"The number of entities involved in managing Oak Park's housing cause confusion but is perhaps natural due to the variation among issues and the limitations of government" (Oak Park Housing Needs Report 1993:11).

Jay Ruby
Comments welcome at ruby@acsworld.net

Note - This is a preliminary exploration of a thirty-year social experiment in which a middle-class Chicago suburb, Oak Park, attempted to create and maintain a diverse and ethnically (I will use the term "ethnic" in place of the more popular but inaccurate designation, "racial." Email me for an explanation) integrated community in the face of what most people regard as impossible odds. For the past year (June, 2000 to May, 2001) I have been conducting reflexive participant-observational ethnographic research that involves video and audio taping of interviews and the recording and observation of events relevant to the topic. I am not an innocent bystander or neutral observer. I am a native-born Oak Parker come back home to see what has become of the community after 45 years. As a first step in organizing this material, I wrote this paper while still doing fieldwork in the hopes that Oak Parkers and other interested people would point out my errors, make suggestions and, in general, continue the dialogue we have established over this year. Please understand you are reading a very tentative presentation without substantial conclusions. It is unpolished, blunt and, I assume, offensive to some sensibilities. I mean to be provocative but not offensive. I am circulating this to a limited number of people and would not like to have it in general distribution until it is much more polished. Please do not quote, cite, or attribute without written permission.

A Description of Oak Park for Non-Oak Parkers
(Natives can skip to the next section)

Oak Park is a small Chicago suburb (around 50,000 people living in 4.5 square miles), founded in the 1850s (see appendix 1 for more details). The majority of its housing stock was built prior to World War II, which means its appeal is mainly to people who wish to live in older expensive houses (the median house value is over $200,000). One of the most affluent of the Cook County suburbs with a highly educated population (median family income is over $82,000 with around 50 percent of the population employed in managerial and professional jobs), it is about 9 miles from the Loop. Its eastern border is the Chicago community of Austin - an almost all-black area of high crime, low employment and poorly maintained housing stock - a constant reminder of how close the "other" world is (There have been some recent attempts to turn the "Austin Village " area around but 2000 census figures indicate that Austin will soon be 100% black).

Fodor depicts Oak Park as "...a living museum of American architectural trends and philosophies. It has the world's largest collection of buildings from the Prairie School, an architectural style created by resident Frank Lloyd Wright..." In addition to Wright, a number of famous people were born or lived in the Village ­ novelist Ernest Hemingway, dancer Doris Humphery and the founder of McDonalds, Ray Kroc. In the 1970s when Oak Park was beginning to "change," sociologist Carole Goodwin described it as " a well-established, affluent, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant community remained remarkably durable despite some contrary demographic trends.What is important here is that the image of community held by Oak Parkers and promoted through the local media rested far more on such things as its expensive homes, architectural landmarks, quality stores, favorite sons, and a few affluent citizens than it did on any average measures or objective criteria of housing and population characteristics" (Goodwin 1979:34-35).

Designed as promotion, the 1995 Executive Summary of Oak Park authored by the Village board is a concise description of the community that emphasizes the social experiment that is the focus of my study.

Oak Park is primarily a residential community, with equal numbers of single family homes and multi-unit buildings.The Village is surrounded by one predominantly black neighborhood and five predominantly white neighborhoods, several of which have strongly resisted racial integration. Oak Park, on the other hand, has firmly embraced racial diversity in its community.

As a first step towards achieving diversity, Oak Park passed an Open Housing Ordinance in 1968. Soon after, the Village of Oak Park Community Relations Department was created to enforce the Open Housing Ordinance and to promote racial diversity.The Village government formalized its commitment to racial integration when in 1973 it adopted a policy of maintaining diversity in Oak Park.

As the Village government worked to implement this policy, it developed a number of new programs. The Community Relations Department administers the Diversity Counseling and Affirmative Marketing programs where staff counsel prospective residents, encouraging them to make non-traditional choices in housing. Oak Park was the first community in the nation to adopt an Equity Assurance program which guarantees the resale value of single-family homes in the Village.

Diversity Assurance is another unique program in the Village where owners and managers of multi-unit buildings are provided with strategies and incentives to keep their buildings well maintained and racially integrated. The Village also has a First-Time Homebuyers Assistance Program where moderate income families can receive no-interest loans for the purchase of their first home.

While the Village government has been a leader in developing programs to promote racial diversity in the area, several independent organizations in Oak Park are also working towards this goal. The Oak Park Regional Housing Center encourages homeseekers to make pro-integrative moves. It also fights discrimination against minority homeseekers, opening .new housing opportunities in previously segregated areas.

The Oak Park Development Corporation works in cooperation with the Village government to foster economic development through a number of financial incentive programs. The Village is also home to the Oak Park Housing Authority which administers the Federal Section 8 program....

Clearly, the above descriptions show that Oak Park is a community which celebrates diversity. Perhaps this point is most eloquently stated in the Village of Oak Park's Diversity Statement which reads- -The people of Oak Park have chosen this community, not so much as a place to live, but as a way of life. A key ingredient in the quality of this life is the diversity of these same people: a broad representation of various occupations, professions, lifestyles, age and income levels, a stimulating mixture of racial, religious and ethnic groups. Such diversity is Oak Park's strength.

A Social Experiment in Diversity

As this description indicates, over a thirty year period, Oak Park developed, a complex of ordinances, practices, departments, programs as well as private non-profit agencies designed to maintain a particular vision of diversity in which different ethnic groups are dispersed throughout the community (see Appendix 2 for a timeline of events). In doing so they distinguished themselves from other "integrated" communities like Evanston, IL, or Shaker Heights, Ohio, where the black population is more concentrated in one area. While there is a general effort to welcome all ethnicities, sexual orientations, people of varying economic statuses and religions as well those with handicaps, the major concern has been the ability of whites and Blacks to live together in an integrated community (for the sake of brevity, I will employ the terms "white" and "black" and acknowledge that some people would prefer other terms). Some Oak Parkers have criticized this emphasis on black/white relations and suggest that the community is so diverse today with dozens of different ethnic groups represented that to only discuss black/white issues is out of touch with contemporary realities. The national picture suggests it is an emphasis required by the world we live in. In their thoroughly depressing book, American Apartheid, Massey and Denton argue that "...black segregation is not comparable to the limited and transient segregation experienced by other racial and ethnic groups, now or in the past. No group in the history of the United States has ever experienced the sustained high level of residential segregation that has been imposed on blacks in large American cities for the past fifty years" (1993:2).

The goal, as defined by the Village government, has been for Oak Park to strive to have a population that comes close to reflecting the general population of the greater Chicago area in terms of the number of black and white citizens. Moreover, the intention was so strive to have the Village geographically diverse, that is, to avoid creating neighborhoods that are predominately or exclusively one ethnic group. As of the 2000 census 81 percent of the blocks in Oak Park have at least one black family. It is an achievement that few communities have realized. It has been an expensive and a complicated decision. The position I take in this paper is that the entire program has become so complicated that few Oak Parkers fully understand it. Consequently it is very difficult to have an informed opinion. As some of these policies and programs are approaching 30 years of practice, a through re-examination of them seems in order but is hampered by their interlocking complexity. The result is that some criticism I have heard this year is based upon a less than adequate knowledge of the situation or on an ideological position that does not require specific knowledge of any program. Some people are opposed to all forms of managed integration. The purpose of this paper is to partially unpack the complex package to better understand how Oak Park tries to maintain its policies of integration and diversity. The conclusion I draw at this point in time is that there is a profound irony to be observed. As Oak Park succeeds in these efforts, the truly difficult questions about how black and white Americans can live together emerge. The more they succeed, the more problems surface.

As these issues deserve a book-length treatment, I must limit my purview. I will therefore not discuss issues relating to the housing of the elderly, the disabled or the homeless. The question of crime in a community is also an important one that influences people's decision about moving to or staying in a place, but I cannot pursue this aspect of Village life. The perception of what constitutes a "high crime area" is, of course relative to a person's experience and figures greatly in discussions of community safety.

In addition, the role of the school, a fundamentally important variable, will be ignored. For a long time, Oak Park's schools have been regarded as one of its most attractive features. Some are now questioning that assumption. A Commitment to Diversity Task Force was formed last summer (2000) as a result of growing concern about the potential impact the distribution of black and white students might have on the quality of education and the perceived desirability of neighborhoods with a high number of low-performance students. Unfortunately those elementary schools with the largest black populations tend also to have the lowest scores and five of the eight schools are located on the east side of the Village where the majority of the black population resides. Scholars like Saltzman (1990) have suggested that the quality of the schools is the "killer variable" in maintaining an integrated community. Therefore the question that must be asked is - will white residents with children in those "problem" schools move elsewhere and will potential home buyers avoid those school districts with lowest test scores? If they do, Oak Park could experience considerable resegregation. Fortunately for me, my colleague Evan McKenzie, a political scientist from the University of Illinois, Chicago, is currently conducting research into these issues and I will be able to rely on his findings.

The Nation - The Larger Context

"The most significant hindrance to further improvement of race relations in the United States remains the tendency of the races to live separate lives in separate neighborhoods. Whites have accepted African American advancement toward equal citizenship rights as long as they don't move next door" (Meyer 2000:vii).

Oak Park is not an island. It exists within the larger contexts of the nation and the greater-Chicago area. The patterns of housing preferences and the ability of people to live where they want to has a profound effect on what Oak Park can and cannot do when it comes to maintaining a diverse community. New comers arrive daily with their experiences from elsewhere that preconditions what they assume will happen to them in Oak Park. People who have lived in Oak Park for a long time naturally develop the myopia that comes from a lack of experience of living elsewhere and begin to think the rest of the nation is like Oak Park and that perhaps the battle for integration has been won or that it is not worth fighting for anymore as the "costs" for blacks is too high. Some fail to understand how unusual Oak Park really is and how rare its accomplishments are. As a recent survey of successful, stable, racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods suggests "such neighborhoods are, by far, the exception rather than the rule" (Nyden et al 1998:1).

The ugly reality is that most people in the U.S. live in segregated communities. Often our first encounter with someone of a different color is in college or when we go to work. Residential ethnic diversity is such an uncommon experience that a "diversity" industry has developed to train people in businesses to deal successfully with people different from themselves. While work and school are increasingly heterogeneous, most of us return home to a place where most people look like us. While there have been many attempts to produce stable and diverse places, Saul Alinsky's cynical but accurate notion that integration is the period between the time when the first black moved in and the last white moved out is all too true. The consequence is that many newcomers arrive in Oak Park with little experience and perhaps many unrealistic expectations.

