Nov. 10, 2000

Oak Park Housing Center has perverted
its mission by excluding blacks

Commentary
By ERIC LINDEN

So now it's finally on record how perverted the Oak Park Regional
Housing Center has become: the center's "counselors" now don't even
bother to show Oak Park apartments to African Americans and other
blacks. Blacks can rent in Oak Park, but there'll be no help from the
Housing Center, as there is to whites.

Going on 30 years old, the center--in the name of "diversity"--has
strayed far away from its original mission and has delved into true
steering. That's the indication, anyway, from the Oct. 27, 2000 cover
article in the Chicago Reader about the Housing Center and its
ubiquitous founder and former executive director, Oak Parker Bobbie
Raymond.

Unfortunately titled "The Gatekeeper," the profile-and-article focuses
on Raymond and her still powerful hold on the Housing Center, which she
founded in 1972 to insure long lasting racial diversity in Oak Park. The
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition,
2000 defines "gatekeeper" this way: NOUN : 1. One that is in charge of
passage through a gate. 2. One who monitors or oversees the actions of
others.

So now the Housing Center, which this year will again get more than a
half-million in monies controlled by the village board, performs in, as
Oak Parker Ron Lawless tells the Reader, an "integration system ...
based on whether or not, we have enough blacks in Oak Park."

The Housing Center for so many years has been a free service that helps
people of all races find apartments with an eye toward improving the
racial balance in Oak Park. But now the Housing Center's Apartments West
program recommends apartments to blacks only outside Oak Park. As a
peripheral issue, there's a major debate continues to fester in the
community about the size of African American student population at a
couple of Oak Park schools.

Forces aligned with the Housing Center have been leading the charge
about so-called racial tipping points at the two schools, and I believe
they're misguided. It's not important that a school--or an entire
village--is, as they saying goes, "majority minority," it's that no
effort is made to also insure the racial integration of a predominantly
white school in the northwest corner of the village.

That's where Oak Park shows its inconsistancy--maybe even hypocrisy.
Much concern is expressed publicly and privately about the population
and attitude of African Americans in various areas: Oak Park and River
Forest High School, black columnists in the local press, sitting
together in school lunchrooms and the like, but there's little worry
with all-white school activities, the all-white makeups on local
policy-making boards and other areas. And don't villagers also have
quite the racial double standard when it comes to being outspoken on
public issues.

Instead of insulting blacks by discouraging the rental of apartments in
Oak Park, the Housing Center needs to focus on the key to its success
over the years: boosting demand for housing in the village by white
people. It's been shown over the years that white demand is needed to
insure integration: in housing, business, good schools and the rest.
Given Oak Park's expressed double standard, the steps the Housing Center
and other Oak Park agencies have taken to boost white demand have
themselves have been viewed skeptically by many black residents, but
they've been nowhere near as blatantly offensive as the Housing Center's
Apartments West tactics.

The Housing Center's moves that focused on boosting white demand have
benefited from federal court rulings that it's not racial steering, but
I wonder if the current no-blacks practice could survive legal scrutiny.
I don't believe it should.

If the Housing Center can't succeed on that original level, it ought to
be disbanded.

And before panic sets in from anyone reading. That does not mean the
presence of "resegregation" dreaded by so many in Oak Park--and which in
itself should be an arguable point. There's nothing wrong with a
majority black, stable community with good public services and schools,
but--to me anyway--it's vastly preferable to live among different races
and cultures. Given the current and sad thinking of too many whites,
stable integration still can't happen by accident.

If the Housing Center continues its offensive tactics--clearly now aimed
at limiting the number of black residents in Oak Park--there will be no
"resegregation" because blacks will continue to be discouraged from
living here.

But the center's original mission--again, boosting white demand--should
not be abandoned. And neither should the other elements of Oak Park's
vaunted "managed integration" programs. Continuation of those programs
should be enough to insure our dream of a racially mixed community.

Keeping in touch with Realtors and avoiding any hint of racial steering
should remain. Keep the equity assurance program that insures home
values, just in case. Keep offering the housing bond loan programs that
encourage property upkeep. Get enforcement of housing codes--now done by
the snazzily recently renamed Building and Property Maintenance
Department--up to speed. Keep the restrictions on for-sale signs that
encourage property turnover. Keep working with local banks and thrifts
to avoid any hint of mortgage redlining.

Those and other steps are part of managed integration in Oak Park, which
has worked and could continue to work without the Oak Park Regional
Housing Center continuing to go way too far.