants — not charging junk fees, just being a regular person — this is going to be the least burdensome thing. You put your unit up for its annual registration, and you pay nothing if you have zero to six units. Unless you're planning to evict or non-renew your tenants left and right, it's not going to be an issue for you.

There's a lot of misinformation about the ordinance. But when a landlord can actually sit down and understand how it's really going to impact them, they go: "oh, this is fine. Everyone keeps telling me I'm going to pay more, and I'm actually not. This is good for the city, it's good for renters — and it's good for me, because I have to compete with really terrible landlords who keep rents lower by creating environments that are dangerous and uninhabitable for their tenants." It wasn't that difficult to get a landlord to come out and support the ordinance, once it was actually explained. It's about bringing people along so they work alongside you.

312: Last one. What advice would you give somebody trying to reach more people about municipal government?

Ugo: Make sure you're communicating in a way people understand — and in a way that you would want to see. When you're crafting your video: would you see this and stop? There are a million pieces of content people are moving through. It's not enough to just make a video, to just make something. Like — do I think this is funny? You have to think about the psychology of how people are viewing social media, and thinking about your own experience is really important as you're crafting it.

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Watch the videos on the Department of Housing's Instagram.

This is the second conversation in 312's interview series on movement communications. The first, with Ritti Singh on building "surround sound" narrative machines from the organizing side, ran as an excerpt here — the full interview is coming to your inbox soon.

See you Thursday,

-H

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