Let me talk about one of them that has hampered public debate in Oak Park. Since the 1870s the percentage of blacks in the U.S. has hovered around 12 percent. The 2000 census states that again the black population is about 12.5 percent. The white population has gone down from a high of almost 90 percent to 67+ percent in 2000. The biggest increase is in the "other" category, from almost none in 1970 to over 13 percent in 2000. The Hispanic and Asian explosion will undoubtly cause the percentage of whites to continue to decrease but will have little impact on the percentage of blacks. In the 2000 census the category "mixed race" has been added. In Oak Park, the 2000 census reveals a white population of 67 percent, blacks at 22.2 percent and others at 10.6 percent. While the country as a whole is rapidly changing so that the possibility of a white minority becomes increasingly probable, there is no evidence of a rapid increase in the non-white population of Oak Park. In spite of the public statements of some local politicians and others, Oak Park will remain a community in which the whites are in the majority for a long time.

These percentages are important when it comes to understanding the notion of what constitutes a racially balanced or stably integrated community. The evidence suggests that whites and blacks have very different ideas. "...studies support the notion that Blacks prefer to live in integrated neighborhoods. In a recent study of the four major metropolitan areas, 57 percent of African-American respondents preferred living in a neighborhood that was 50 percent white and 50 percent black with only 16 percent preferring an otherwise comparable all-black neighborhood" (Immergluck 1999:6). The study was Farley et al 1997. This notion of an integrated community consisting of equal parts of black and white residents has been around for several decades. "To most blacks, an integrated community is approximately 50 percent black, but most whites consider a community to be integrated if there are merely a few black residents" (Harvard Law Review 1980:943). While the preference remains, no community has achieved this balance. There are almost no majority-minority communities that are stable. If blacks in Oak Park share this preference and whites do not, then such a difference in expectations can be a cause of some conflict.

I have noticed a tendency among some blacks in Oak Park to overestimate the size of the black population in the U.S. For example, a black woman prominent in the Village once stated in a public meeting that blacks constituted 25 percent of the general population - an estimate almost double the actual figure. Others have reported similar overestimates as common. Perhaps it is a consequence of the fact that many blacks live in all black communities. As some have limited contact with the white world, they logically assume the nation contains more blacks than it does.

Viewed from a national perspective, it appears that those blacks who seek to be half of the population in a community do not critically evaluate that among other things, even if it were possible to achieve this goal in a number of different places, it would concentrate 12 percent of the nation's population in a relatively small number of communities, and leave many others all white. In Oak Park, the dialogue about how the community is to be integrated is hampered by the lack of consensus about what percentage of what group should be the Village's goal and how that should be accomplished.

It may also be that the desire for parity is partially founded on the desire for political power. There is a political consequence to segregation that some do not regard as negative. In all-black communities the residents sometimes have significant political power, that is, they lose their minority status. In a community like Oak Park where blacks remain in the minority, their chances of the same kind of political autonomy is limited.

Viewed from a national perspective, Oak Park is an anomaly. Newcomers arrive with little experience living in an integrated community. Long-term residents interested in discovering other communities striving to realize the goals Oak Park has set for itself are surprised to discover other communities are looking to Oak Park as the model. To slightly overstate the situation, Oak Park is an island of integration in a sea of segregation. As such, the demand for housing in Oak Park among those people denied desirable places to live elsewhere is overpowering and impossible to satisfy.

The problem of understanding Oak Park's experiments within the larger context of our nation is made problematic because "Most Americans vaguely realize that urban America is still a residentially segregated society, but few appreciate the depth of black segregation or the degree to which it is maintained by ongoing institutional arrangements and contemporary individual actions. They view segregation as an unfortunate holdover from a racist past, one that is fading progressively over time. If racial residential segregation persists, they reason, it is only because civil rights laws passed during the 1960s have not had enough time to work or because many blacks still prefer to live in black neighborhoods. The residential segregation of blacks is viewed charitably as a 'natural' outcome of impersonal social and economic forces, the same forces that produced Italian and Polish neighborhoods in the past and that yield Mexican and Korean areas today....Residential segregation is not a neutral fact; it systematically undermines the social and economic well-being of blacks in the United States. Because of racial segregation, a significant share of black America is condemned to experience a social environment where poverty and joblessness are the norm, where a majority of children are born out of wedlock, where most families are on welfare, where educational failure prevails, and where social and physical deterioration abound. Through prolonged exposure to such an environment, black chances for social and economic success are drastically reduced" (Massey and Denton 1993:1-2).

As an example of the possibility of viewing the glass as half empty or half full, Ingrid Ellen suggests that because "nearly one-fifth of all neighborhoods in the United States were racially mixed in 1990 and 15 percent of all non-Hispanic Whites and roughly one-third of blacks lived in such communities" (2001:1) that one should be optimistic about the chances for an integrated nation. On the other hand, Massey and Denton (1993) remind us that four-fifths of all communities are segregated with 85 percent of all whites and 66 percent of all blacks living in segregated places.

Discrimination, steering, and other forms of prejudice are the all too common experience of most blacks. "A 1991 Housing Discrimination Study reported that when houses are shown or recommended to black and Hispanic homebuyers, the probability of steering by realtors in 21 percent" (cited in Settles 1996 and based upon Turner et al 1991). Blacks often have few experiences living with whites. "The housing experiences of most African Americans have change little since the beginning of integration. From the 'black ghetto' to the 'black suburb,' residential segregation largely defines the housing market despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968" (Brooks 1996:47).

There are several consequences to this thoroughly depressing national picture of the failure of the civil rights movement to integrate housing in our communities and the implication of an even worse picture of social integration - that is, a mingling of people of different ethnicities outside of work and school. People come to Oak Park with little experience of living in a heterogeneous community and they often come with unrealistic expectations. In addition, as Oak Park is one of the few middle-class places in the Chicago area where blacks, who are middle-class or who aspire to be middle-class, can expect to be welcomed, the demand for housing by whites is often in excess of what is available, assuming of course that the community wishes to remain integrated.

The Chicago Area

Chicago has been called the most segregated city in the U.S. It has seen a century of block-by-block resegregation in which blacks replaced whites sometimes at an alarming rate. In 1917 The Chicago Board of Realtors decreed that a realtor could not sell a house to a black unless there was a black homeowner in the adjoining block. It established a pattern that continued unabated into the 1970s. "In the 1950s, an estimated 74,500 units, or three and a half blocks per week, changed hands from white to Black (in Chicago)." Rubinowitz and Rosenbaum 2000:22). Little has changed in the 80+ years since. A recent study of fair housing in the Chicago area suggests that "...while African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians are more widely distributed across the region, these groups are also becoming more concentrated. In 1980, there were only nine (of 172) municipalities in the region whose percentage of Blacks was similar to the percentage we predicted given the economic profile of these communities. By 1990, only four of these nine municipalities still enjoyed a percentage of African-American close to what we predicted" (Leachman et al 1998 executive summary).

As Robert Fishman points out, some of the pressure for change in the ethnic composition of communities is the result of a relatively recent change. "The more than four million African Americans who migrated from the rural South to northern industrial cities from World War II through the 1960s encountered an urban world already defined by the 'color line' and 'the job ceiling'....These and other forms of racism meant that a significant portion of the black migrants were unable to take the route of assimilation into the suburban middle class that earlier immigrants had followed. They were instead trapped in inner cities characterized by what social scientists call 'hypersegregation': virtually total exclusion from white urban and suburban America, combined with concentration of poverty, crime, and other indices of social disorganization" (1999).

It was the movement west from the Loop toward Oak Park that is of greatest concern to us. "During the 1960s the front of the ghetto expansion in Chicago traveled westward at the rate of about two block per year..." (Goodwin 1979:fn. 4). As the neighborhood changed and disinvestment followed, the community suffered. "...in Chicago's West Side ghetto, which lost 75 percent of its business establishments between 1960 and 1970. Similarly, a North Lawndale neighborhood decayed to the point where it now contains 48 state Lottery agents, 50 currency exchanges, and 99 licensed bars and liquor stores but only one bank and one supermarket for a population of 50,000 residents" (Brooks 1996:53 - quoting from Massey and Denton 1993:134-5, 137). Many people assumed that this block-by-block movement would continue and transform Oak Park into a black ghetto. It did not.

The riots sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King in April of 1968 produced permanent changes in the already troubled West Side. Both the character of the West Side and the disastrous impact of the riots must have been strong motivations for Oak Parkers to try to "stem the tide." They could see the fires along Madison Street. The destruction was not far away. Cohen and Taylor describe this situation as well as the character of the west side. It provides some context of the development of a fair housing movement in Oak Park that started in the mid-sixties and rapidly escalated after the riots.

"One of the most notable aspects of the riots was that they were concentrated on the West Side. The West Side was the newer of Chicago's two ghettos, comprised of neighborhoods that had been white not long ago. Compared to the South Side, it had fewer community organizations, less- established churches, and fewer black-run businesses and institutions. Its residents were also different from blacks on the South Side. More of them had personally made the Great Migration from the rural South. They were more likely to be poor and undereducated, to have loose ties to the city, and to still be experiencing the disappointment of the gap between what they expected when they moved north to Chicago and what they found there. Another large group of West Side residents were uprooted migrants from closer by. West Side neighborhoods were home to many blacks forcibly displaced by Daley's urban-renewal programs - a Chicago Urban League report called them 'dumping grounds for relocated families.' In a 1958 series on urban renewal the Chicago Daily News compared 'Chicago's DPs'- for the most part poor blacks pushed out by urban renewal - to European 'displaced persons' uprooted by world war. Chicago's DPs were 'made homeless not by war or communism or disaster but by wreckers,' the Daily News reported, and were 'refugees of the relocation that inevitably accompanies redevelopment. They are people, angry, indifferent, resentful, resigned.' It was the kind of alienation, the Chicago Urban League's report concluded, that made an area a likely site for Civil unrest" (Cohen and Taylor 2000:456-7).

As I will describe below, the campaign to convince black Chicagoans that Oak Park was a welcoming place succeeded by the early 1970s. It was a time when the block-by-block resegregation movement has reached Oak Park. Many blacks able to afford to move Oak Park did so as renters of the apartments that then constituted 50 percent of the housing units (even today more than 75 percent of the blacks living in Oak Park are renters.). As the apartment buildings are clustered in the eastern part of the Village, particularly along Austin Blvd - the border between Chicago and Oak Park - the possibility of resegregation remained. Not as a result of the tactics of slum landlords or steering or the other negative forces normally at work when a community begins to resegregate but rather as a result of a campaign waged in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the Oak Park/River Forest Citizens Committee for Human Rights that took pains to promote Oak Park as an open community (Brooke 1996).

