Systemic racism starts and ends with housing

All I could think of as I scanned the crowd of 4,000 mostly young white earnest faces on the Winnetka Village Green was that to end the shame of systemic racism on the North Shore, their next step should be to advocate that their suburbs permit affordable housing. Together, they can shape a local ethos of welcoming Black neighbors of all incomes and stop the nonsense of treating anyone who is not white or rich as “other.”

That June 6th solidarity rally was nearly 55 years to the day since another generation of north suburban Chicago residents, organized as the North Shore Summer Project and riding the crest of the mass movement for equal rights for Black Americans, held a demonstration of 10,000 people on that very spot. There, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously exhorted, “We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools.”

Open housing was indeed the focus of the civil rights movement in the North the way voting rights was in the South. If you wanted to put your finger on the most egregious manifestation of institutionalized racism, it was the unapologetic public and private real estate policies of triaging Blacks to substandard housing in isolated Chicago neighborhoods and whites to job-rich and tree-lined neighborhoods and suburbs.

Choosing open housing as the organizing goal was clear. James Bevel, a key strategist of Dr. King’s Chicago campaign, said, “Coming up here in 1965, when they were telling me you can’t live here, there, I would not stand for that. That is more of an affront to me, and a violation of me, than not eating at a lunch counter, not going to the theater, or having to go to the back of the bus, and can’t vote. You just can’t tell a man he can’t live somewhere.”

Although President Lyndon Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law days after Dr. King’s assassination in 1968, real estate professionals, lenders, and indeed local governments have continued to discriminate against Blacks. Blacks are still shown fewer homes than whites and many municipalities and developers alike still use white-only models in promotional ads, perpetuating the perception that African Americans are not welcome. This is why affirmative marketing – taking steps to not merely to post “equal opportunity” for all but to invite Black people and other underrepresented legally protected populations to move in – is essential.

Our whitest suburbs are also our most affluent suburbs. With the dramatically widened racial income gap since the 1960s, simply jacking up housing prices had the effect of keeping communities white with inflated property values without directly violating fair housing laws. Zoning that allows for only one house per acre, say, or a laissez-faire attitude favoring high-end housing or small apartments, effectively limits the housing of people of color.

In Chicago’s northern suburbs, if Evanston and Skokie are removed from the equation, the region is just one percent Black.

Racial disparities in education and health all derive from racial segregation in housing. The very issue of police brutality against Blacks that brought us to the Winnetka Green in the first place is the direct result of residential segregation, as Boston University researchers published last year in the Journal of the National Medical Association.

Today’s racial segregation in housing is so entrenched that well-meaning people of all races are unaware that reforming police departments or, for whites, changing their personal behavior, are only one part of the solution.

Right now, we have an opportunity to chip away at structural racism in the suburbs by persuading city councils to submit their new or updated affordable housing plans to the State of Illinois by the June 28th deadline under the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act.

I know because I have probably the loneliest appointed position in the State of Illinois, the “affordable housing advocate” seat on the State Housing Appeals Board that enforces the Act.

The Illinois Housing Development Authority deemed forty-six municipalities to have an insufficient supply of housing affordable for families earning no more than $60,000. All of them the Chicago suburbs. They have had eighteen months to comply. Most have not even bothered to respond to IHDA. And some have declined citing “home rule” status. But home rule itself, which also emerged within the last fifty years, has been linked to the “power to exclude.”

These communities – indeed, all communities – can take tangible steps to create housing for people at all income levels such as mandating inclusionary zoning – that is, designating at least 15 percent of new multifamily units as affordable. They could sponsor affordable developments. They could give out rental subsidies. Above all, they should affirmatively invite people of color and people of all income levels in, welcoming the fact together, long-term and new residents will create a new and better community for all.

The zip code in which we are raised should not determine our destiny. Segregation is no single person’s fault who kneeled in silent tribute to George Floyd on the Winnetka Green. But it’s every person’s responsibility to end housing systems that devalue Black people. Let us take as our imperative the inscription on the belly of a pregnant young Black protester whose photo was in the Washington Post: “My future depends on today’s change.”