Many white Chicago neighborhoods and most white suburbs surrounding Chicago did not overtly welcome blacks in the 1970s. Some still don't. Some were and are notoriously hostile, like Cicero. Consequently the demand for rental housing in Oak Park by blacks was in excess of those who could be accommodated by the Village without suffering resegregation. This has remained a problem for thirty years. The term "excessive black demand" is often misunderstood and regarded as a hostile and negative concept when it simply reflects the grim reality that housing choices are severely limited for blacks in the greater Chicago area. While the situation has changed since the passage of the Federal Fair Housing act in 1968, the perception of many blacks living in Chicago is that most suburbs are not welcoming even though that perception is no longer accurate, according to Jim Shannon of the Nearwest Suburban Housing Center in Westchester (personal communication, 2001).

While there are no studies of the rental occupancy patterns of where blacks live the Chicago area, there is a study of home-owning that suggests a continuation of an old pattern of limited choices. "The bulk of communities in the metro (Chicago) area continue to see few African-American home buyers....Many neighborhoods that have exhibited integrated home buying patterns are experiencing shifts to substantially higher levels of African-American buying....The increase in African-American home buying is being concentrated in a relatively small number of census tracts....African-American home buying is disproportionally concentrated on the city's far west side, far south side, a cluster of western Cook County suburbs (emphasis added) and in parts of southern Cook county, east of I-57. In 1990-1 neighborhoods with 75 percent African-American buyers were located almost entirely in the city of Chicago. By 1995-6 many neighborhoods in southern Cook county suburbs reached the 75 percent mark" (Immergluck 1999:ii). The author predicted that "...discrimination in the housing market may funnel the increase in African-American home buyers into all-African-American and soon-to-be all-African-American neighborhoods and may threaten the stability of integrated neighborhoods" (Immergluck 1999:2).

I assume a similar pattern can be found for the rental market. If you add the increasing number of blacks being displaced by the systematic destruction of over 17,000 units of public housing in Chicago, the demand for apartments in places like Oak Park will only increase at a time when the loss of available apartments through condoization - particularly the larger units - is on the increase. According to Lauren Allen in Changing the Paradigm: A Call for New Approaches to Public Housing in the Chicago Metropolitan Region (Metropolitan Planning Council, October 1996) "In the six county Chicago area, there were nearly two renters for every affordable unit in 1990." In many peoples' minds Oak Park is one of the few reasonably priced safe communities with a decent school system where blacks are welcome.

It is literally impossible for the Village to accommodate all those who wish to live there if the community wishes to avoid resegregation. One consequence of the "excessive black demand" is the misperception by the critics of "managed integration" that places like the Housing Center are "steering" blacks out of Oak Park with their program of affirmative marketing of other suburbs to blacks. It is the grim realities of the marketplace that "steers" marginally incomed people away - those with HUD Section 8 vouchers and those with large families. The sad truth is that "although Chicago's fair housing groups have pushed private fair housing enforcement to the legal limits, they have produced essentially no change in the degree of racial segregation within that urban area" (Massey and Denton 1993:225).

Given the national and the Chicago area contexts, I now wish to critically explore some of the ways in which Oak Park devised to try to stem the tide of resegregation it was facing in the 1970s and still faces today. I will begin with a brief historical overview of how Oak Park dealt with single-family housing and then discuss on the rental units.

Integrating the Real Estate Market and Maintaining Diversity in Home Ownership in Oak Park

In the 1960s there were a number of complex and seemingly contradictory forces at work that had the potential to profoundly alter the character of Oak Park. They were a response to the apparently inevitable resegregation of the West side of Chicago and, as logic would have it, of Oak Park. Most local realtors in Oak Park who had been doing business in the community for some time and who were local residents, continued to follow the wisdom and practice of the National Board of Realtors and refused to show properties to blacks even those who were, on paper, qualified home buyers. They did so in the belief that selling homes to blacks in a previously all-white community would destroy the community as whites would flee and Oak Park would become all black in a short period of time. At the same time there were those realtors, mainly from outside Oak Park, who hoped that the community would begin the process of resegregation, like it had in Austin, so they could repeat the profitable transactions they realized on the west side of Chicago. These realtors hoped to scare white home owners to sell in a panic caused by the possibility of blacks moving in. They attempted to buy homes at a reduced rate and quickly sell them to blacks at inflated prices. They would flood neighborhoods with phone calls, mailers, in-person visits. Sometimes they would even hire black couples to visit a home with for-sale signs. This was a pattern successfully repeated in many places in the U.S., including Chicago. Realtors made fortunes and neighborhoods and communities were devastated. At the same time, the apartment buildings which were mainly located on the eastern side of the Village near Chicago began to resegregate. Those along Austin Blvd. - the border between Chicago and Oak Park - were the first to change. In short, Oak Park was beginning to look like a place where rapid and destructive change was about to occur.

Before I outline the historic and unusual response to this situation, I think it is useful to remind readers of the historical role the real estate industry, along with redlining mortgage companies, has had in ensuring that the U.S. remained as segregated as possible for as long as possible. "Beginning in 1913, the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) instructed its members not to contribute to residential race mixing. It adopted racial criteria for appraising property in the 1920s. A textbook on real estate practice published in 1923 instructed prospective brokers that it was a matter of common observation that the purchase of property by certain racial types is very likely to diminish the value of other property in the section. The Appraisal journal, published by the American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers, echoed these sentiments. In a 1938 article, the appraisers advised, ratings of location will be impaired where protection from adverse influences is inadequate to the extent that it is likely that lower racial and social groups will be attracted to the area. They continued: If the present and prospective market is tolerant of such conditions, [then] their effect is of little importance, but where the presence of nuisance tends to accelerate the rate of transition to lower racial or social occupancy, proper recognition of these conditions is obligatory. Even as late as 1957, a NAREB teaching manual counseled against introducing undesirable influences onto a block. Included among the undesirable influences cited were bootleggers, gangsters, or a colored man of means who was giving his children a college education and thought they were entitled to live among whites.....The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), for example, agreed that an African American invasion caused property values to fall and led to racial conflict. The agency actively upheld deed restrictions against African Americans. It furnished a model race-restrictive cause in its guidelines for builders and subdivision contractors from 1935 to 1937 and insisted that such provision be utilized" (Meyer 2000: 16).

Oak Park realtors were no better or worse than the industry as whole. Today after much turmoil, Oak Park realtors are active participants in the Village's diversity programs and on a regular basis provide diversity training for all new realtors. Ironically, the realtor who currently provides diversity training for other agents comes from an agency that led the fight against what they regarded as "forced housing."

Two incidents set the stage for Oak Park's formal response to the civil rights movement. In 1950 an African-American research chemist, Percy Julian, purchased a home in north Oak Park. Julian's family had been living in Maywood but were members of the First Congregationalist Church in Oak Park. In late November 1950, prior to the Julians moving in, someone firebombed their house. It was attempted a second time the following year. While some Oak Parkers were morally outraged and wrote letters to the local newspaper, the effort to make the Julians feel welcome was not community-wide. The family persevered and eventually Julian became known as one of Oak Park's most illustrious citizens, with a middle school named after him. The arsonists were never caught but the embarrassment of this public prejudice had a profound impact on many Oak Parkers. It made some realize that the world around them was changing. This was, by and large, a personal, moral and religious response to a particular situation. Few Oak Parkers involved in civil rights had political motivations or were interested in exploring the more profound societal issues that could be seen as causal.

A few years later some Oak Parkers began to meet to discuss how they could respond to and correct the segregation that had characterized the Village since its inception (Virginia Cassin and Lee Brooke, personal communication, 2001). In an informal manner they started to see if they could locate blacks living in Chicago who wanted to move to Oak Park and then, in turn, find homes for them to purchase or apartments to rent. The attempt to deliberately and constructively integrate Oak Park began. A decade after the Julian bombing, another manifestation of racism became the precipitant for an organized civil rights movement. In February, 1963, Carol Anderson, a black violinist, was fired by Marie Palmer, the chairman of the board of the Oak Park Symphony, when Anderson appeared for her first rehearsal. According to a statement Palmer made to the Chicago Daily News -"Nothing is integrated in Oak Park as yet." The conductor, Milton Preves, and 25 of the 83 musicians resigned. Leading Oak Parkers wrote letters of outrage to Chicago and Oak Park newspapers (On February 10, 1963, one letter of protest was signed by 32 residents). The Village board adopted a "statement of concern." (additional information about this incident can be found in a Wednesday Journal, January 17, 2001, article by Ken Trainor).

In less than a year (April 16, 1964), a full-page ad appeared signed by over 1000 Oak Parkers declaring "The Right of all people to live where they choose" (see Appendix 3). First Congregational, First Presbyterian and St. Edmunds took the lead in creating social-action committees. By the summer the Oak Park River Forest Citizens Committee for Human Rights was formed. It is interesting that, at this time, only twenty-five black families lived in Oak Park and none in River Forest. There was no immediate threat of resegregation. Even North Austin was still predominately white.

The mission of the committee was to lobby for a local fair housing ordinance and to pressure realtors to show houses to anyone qualified regardless of the color of their skin. They employed the tactics of regular protest marches, demonstrations in front of realtors' offices and "testing." The group consisted of a variety of people - some were progressive Catholics, a few political radicals and still others were simply people who viewed residential segregation as morally wrong. Eventually they were joined by people who had a self-interest in keeping the property values up. They viewed the potential resegregation of Oak Park as possibly destroying the economic value of their greatest investment - their home.

The story of the success of this committee to get Oak Park to pass a Fair Housing Ordinance before the passage of a national one and the creation of a Community Relations department to enforce the ordinance and their success in "convincing" realtors to show properties to all qualified buyers regardless of their ethnicity has been told in detail by several people - Lee Brooke (1996), Carole Goodwin (1979) and Roberta Raymond (1972). "For Sale" signs were banned. All of the techniques of block busting and steering were made illegal. By the early 1970s, the committee was sufficiently convinced of its success to disband. But only after it had helped to found the Oak Park Housing Center on May 1, 1972 to deal with the serious problem of the resegregating apartment buildings.

It has been my observation that today the housing market in Oak Park is driven by the marketplace and nothing more. That is, if you have the funds and other qualifications, you can purchase a home in Oak Park regardless of who you are. In other words, Oak Park realtors are compliant with the spirit and the letter of the Fair Housing laws. From 1980 to 1990, home ownership among black Oak Parkers increased by 120 percent.

From the earliest days of the movement, the blacks seeking to purchase homes were solidly middle-class with a secure financial history. In short, they shared many of the same values as native Oak Parkers. They were seeking a place with good schools, safety, and all the comforts associated with suburban living. Once Oak Parkers got over their "racial" preconceptions, they discovered that their new home-owning neighbors were a lot like them.

Since the early days of the Committee on Human Rights, Oak Park has continued to create a complex of innovative programs to insure the housing market will remain open to all and especially attractive to minorities. While these various incentives have taken over twenty years to evolve, they form a package unique in the U.S.

In 1973, a group of concerned women formed themselves into "First Tuesday." They met to discuss how they could aid in the Village's efforts to integrate, as they are aware of the widely held assumption that property values decline when blacks move into a predominately white community. Their solution to this anxiety was ingenious. After some study, they convinced the Village to create an "Equity Assurance Program" - an insurance arrangement whereby the home investment would be protected should the market value drop below the original purchase price - a way of preventing white flight that was based upon fear of having the value of your house decline because of integration.

The plan operates as follows: a homeowner enrolls in the program, paying a onetime fee for the appraisal of the home (currently $90). The appraisal is performed by one of a panel of appraisers approved by the Equity Assurance Commission using an appraisal report form devised by the Commission. The appraiser is to determine the current "market value" of the home with neighborhood conditions, zoning and all other factors operating that are routinely included in an appraiser's report.

Since neighborhood stability is the goal, there is a five-year waiting period before the insurance option can be activated. Any person participating in the program may sell his/her home in less than five years from enrollment. However, should the home sell at less than the original appraised valuation, the loss would not be covered.

At any time after the five-year waiting period, if the highest offer for purchase is less than the initial appraised valuation, the Commission will have the home reappraised to determine if the apparent loss in value is attributed to the homeowner's neglect to perform routine maintenance on the home. If the home is essentially the same or better, the member would be reimbursed 80 percent of the difference between the current sale price and the original appraised valuation determined at the time of entry into the program. Should it appear the decline in value is attributable to the homeowner's failure to adequately maintain the property, the amount of coverage would be reduced proportionately, corresponding to the decline in value.

"The Equity Assurance Program, the first in the nation, began in September, 1978. For four months 99 households enrolled out of a total of 158 who ever enrolled. Then interest waned and few people enrolled. No claims have been made and only 10 renewals made - 9 once and 1 household twice. 78 of the 158 still live in Oak Park as of 1999. Most of the 158 were households living on all white blocks. Most reported that there was no or only a small increase (less than 10 percent) in black residents. Those who did not renew did so because of an increase in the value of their house. 67 percent think the program should continue." (From an undated (1999) and unauthored fact sheet from the Village.)

In addition to striving to maintain the resale value of houses, Oak Park has two related problems: the housing stock is old and in constant need of costly maintenance; and developers place constant pressure on the community to change its appearance to a more contemporary suburban "look." In short, causing Oak Park to lose its unique character and to become another suburb that looks like every other suburb. Both forces, if not controlled, could cause the community to become unstable and vulnerable to disinvestment and then ultimately resegregation. The Village has dealt with these problems directly and indirectly.

Oak Park is the home of a number of internationally renown buildings in addition to the well-known home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright. This is the birthplace of Prairie style architecture as well as a place with many impressive Victorians, Chicago- and California-style bungalows as well as more modest but equally important foursquare homes. Realizing the historical importance of these houses, Oak Park applied to the federal government for Historic District status for a large part of the Village. The Frank Lloyd Wright and Ridgeland/Lake districts are a source of community pride and tourist dollars. A third application for the Gunderson homes in South Oak Park is in process. The citizens' Historic Preservation Commission has the right to examine all building permits and prevent the demolition of buildings within the districts (Oak Park has 25 citizens' advisory commissions that offer organized and regular advice to the Village board). While the commission does not have the power to turn down a building permit, they can invoke "peer pressure" to see that the owners maintain the historical integrity of the exterior of their homes. Houses in the districts are expensive and are likely to be purchased by people with a strong sense of their significance and a desire to maintain them. All this strengthens the reputation of the Village as a good place to live and attracts community-minded people. It also ensures that the traditional "look" of the Village is preserved. If one assumes that there are cultural and class differences in housing preferences then preserving the look of a place also aids in a kind of pre-selection about who is likely to want to buy a home in Oak Park. It is an indirect way of preserving Oak Park's traditional lifestyle and preselecting its new citizens.

Oak Park has thus far escaped the massive alteration that has plagued other older suburbs in which single-family houses were acquired, torn down and replaced by multi-family town houses or condos and entire blocks leveled to make way for mini-strip malls. In addition, some of the recent multifamily buildings attempt to emulate a "Prairie style" and thus fit into the "look" of the village. At the writing of this paper, there are numerous examples of plans for such changes but so far the community has been able to resist a transformation into the look of "just another suburb" and retain its somewhat unique character. How long it can continue is uncertain and what impact it might have on who lives in Oak Park is uncertain.

The Village also created a series of Single-Family Rehabilitation Loans designed to assist owners in making essential repairs and restoring houses that were deteriorating. Some are for low-income owners. Some can be deferred until the house is sold. This program has two intentions: to encourage owners to maintain their investment; and to give support to the more marginally incomed owner. The latter is one of several attempts by the Village to encourage economic and ethnic diversity.

Finally, there is a series of programs designed to assist first-time buyers with a marginal income. These programs are designed to implicitly encourage minorities. The Assist Program provides down payment assistance for first-time home owners. The maximum house price is around $150,000 and income limits are $64,000 for one or two family members and $74,000 for three or more. It is a conventional fixed-rate mortgage of a full 4.25 percent gift back to use for down payment and closing costs. There is the Mortgage Credit Certificate for middle-income first-time buyers - with the same limits as Assist. You get an annual $2000 federal tax credit for the life of the mortgage. Looked at together, these programs offer incentives for new owners to move into condos or small homes and for owners of older homes to keep them up.

In recent years there has been a move to convert apartment buildings into condominiums thus reducing the number of apartments from 50 percent of the market to less than 37 percent. In 2000, the Village staff listed 182 Condo buildings containing 2,958 units - an increase of 25 per cent since 1990. In 1990 about 26 percent of condo units were occupied by renters. A recent survey covering about one-third of the condos reported that 22 percent were occupied by Oak Parkers who are black. This movement to condo conversions has caused the larger apartments - 3 or more bedrooms - to disappear. As the move toward condoization continues the ability of large families to rent in Oak Park diminishes and thus inhibits the ability of some Hispanic and black families who tend to be larger than those from other ethnic groups to move to Oak Park. Because the average price of a condo is $150,000, they are attractive to more modestly incomed families and have become the primary focus of the loan programs discussed above. Because condos are outside the scrutiny of the Community Relations division, it is possible for a condo building to resegregate or to become rental units unregulated by the Village. It is a growing concern of those Oak Parkers interested in maintaining integration in their Village.

Given the skyrocketing housing market in Oak Park - property values increased on the average of 25+ percent in 2000 - people desiring to own a home or condo in Oak Park have to display a financial stability that means that they are solidly middle class regardless of their ethnicity. Moreover, given the age of the housing stock and the lifestyle characteristics of Village life, a "natural" self-selection occurs that virtually guarantees the newcomers to be compatible to the sensibility that has dominated Oak Park for a long time. Apartments and the people they attract is another situation, one that requires a much different solution.

Maintaining Diversity within the Apartment Corridors in Oak Park

Apartments are the Achilles' heel of Oak Park's determination to be an integrated place. At one time they constituted 50 per cent of the housing market. According to the 2000 Village Survey, there are 476 apartment buildings (with four or more units) that contain 8,825 units (apartments). In addition, there are 938 two-flats (or 1876 units) and 114 three-flats(or 342 units) with a potential of 11,043 possible rentable units because some apartments are owner occupied that is a high figure. Even with the movement to convert buildings to condos, apartments still are 37 per cent of the housing market. Rentals are to be found in a variety of buildings. There are the two-flats, four-flats and six-flats that are often owner occupied and outside the scrutiny of Community Relations. Owners are not required to provide information about the racial make-up of their buildings the way the owners of larger buildings are. Then there are the larger buildings. The so-called "vintage" apartments were built prior to 1920, often courtyard in design. They tend to be large (a one bedroom will have a full-sized dining room and sometimes a sun room) with hardwood floors, sometimes with architectural features such as built-in bookcases but they lack central air-conditioning. While the Village was initially resistant to the building of any multi-family units, these buildings, from an aesthetic point of view, now fit into the "look" of the Village, that is, a place with some age to it. They tend to appeal to the same sort of people who would like the older housing stock in Oak Park. In addition there are the so-called "modern" apartments built in the 1950s and 1960s. There are no apartment buildings built more recently. Contemporary commercial residential construction is devoted exclusively to townhouses and condos. There is more profit in them. Modern apartment units are smaller than the ones in vintage buildings but have wall-to-wall carpeting and central aid conditioning and appeal to those renters who like creature comforts that newer places offer.

As stated, above the majority of the apartment buildings are concentrated in the eastern half of the Village with a high concentration along Austin Blvd. - the border between the all-black community of Austin and Oak Park. Many of the apartments were in the process of resegregating when the Village started to intervene in a systematic way. The first response was to create a private non-profit organization, the Oak Park Housing Center, that would induce white demand within the Austin Blvd apartments as well as other buildings located east of Ridgeland Ave and to encourage blacks to move to buildings in the western half of the Village. The Open Housing Committee first asked the Village to take on this task but were told that the Village would support their efforts if the Committee created its own organization. By the early 1970s many blacks living in Chicago knew Oak Park was a welcoming community and did not need to be encouraged to look for a place there. Whites, on the other hand, were leaving Oak Park because of their fear of living in an integrated place.

In addition, the Village needed to enlist the aid of the building owners to accept a variety of tenants and, most important, to maintain their buildings. Given the limited prospects in Chicago, blacks would often move into sub-standard buildings simply because of lack of choice. Whites, on the other hand, had more places to choose from and therefore would only accept an apartment that was in excellent condition. If Oak Park was going to maintain white demand in the apartments, they could not tolerate "slum landlords" who neglected their buildings, collected rents for as long as possible and then abandoned their property.

Let me first examine how the Village induced building owners to comply and then look at how the units were affirmatively marketed. The earliest attempts to enlist the aid of owners in the Village's integration efforts were relatively simply. The Village employed inspectors to examine buildings on a regular basis for code violations. Those found in violation were fined and pressure was put upon the owners to repair the problems. Next, annually renewed business licenses were required for all multi-family buildings. Part of the requirement for renewal was for the owners to list the "racial" makeup of each tenant, thus providing the Community Relations department with some indication about which buildings were in danger of resegregating. While the data is only as good as the honesty of the owner, in the early days, it did provide a good indication that more aggressive actions were necessary. In 1973 the Village began to require written leases as a protection for the tenants.

The Oak Park Residence Corporation (RESCORP)

In 1966 the Oak Park Housing Authority helped create a private, non-profit corporation, the Oak Park Residence Corporation (Rescorp) to find ways to deal with blighted single-family units. They worked in conjunction with the Village board and the Illinois State Housing Board. By 1973 Rescorp began to purchase and rehabilitate poorly maintained apartment buildings with monies granted to them by the Village, loans from local bankers and some other public money. Over an almost thirty-year period, Rescorp has evolved into one of the largest landlords in Oak Park. As of December 2000, they owned or managed 547 units. Initially the plan was to purchase, repair and then sell the buildings, but for a complex of reasons, the Rescorp has not sold many buildings. Designed to serve as a model for other landlords, the Rescorp placed resident managers in each building - non-professionals who receive a reduction in their rent in exchange for some minor service and maintenance and to serve as a liaison between tenants and the Rescorp. Resident managers also attempt to create a community spirit among the tenants with building newspapers, barbeques and other social events. The hope is that the tenants will feel more engaged in community life as a result. Given an average turnover rate of 38 percent, these efforts are particularly difficult. As about 70 percent of blacks living in Oak Park are renters, engaging apartment dwellers is especially important. Some privately owned buildings also have resident managers. Some resident managers were or are employees of the Housing Center and thus fully conversant with the social agenda of the Village.

The Rescorp is also a model of how to maintain diversity in buildings. All of their vacancies are affirmatively marketed through the Oak Park Regional Housing Center (discussed below). As many of the buildings the Rescorp purchased were resegregated at the time of purchase, the contemporary figures clearly indicate how successful these efforts are. In 2000, 345 or 63 percent of the tenants are white; 118 or 21 percent are black and 78 or 14 percent are other. The ethnic breakdowns mirror the percentages just released from the 2000 census for Oak Park. In other words, the Rescorp is succeeding in maintaining the diversity the Village desires. Rescorp buildings contain a number of handicap-accessible units. In an effort to assist the Village in their desire to be as economically diverse as possible, 14 percent of the units (77 apartments) are currently rented to families having H.U.D. Section 8 rent vouchers - this program will also be discussed below. In sum, the Rescorp is designed to be a model landlord with properly maintained buildings, resident managers, and diverse tenant population. Viewed from that perspective, it is a success.

However, the Rescorp is not without its critics. Some apartment owners think the policy of the corporation of purchasing poorly maintained buildings at market rates encourages unscrupulous landlords to not maintain their buildings, collect rents as long as possible, ignore summonses and fines and when they have milked the building for as much profit as possible, they know they can sell at market rate (some argue the Rescorp pays more than market rate) and walk away with a huge profit. Other critics argue that the Rescorp is not living up to its original intention by not selling the buildings they rehabilitate and are thus unfairly competing with the private sector. As the Rescorp is a "partner" organization with the Village, it is able to have the Village assist them in creating new parking spaces adjacent to a Rescorp building when private owners do not have this opportunity. As the lack of parking is a serious problem in Oak Park, such an advantage, if indeed it truly exists, is significant. Some of the most severe critics have suggested that the Rescorp is "cooking" their books in some manner. Even though the Rescorp receives large CDBG funds on an annual basis and collects rents on buildings they have owned for decades, the corporation is still, at times, short of operating capital. In 1995 they were "forced" to condoize their 23-unit building at 222 Washington because they needed the cash to pay for big ticket deferred maintenance needs. In 2000 the need arose again for 844 Washington. All of this criticism is made more believable with the mysterious and unceremonious firing of their director in the summer of 2000. However, none of these criticisms have resulted in any formal action against the Rescorp or the Village. So perhaps it is nothing more than groundless complaining that one finds within any small close-knit community.

Diversity Assurance Programs (DAP)

The Village was not content to rely on the ability of the Rescorp to solve all of the problems associated with rental properties. It is unreasonable to think one corporation could buy all of the buildings that needed to be rehabilitated. So in 1984 a complex of measures was instituted, Diversity Assurance Programs (DAP), to induce private owners to maintain their property and affirmatively market their vacancies. The concept was sufficiently innovative that the New York Times ran a front section article about the program on November 11, 1984.

There are three DAP programs:

1. Voluntary Building Evaluation Program - The Village will pay 50 percent of the fee up to a specified amount per unit and per building to hire an approved inspector to evaluate the condition of a building. Any code violations discovered are not turned in. The program is designed to encourage owners to seek the means to correct the problems. Should the owners decide not to correct the violations, the next cycle of code inspections could result in a fine.

2. Security Improvement Grants for buildings with two or more units. Designed to be used for intercoms, lighting, locks, fencing, windows and emergency lighting and alarms. There are two plans: one in which the Village pays 20 percent of the cost and a second in which the Village police evaluate the security of the building and make specific recommendations. If followed, the Village pays 40 percent of the cost up to a specified amount. Making buildings more secure reduces crime and, in the long run, saves the Village money and certainly increases the desirability of the apartments among potential tenants.

3. Building Improvement grants and loans or Incentives Program for multiple unit dwellings (4 or more units). Designed to encourage the rehabilitation of older buildings, the Village offers matching grants and low-interest loans up to a specified per-unit figure. The owner agrees to a five-year marketing services contact that allows the Oak Park Regional Housing Center to affirmatively market the buildings being remodeled with DAP funds. Originally the agreement was for the Housing Center to market all the owners' buildings, but one of the larger property owners was able to convince the Village to reduce it to only the buildings being rehabilitated. As this reduces the number of units that are affirmatively marketed, some people involved with the Housing Center are striving to change the regulation back to its original form. It is one of a number of conflicts between the Housing Center and some apartment owners.

In 1995 DAP was evaluated by the Housing sub-Committee of the Village board. The results seem to indicate that the intended result was realized. At the time of the study, 66 buildings were in the program with another 31 buildings with expired contracts for a total of 1824 housing units. There was an increase in diversity in 83 percent of the DAP buildings. In addition, Trustee Kuner, as chair of the Housing Committee of the Village board of trustees, examined the reported racial makeup of apartment buildings in Oak Park (four units or larger) and determined that those buildings owned by the Oak Park Residence Corporation or currently in the Village's DAP program are more diverse than the privately owned apartment buildings not currently in any DAP program. These "non-DAP" buildings tended to have larger concentrations of black tenants than the other buildings (Jim Shannon, private communication, January 18, 2001).

Not all owners get involved in DAP because they are critical of its operation. Cynthia Breunlin, the Village staff person in charge of DAP, prepared a memo on July 17, 2000, for the Housing Subcommittee of the Commitment to Diversity Task Force, articulating reasons owners do not participate. Some felt that the amount of paperwork and the requirement to disclose personal financial data was intrusive and unnecessary especially when banks offer loans at similar rates. Others thought that the Housing Center could not handle all of their vacancies and would cause the owners to have unacceptable vacancy rates. Finally, there was the feeling that the owners could keep their buildings diverse without using the Housing Center. Several owners in BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association) who have large numbers of units, share these feelings about DAP and the Housing Center.

Between the Rescorp units and buildings involved in DAP, there are about 2500 apartments or approximately 22 percent of the total rental market in Oak Park affirmatively marketed by the Housing Center. In addition to these units, there are those landlords who voluntarily ask the Housing Center to market their vacancies. These tend to be the owners of smaller buildings - 6 flats or less. A generous estimate is that about 40 percent of the rental units are affirmatively marketed. If diversity is maintained in the other buildings it is accomplished privately by the owners outside the scrutiny of the Village who are restricted by anti-discrimination laws that prohibit landlords from refusing to rent to qualified tenants. In other words, if an owner was approached by a large number of qualified blacks who wanted to rent apartments, the owner would be obligated to do so and thus would be in danger of having those buildings resegregate. Voluntary compliance of a policy of managed integration seems unlikely to work and the staff of the Housing Center doubts the figures provided by these apartment owners as to the diversity of their buildings.

H.U.D. Section 8 Vouchers

Oak Park is dedicated to being an inclusive and diverse community. This includes economic diversity. However, the attractiveness of the place and the limited number of apartments has caused the cost of a rental to dramatically increase. As of the writing of this paper, the average rental price for a two bedroom apartments was between $900 and $1500 per month, plus utilities and parking. Owners require a 1-1/2 month's security deposit and conduct a through credit and employment check. In other words, only "solid" citizens need apply. Senior citizens on fixed income, the disabled with special needs and low incomed families who wish to live in Oak Park have only one recourse, H.U.D.'s Section 8 rental vouchers. The unfortunately named Section 8 program is an attempt to disperse the families throughout a community rather than concentrating them in certain buildings. Eligibility is based primarily on income and need. Families who get vouchers must pay 30 percent of their adjusted net income as rent. They are expected to locate a place on their own. The program in Oak Park is administered by the Oak Park Housing Authority, a non-profit corporation housed in the same building as the Residence Corporation and designated as a sister organization with the Housing Center. They determine eligibility, issue vouchers and inspect apartments to see if they meet H.U.D. requirements. As is the case in most Housing Authorities, Oak Park has a long waiting list. Vouchers can be moved from the community that issued them to another community, if the recipient can locate an apartment in the new community. The Chicago Housing Authority is planning to demolish over 17,000 public housing units over the new few years. It is unclear where they plan to house these displaced people. Undoubtedly some of these families will attempt to relocate in Oak Park. Some are already appearing at the Housing Center looking for "bargains" that don't exist.

Section 8 is a voluntary program. A local Housing Authority must petition H.U.D. for vouchers. It can be looked at as an index of a community's commitment to economic diversity, especially if that community is a middle-class suburb. A comparison of Oak Park with other Cook County suburbs reveals the fact the Oak Park has 427 vouchers (as of December 31, 2000). Only four communities have more. Three are Southside - Calumet City (621), Chicago Heights (779), and Harvey (1190) and one, Evanston (963) is in the North. Those communities bordering Oak Park have far fewer - Berwyn (77), Elmwood Park (24), Forrest Park (81), Maywood (3), Melrose Park (70) and River Forest (6) (Source - Cook County Housing Authority). It appears that only Evanston and Oak Park are truly striving to maintain some economic diversity in their communities and some like Hinsdale, an almost all-white western suburb with no Section 8 contracts, are actively attempting to discourage the marginally incomed from living there; or perhaps it is merely another example of a community that wishes to remain unicultural.

A more detailed look at Oak Park's Section 8 program is warranted in that it is revealing of both the promise and the reality of the community's self-image as welcoming to everyone. Of the 427 vouchers allocated only 387 are currently in use. That means that about 40 vouchered families are currently looking for buildings that will accept them. As some owners will not rent to Section 8 families (it is their legal right to do so.), some of these people may lose their voucher allowing other families on the long waiting list to be issued vouchers. 71 percent of the Section 8 recipients are black, 26 percent are white and 3 percent Hispanic. There are no Asians in the program. 12 percent are elderly or 46 recipients of which 40 are female. 36 percent are disabled or 138 recipients of which 103 are female. That means 47 percent are families - mainly with a female head of household (only 5 families have a male head of household) with an average size of less than three members. Taken as a group the recipients of Section 8 vouchers are less educated and poorer than most Oak Parkers. They are at the margins of the middle class and as such represent a cultural challenge for the solidly middle class and frequently liberal Oak Parkers who may hypothetically espouse the liberal sentiment of wanting an economic diverse community but bridle at the conflict in cultural values between themselves and their poorer black neighbors who occupy different and often conflicting taste publics. To suggest a clichéd example, it is the conflict between rap music coming from an auto and Bach performed in a public park. As the majority of the Section 8 clients are black and poor, it is a place where issues of class and "race" become confused.

In the Oak Leaves, a local weekly newspaper, on July 5, 2000, there is an article - "Family Losing Fight to Live in Oak Park" in which the sad tale of a black woman with a 21-year-old and a 13-year-old is told. The mother wants to move back to Oak Park so that her daughter can continue in Julian Middle School but she cannot afford the $950 per month rent on a two bedroom apartment and code restrictions forbid her from living in a smaller place. They have been on the Section 8 waiting list for 8 years. She was on public assistance but let it lapse when she thought she could afford to buy a house. They lived in the house - lease to buy - but found it was too small and left it. Her husband stopped child support payments. The Oak Park apartment on Garfield Blvd. they lived in had a fire. It is unlikely that she will be able to return to Oak Park.

Oak Park faces a dilemma. On the one hand, it has been on record as a community that will strive to be economically diverse. It has acted on this principal by requesting an unusually large number of Section 8 vouchers. As the rents in Oak Park rise faster than H.U.D. can raise the ceiling on vouchers, fewer and fewer low-income people can find places to rent. As the larger apartments are increasingly condoized, there are fewer and fewer places for larger families. The rental world of Oak Park is designed for single people or small families with a good income. Oak Park will soon have to face the difficult decision of funding some sort of massive program of intervention in which some of the Rescorp units are remodeled into larger apartments and/or the Village offers rent subsidies in addition to those available from H.U.D. If they do not, then it is possible that Oak Park will have to admit that they can no longer strive to be economically diverse.

Oak Park Regional Housing Center

The Oak Park Regional Housing Center (OPRHC) is the cornerstone of Oak Park's diversity policy (see Appendix 4 for an official description of the Center). By the early 1970s the Oak Park River Forest Committee on Human Rights had accomplished its original goals of opening up the real estate market and was able to disband. Before it actually went away, a proposal was offered by Roberta "Bobbie" Raymond, a committee member, for the next phase - the stabilization of the rental market. It was partially based on her 1972 Masters' thesis. The Committee disbanded and the Housing Center was born with Raymond who had been the chair of the Committee's Housing Committee, as its director.

The OPRHC is a fair housing rental referral agency. Clients come there to find an apartment. The Center acts as an agent for properties owned by the Oak Park Residence Corporation, those in DAP, as well as privately owned buildings where the owners voluntarily give the Center their listings. In addition, the Center's staff obtains listings from newspaper want ads. While it is difficult to obtain reliable statistics, I estimate that the Center has listings for about 1/3 of the vacancies. I base that estimate on the following: There are about 11,000 rental units in the Village. The annual vacancy rate is about 30 percent, which means that approximately 3600 apartments are available to be rented in any one year. According to the Center's marketing department, they obtained around 1100 listings in 2000 or slightly less than 1/3 of the rental market. This is an important figure because it indicates that the Center does not control the rental market and that no one is forced to use its services. They can easily find an apartment on their own.

It is important to realize that the Center does not make any policies about how Oak Park is to be integrated, it merely follows the dictates of the Village. To implement a policy of balance, the Village's Community Relations division maintains records of tenants in apartment buildings. All owners must provide the Village with a detailed list of the "racial" makeup of their tenants when they apply for the annual renewal of their business license. The division is then able to determine which apartments can have an open listing (that is, available to all interested people) and which apartments are in danger of becoming "unbalanced" and are therefore a counseling location where white demand should be encouraged. This information is then conveyed to the Center so that they can determine which clients are given which listings. As the data collected from the owners by Community Relations is confidential, it is not possible to fully understand the logic of the decision. Moreover, Community Relations feels that the process they employ to determine which listing is open and which is a counseling location should not be available for public scrutiny. Some critics call this policy social engineering or even benign "racial" steering. Some even suggest that it is illegal. It is not. (See Appendix 6 for the legal basis of the Center's actions). Whether the process should be more open is subject to debate. The philosophy of the Center and of all agencies in Oak Park devoted to maintaining diversity is to maintain a "racial" balance. They believe their policies will prevent the resegregation of Oak Park. An examination of the activities of the Center and its impact on the Village strongly supports this contention. While the Center cannot force anyone to live anywhere, they strongly encourage clients to assist them in their efforts to keep Oak Park stable by having a diverse population live in all sections of the Village.

In the early days of the Center there was a need to promote Oak Park in general among whites as a good place to live. To oversimplify the situation slightly, Oak Park needed to replace the "white flighters" who would not or could not live in an integrated community with white liberals who would welcome a chance to act out their notions of social justice. To attract these kinds of people, advertisements were placed in a number of national magazines (e.g., Ms., Psychology Today and the Saturday Review. See Appendix 5 for some examples), Chicago-area publications and student-housing centers at the many Chicago-area universities, colleges and medical schools that are within easy access to Oak Park. The campaign worked. Many of today's leaders came to Oak Park during this time - university professors (for example, in '90 zip code 60302 was the favorite for University of Illinois, Chicago faculty - 139 lived there and another 55 in 60304 and 44 in River Forest), social workers and professionals in service industries. As Carole Goodwin has pointed out. "By 1970, significant inroads has been made by what was frequently called the 'new Oak Park'; younger, progressive, involved and issue-conscious.Oak Park's oldest leading families were found among the most avid backers of the 'new Oak Park' style" (1979:35). By 1986 the transformation of the Village from a WASP Republican enclave to a liberal community was evident when the Village voted Democratic in a national election for the first time.

Even so, the Center was more successful in convincing blacks than Oak Park was a welcoming community that reassuring whites that in spite of the moves toward integration that all parts of Oak Park were "safe" places for whites to rent - a sad but accurate appraisal of many whites' notions of the dangers of living with blacks. It therefore became apparent early on that increasing white demand for apartments on the east side of the Village was going to be the Housing Center's major focus. It remains so almost 30 years after the Center's founding. Some people incorrectly believe that the eastern part of the Village - the area closer to Austin - is less desirable because Austin is perceived to be a crime-ridden black ghetto. Repeated efforts to undo that impression have only partially succeeded and even some white Oak Parkers will tell potential renters to avoid certain areas. While volunteering as the receptionist at the Housing Center I can attest to the many white folks who knew almost nothing about Oak Park and yet arrive at the Center convinced they know where the "bad" places to live are located. Their attitudes are often confirmed by Oak Parkers who view the eastern part of their community with suspicion.

The Center is located in a 1920s one-story building on South Blvd. across from the suburban Metra train and "El" tracks. As there is a train stop at Marion one block away, clients can arrive by public transportation. The store-front window is covered with posters for Oak Park cultural activities like the Wright walk or concerts at the Unity Temple. The Center has a double-wide store. One can see the desk of one of the counselors on the left. The "look" of the Center is one of basic if not a low-rent seedy office - no frills, nothing fancy and very busy with information. The foyer consists of the receptionist's desk with a listing of parking spaces on a board behind, some chairs for the clients, a counter-desk that runs along one side where people can fill in the forms, and lots of literature about potential rentals, information about various Oak Park services like the library, train schedules, local newspapers and a few toys for the clients' children to play with. There are two counselor spaces on the left - one is open near the store window and the other is a private office occupied by a senior counselor. There are several more counselor offices along the hall. The rest of the space has offices for the marketing people, a general staff space, and the director's office.

There are two major activities at the Center ­ counseling clients and providing them with potential rental referrals and marketing, which includes property inspections that provide the rental listings and suggestions to property owners about how to improve their rentals. A client comes to the Center looking for an apartment. Some know about the place because a friend got their apartment from the Center. Others see ads and still others are referred to the Center by realtors or the housing office of their collage or medical school. When the client arrives, the receptionist asks them to fill out a form that describes the client and their needs. They are also instructed to read the Center's policy card.

Oak Park Regional Housing Center Policy

The policy of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center is to assist in achieving meaningful and lasting racial diversity in the west suburban Chicago area.

Clients are encouraged to consider the full range of housing opportunities in keeping with this policy. The Center is a not-for-profit organization and does not own or control any housing. Other sources for apartment listings in this region include local newspapers, landlords and apartment search services. Under both local and federal laws, clients are free to pursue the housing of their choice.

This is usually the first and possibly the only time a client is informed that the Housing Center is a fair housing organization designed to encourage dispersed integration and not simply an apartment referral service. The Center has decided not to emphasize or even mention their social purposes. None of the ads they currently employ suggest that they are anything but a rental agency. As one might assume the Center has something to hide, this may be a decision that backfires on them.

Next, a client sees a counselor who goes over the listings available and gives them some referrals. They will also attempt it "sell" Oak Park as a good community by answering as many questions about the place as possible. If the client is white and resistant to considering listings in the eastern part of the community, then, some "selling" of the entire community as a safe place is attempted along with some discussion of the need to disperse people in the Village. At this point, some clients leave to pursue the leads they were given. As most of the listings the Center has access to are "counseling" locations, that is, in need of white demand, there are usually more listings that can be given out to whites than blacks. Sometimes the only listings available to blacks are those the staff obtains from the newspapers.

At this point, black clients will be informed of the Apartments West program that offers listings to black clients for apartments in other western suburbs since 1993. Some of these communities are less expensive than Oak Park and thus potentially appealing to black clients who cannot afford Oak Park. Others have an appeal because the clients work in these communities but were mistakenly assuming that black people could not easily live there because of discriminatory practices of the landlord. Apartments West also offers a limited escort service where clients are taken to places they could rent. 780 out of the 2308 blacks who came into the Center indicated that they were interested in this program (about 1/3 of the black clients). The Center was able to find apartments for 54 of those clients (6 percent). Some question the viability of the program with its relatively small rate of success. Some object to it on ideological grounds and argue that the Center is steering blacks out of Oak Park. Some critics say that some of the Center staff is insensitive to the situation and regardless of their intention end up making some black clients feel that they are not welcome in Oak Park.

There is a real irony here. All of the studies undertaken by the Village since 1984 about diversity arrive at the same conclusion - that Oak Park must think regionally if it wishes to succeed with its own programs for maintaining diversity. The Center has put into action this suggestion and is then criticized for doing so.

After the initial counseling of white clients, it is possible that an escort will be available to take white clients to up to three counseling locations where keys are available. Escorting was begun in the early 1980s when the Housing Center realized that many white clients would simply not pursue listings for places on Austin Blvd. or anywhere in the eastern half of the Village. The unwarranted reputation of this area as being unsafe was a very strong impediment to the diversity model the Center was working with. So the Housing Center staff tried to get some landlords to provide keys. Today clients are escorted by the Rescorp's marketing agent to all of their vacancies and the Housing Center escorts take clients to DAP buildings and those locations where the owner has voluntarily agreed to have their vacancies shown. An attempt is made to locate tenants or resident managers in these buildings who will reassure the client of the safety of the building and that it is a nice place to live. As the Housing Center receives a fee for each listing rented, this aspect of the Center has the highest rate of success in placing white clients in eastern Oak Park. 300 escorted clients rented apartments in 2000 or about 25 percent of all clients who moved to Oak Park during that year. It would not be overstating it to suggest that it is the escort service that keeps Austin Blvd apartments from resegregating.

After being escorted, the white clients return to the Center. Some actually fill out a rental application and credit check and leave a deposit of earnest money which takes the place off the market. Others simply leave, possibly to look at one or more of the referrals. They may come back for more listings if the original list does not work out. The Center asks the clients to let them know when they get an apartment. Of the 5500+ people who registered at the Center in 2000 almost 1300 (or slightly less than 25 percent) rented apartments in Oak Park. Given the complexity of the data, it is not possible to be certain how many clients actually rented apartments that were given to them by the Center as listings and how many found apartments on their own.

A look at the client profile for 2000 makes it abundantly clear what the Housing Center is able to successfully do and why its success is regarded with suspicion within the community. The typical Housing Center client in 2000 was white (67 percent), young (80 percent 40 or younger) and unmarried (80 percent). If employment could be established, I would add that this typical client was a university student, resident or intern at one of the many nearby medical centers (see Appendix 7 for more details). Of the 2308 black clients who registered, only 193 found apartments in Oak Park (8 percent). While 865 white clients out of the 2388 who registered found places (36 percent). The success rate for Asians (31 percent) and Hispanics (24 percent) were closer to the white rate than that of blacks (source - Oak Park Regional Housing Center Annual Report 2000). It could be said that the Housing Center's real mission is to induce white clients (and Asians, Hispanics and other non-black clients) to move to apartments in east Oak Park. The fact that a few blacks do get apartments through the Center is more a matter of public relations than policy. It can be argued that blacks can easily obtain apartments without the assistance of the Center. If the purpose of the Center is to maintain a dispersed pattern of integration, then its primary goal is to increase white demand in the eastern part of the Village and not to be simply an apartment service. Ideally the Center should be able to induce blacks to move into the whitest part of Oak Park - the Mann school district (the northwest quadrant of the Village) but only 3 black clients did so in 2000. It is not an area with many apartment buildings. Some Center staff believe that their goal of increasing the number of blacks living in the western, particularly northwestern portion of the Village, is made more difficult because many owners of the buildings in that area refuse to give the Center their listings not because blacks do not wish to live there. I cannot confirm or deny that assumption or other potentially useful information about apartment owners because B.O.M.A. (Building Owners and Managers Association) refused to supply me with their membership list on the grounds that I might use it to solicit "business."

The Oak Park Regional Housing Center is a place much discussed and offered as one of the success stories about how to maintain diversity in a suburban community. It is now almost 30 years old. The sad thing is that the reason for its creation has not changed. White people are reluctant to rent in neighborhoods where there are a significant number of black tenants. They associate black neighborhoods with danger and high crime. If Oak Park is to continue to realize its goal of dispersed integration then the Center will have to continue to induce white demand in East Oak Park no matter how offensive those policies might be to some Oak Parkers.

Some Very Inconclusive Conclusions

"Residential segregation has proven to be the most resistant to change of all realms perhaps because it is so critical to racial change in general" (Petigrew 1996:112-3).

I am aware that this paper does not end, it stops. But in the interest of being able to circulate it in enough time to obtain feedback from Oak Parkers while I am still in the community, I will stop here. In this preliminary version, I have sprinkled some conclusions throughout about certain aspects of Oak Park's plan. Eventually I will attempt to organize them together into a more coherent whole. There are a few concluding remarks I wish to make.

As stated at the beginning, Oak Park's complex of ordinances, regulations, programs and organizations designed to create and maintain a community that was diverse and integrated in a dispersed manner is unique. It evolved over time and is without a single author. The parts of this plan are pragmatic reactions to a particular situation rather than a grand scheme. It is overwhelmingly problem solving in intention and not ideologically based. This is an important distinction because some of the recent criticism is ideological.

Because of the way in which the "plan" developed, it has become difficult for any one person to adequately understand the "big picture." Given the high level of education and citizen involvement in Village affairs, this is a particularly vexing problem. One of the questions I had when I started this research was, Could other communities use what Oak Park has accomplished to assist in their efforts to create and maintain an integrated community? The answer I would give at this moment is no, at least not as a complete package. Oak Park's solution is a response to a situation unique to Oak Park - the proximity to a depressed urban neighborhood, aging housing stock, a high percentage of apartment buildings, and a small affluent, politically independent community that has the means to be proactive. Elements of the plan could be utilized but not the entire thing.

I think that it is fair to say that Oak Park's "plan" is in need of a thorough and self-critical examination as a plan and not simply the components. Given the high level of education and citizen involvement, the creation of a Task Force to examine all of Oak Park's policies, procedures, the entire operation of the Community Relations division, and the Village's relation to its partners - Rescorp, the Housing Authority and the Regional Housing Center - should be a task Oak Parkers would welcome. Instead of the random "potshots" that some critics now occasionally take at one particular activity, a systematic look at what each entity does and why and how it fits into the whole would be in order. It is time for Oak Park to explore its commitment to maintaining diversity by dispersing blacks and whites throughout the community to see if it wishes to continue to do so. It is my contention that without these organizations the community would have an almost all-black apartment corridor in the eastern portion of the Village and a scattering of blacks and whites in single family homes and condos. Perhaps that is a future Oak Parkers wish for themselves.

It should be clear by now that I regard residential integration as a most difficult idea to actualize. But it is more than that, it is offensive to all concerned. The problem is that the alternative - segregation - is worse. Integration is offensive because it causes whites to have to confront the fact that, left to their own devices, many of them will not voluntarily live with blacks. Some sort of inducement must be employed such as those used by the Housing Center. For blacks, it means that they must accept their minority status. If an integrated community begins to have a significant increase in the number of blacks that move in, the community is highly likely to resegregate either because whites move out or they stop moving in. Oak Park has a choice. It can continue to be offensive and remain integrated or it can stop offending and cease being one of the only places in the U.S. where blacks and whites strive to live together in neighborhoods where both groups successfully reside.

References Cited

Anon
1992 Community Relations Commission 1992 Review of the Racial Diversity Task Force Report of 1984. Oak Park: Village of Oak Park.
1997a A Look at Oak Park: A Socioeconolmic Profile of the Village of Oak Park. Oak Park: Village of Oak Park Department of Community and Economic Development.
1997b Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice. Oak Park: Department of Community Services.

Bishop, D
1988 Fair Housing and the Constitutionality of Governmental Measures Affecting Community Ethnicity. University of Chicago Law Review 55:1229-66.

Briggs, Xavier de Sousa
1998 Racially and Ethnically Diverse Urban Neighborhoods. A special issue of Cityscape: a Journal of Policy Development and research, vol. 4, no. 2 HUD.

Brooke, Lee
1996 Chronology of the Oak Park/River Forest Citizens Committee for Human Rights: 1964-1973. Oak Park: Oak Park Public Library.

Brooks, Roy L.
1996 Integration or Separation? A Strategy for racial Equality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press

Caldwell, Erin, Tom Miller and Eric Merges
2000 Oak Park Community Survey: Report of Results. Boulder: National Research Center.

Cohen, Adam and Elizabeth Taylor
2000 American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation. Boston: Little, Brown.

DeMarco, Donald and George Galster
1993 Prointegrative Policy: Theory and Practice. Journal of Urban Affairs, 15, no. 2:141-160.

Ellen, Ingrid Gould
2001 Sharing America's Neighborhoods : The Prospects for Stable Racial Integration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Farley, R, Fielding, E and M. Krysan
1997 The Residental Preferences of African-Americans and Whites: A For Metropolis Analysis. Housing Policy Debate 8:763-800.

Goodwin, Carole
1979 The Oak Park Strategy: Community Control of Racial Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Harvard Law Review - read 9/26
1980 Comment: Benign Steering and Benign Quota: The Validity of Race-Conscious Government Policies to Promote Residential Integration. Harvard Law Review 93: 938-965.

Immergluck, Daniel
1999 Unfinished Business: Increases in African-American Home Buying and Continuing Residential Segregation in the Chicago Region. Chicago: Woodstock Institute.

Leachman, Mike, Phil Nyder, Bill Peterman and Darnell Coleman
1998 Black, White and Shades of Brown: Fair Housing and Economic Opportunity in the Chicago Region. Chicago: A Report Commissioned by the Leadership Council for Metropolitian Open Communities.

Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton
1993 American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

McNamara, Chair
1984 Report to the Board of Trustees, Village of Oak Park by the Racial Diversity Task Force.

Meyer, Stephan Grant
2000 As Long As They Don't Move Next Door: Segregation and Racial Conflict in American Neighborhoods. New York: Roman and Littlefield Publishers.

Nyden, Phillip, Luckhart, John, M. Maly and W. Peterman
1998 Chapter 1: Neighborhood Racial and Ethnic Diversity in U.S. Cities. Cityscape, Vol. 4, No. 2:1-18.

Petigrew, Thomas
1996 Review of American Apartheid. American Journal of Sociology, vol. 82:112-113.

Raymond, Roberta
1972 The challenge to Oak Park : a suburban community faces racial change "A thesis submitted to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences in candidacy for the degree of Master of Arts, Department of Sociology, Roosevelt University. Chicago, Ill.

1982 Racial Diversity: A Model for American Communities. Housing: Chicago Style.

Rubinowitz, Leonard and James Rosenbaum
2000 Crossing the Class and Color Lines: From Public Housing to White Suburbia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Saltman, Juliet.
1990 A fragile movement : the struggle for neighborhood stabilization. New York : Greenwood Press.

Schelling, Thomas
1972 A Process of Residential Segregation: Neighborhood Tipping. in Racial discrimination in economic life, Anthony H. Pascal, editor. Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books.

Settles, Marc
1996 The Perpetuation of Residential Racial Segregation in America" Historical Discrimination, Modern Forms of Exclusion and Inclusionary Remedies. Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law

Smolla, R.A.
1985 In Pursuit of Racial Utopias: Fair Housing, Quotas, and Goals in the 1980s. Southern California Law Review 58: 947-1016.

Turner, Margery A et al
1991 Housing Discrimination Study: Synthesis I. Washington: HUD.

HISTORY

"The rich history of Oak Park began with the 1839 settlement by Joseph Kettlestrings, a native of England, on a section of land now bounded by Lake Street, Chicago Avenue, Oak Park Avenue, and Harlem Avenue. The home he built on the southwest corner of that tract was the first house in Oak Park. In the mid-1800's, W.H. Scoville and J.W. Scoville acquired 185 acres of land north of Chicago Avenue between Oak Park Avenue and Austin Boulevard. Other settlers moved in slowly. By 1870, the population of the Village was only about 500, but the Chicago Fire of 1871 caused an exodus of Chicagoans into Oak Park, giving the Village its first population boom. By 1902 the year of its incorporation as a Village-Oak Park was approximately 50 percent developed, predominantly by single family residences mixed with large areas of apartment houses and fringed with commercial development. Through subsequent years, Oak Park developed as a community with a commitment to orderly change and the planning for a better tomorrow. With the rest of the nation it endured world wars, economic depression and the turbulent 1960s - and it endured them all the better because of a determination on the part of the people to direct their destiny. With the rest of the nation, the Village also rejoiced in victorious times and worked hard to offer a good life to all Villagers, the good life that comes from an emphasis on learning, beauty and sensitivity to others. Today, comfortable Victorian homes stand in Oak Park alongside Prairie style structures designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries. The village has come to represent a distinctive urban/suburban lifestyle that is a mix of these architecturally significant homes, lovely shaded streets, expansive parks, an excellent school system, a thriving business community, and a concerned and responsive governing body. The people of Oak Park have chosen this community not so much as a place to live, but as a way of life. A key ingredient in the quality of this life is the diversity of these same people: a broad representation of various occupations, professions, lifestyles, age and income levels, a stimulating mixture of racial, religious and ethnic groups. Such diversity is Oak Park's strength. Our proud traditions of citizen involvement and accessible local government give us a unique opportunity to show others that such a community can face the future with an attitude of change for the better, while preserving the best of the past." From an official Village web site

From the 2000 Community Survey and official Village reports, the following image of the community emerges::

1. Population and Ethnic composition

53,648 (1990 census figures)

52,524 (2000 census figures) or a lost of 2.1 percent

74.8 percent - white, 18 percent black, and 7.2 percent other in 1990

69 percent - white, 22 percent - black , 4 percent - Asian, 5 percent Hispanic and 3 percent multi-racial in 2000.

From 1970 to 2000 the white population in Oak Park has decreased from 98.8 percent to 69.0 percent. In 1970, .2 percent of the population was black and in 2000 22 percent was black.

79 percent of Oak Parkers work outside the Village

Occupations
50 percent professional and managerial
33 percent technical sales and administrative support
17 percent other

Educational differences:
White - 13 percent high school only, 24 percent some college, 55 percent college or higher
Black - 19 percent high school only, 38 percent some college, 31 percent college or higher

Median income - $51,737

The percentage of households below poverty has remained at a low 3 percent since 1970."

2. Housing

57 percent of Oak Park is devoted to housing and 33 percent to streets and rights of way.

23,607 housing units (11,359 rented, 12,248 owned)

10, 029 single family units, that is, single homes.

In addition, there are 938 2-flats (or 1876 units) and 114 3-flats(or 342 units). A potential of 2218 units - 624 owner occupied and 594 rented.

13, 364 units have families and the rest of the 23,607 are single people

Multi-family units (4 or more units). There are 476 buildings with 8,825 units (apartments)

182 Condo buildings with 2,958 units.

Average persons per household is 2.35

Rents have gone up 23 percent from 1980 to 1990

Whites - 28 percent in rental and 72 percent owned

Blacks 65 percent in rental and 35 percent owned

Average single family home sale price

1983 $86,000
1999 $262,000

Appendix 2

AN OAK PARK DIVERSITY/INTEGRATION TIMELINE

1947 Housing Authority Established

1950 Percy Julian's home is firebombed - 11/24/50

1951 Percy Julian's home is firebombed a second time - 6/13/51

1963 Symphony incident and community response. Community Relations Commission established. Citizens Group formed to lobby for Open Housing legislation and to continue informal work already begun by some Oak Parkers. Oak Park-River Forest Citizens Committee for Human Rights sponsors events to attract black residents.

1964 1st Congregrational Church forms a social action committee and organizes a meeting. 1st Presbyterian and St. Edmunds also active. Realtors Board becomes acticie in opposition and forms a "Forced Housing committee in opposition. There are 25 non-whites living in the village.

1966 Residence Corporation established by the Housing Authority, the Village board of Oak Park and the State Housing Board to deal with blighted single-family units.

1967-8 Two demographers (Anthony Downs and Pierre De Vise) predict full and rapid white flight from Oak Park.

1968 The West Side race riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Oak Park Fair Housing Ordinance passed (before the Federal law was passed.). First Tuesday is formed - a group of concerned women to lobby the village government to increase their efforts to integrate. The Community Relations Cititzens Commission is formed.

1970 U.S. Census indicates that there are 132 black residents in Oak Park

1971 Community Relations Department established (first in Illinois)

1971 Black families live in all elementary school districts - 65 housing units in all

1971-2 Resegregation of Austin Boulevard buildings

1972 Oak Park Housing Center established. The District 97 Board adopts its Policy on Human Dignity.

1973 The Village Board adopts its first Racial Diversity statement. The Village of Oak Park requires written leases for the first time. A film, "As Times Goes By: Oak Park, Illinois" is completed. It describes the pro-integration activities of the village 1st Diversity statement; village task force on housing is formed. Result of task force was the Residence Corporation begins to buy and rehab apartment buildings. And offer to manage other buildings. Also Equity Assurance program is created (instituted in 1978). A $1.5 million housing bond is issued to support mulit-family housing rehabilitation.

1973-79 Realtor co-operation, strong code enforcement, increase in size of police force, cul-de-sacs, block parties, Exchange Congress, Mills Park Towers and Oaks provide low cost housing for elderly, Residence Corporation buys first multi-family building.

1974 District 97 Board adopts its Policy Statement on Racial Balance. The "Committee for Tomorrow's Schools" is formed and later formulates a plan to create two junior high schools in order to racially balance the schools here

1976 District 97 inaugurates a racial balance plan which adjusts school boundaries. The Oak Park Village Hall relocates to the east portion of the village - a symbolic gesture to reassure those citizens who live in the east that no disinvestment is occurring. Oak Park wins the All-American City Award.

1977 Oak Park initiates and hosts the Oak Park Exchange Congress to share racial diversity concepts with other communities. Time and Newsweek cover Oak Park and the Housing Center.

1978 The Village of Oak Park adopts its Equity Assurance Ordinance

1984 The Village of Oak Park convenes the Racial Diversity Task Force

1984 Incentives Ordinances passed.

1985 Office of Diversity Assurance Programs established. District 97 convenes its Committee on School Enrollment Concerns which recommends that minority enrollment in Oak Park schools should all contain minority enrollment of no more than 7-10% different from any other village school

1987 District 97 changes school boundaries to promote racial balance in all schools

1991 District 97 adopts a diversity statement as part of a strategic planning process

1992 Supreme Court approves affirmative marketing. New Directions program established by Housing Center (now called Apartments West) to affirmative apartments of other suburbs to African Americans.

1993 Housing Center changes name to Oak Park Regional Housing Center

2000 The Village of Oak Park and District 97 jointly form the Commitment to Diversity Task Force, including its Housing, Education and Community Life Subcommittees

Note - These dates and events were borrowed from a variety of sources including 1995 Evaluation of the DAP Report , 1984 Diversity Task Force Report and Lee Brooke.

APPENDIX 3

THE RIGHT OF
ALL PEOPLE
LIVE WHERE
THEYCHOOSE

WE, THE undersigned residents of Oak Park and River Forest, believing in the essential oneness of humankind, and seeking to foster such unity in our communities, do hereby declare:

That we want residence in our Villages to be open to anyone interested in sharing our benefits and responsibilities, regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin.

That we believe in equal opportunity for all in the fields of education, business, and the professions, in harmony with constitutional guarantees of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;

That mutual understanding between people of diverse ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds can best be attained by an attitude of reciprocal good will and increased association;

That all citizens, in a spirit of justice, dignity, and kindness, should give serious consideration to the challenge that now faces all Americans in the achievement of brotherhood under God.

April 16, 1964

APPENDIX 4
OVERVIEW OF OAK PARK REGIONAL HOUSING CENTER

Practices and Programs

All of the practices of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center are rooted in fair housing considerations. The Housing Center seeks to correct a distortion in the housing market by helping to expand apartment seekers' choices. All too often whites look for housing only in an all-white neighborhood and African Americans in an all-black or racially diverse neighborhood. Our goal is to maintain a stable, integrated community. This is stated in our policy, given to each client in printed form (see below) when she or he registers at the Center. The pro-integrative moves the Housing Center promotes are those that end racial segregation in the housing market. In 1999, 562 1 clients registered for services.

OAK PARK REGIONAL HOUSING CENTER POLICY:

The policy of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center is to assist in achieving meaningful and lasting racial diversity in the west suburban Chicago area.

Clients are encouraged to consider the full range of housing opportunities -- especially those which contribute to racial diversity. Listings will be provided in keeping with this policy. The Center is a not-for-profit organization and does not own or control any housing. Other sources for apartment listings in this region include local newspapers, landlords and apartment search services. Under both local and federal laws, clients are free to pursue the housing of their choice.

Counseling: Clients are counseled and given listings which are consistent with the stated goals of the Center. Client needs and resources are addressed, information is provided about available apartments, their costs, and information about the community is provided. All clients (white, black, Asian, etc.) are given Oak Park listings. African American clients are offered additional help through our Apartments West program. In 1999, we counseled 2,411.2 white clients-, 2,372 black clients, 267 Asian, 210 Hispanic. 265 other, 86 interracial. Of those who moved to Oak Park (1,419), 57% were white, 27% African American, 6% Asian American, 9% other groups, and 1% biracial. In 1999 over 30,000 listings were given.

Escorting: We provide escorts to buildimgs in Oak Park which are already racially diverse. Escorting takes white clients to view choices they might not otherwise consider. Apartments West provides a parallel escorting service for African American clients -- to consider options they might not otherwise consider in the western suburbs. This service helps to counteract the steering and self-steering that still occurs. For example, those within and outside Oak Park continue to discourage whites from living on Austin Boulevard. African Americans are told Oak Park is their only "comfortable" choice. We have clients working in the western suburbs who like the option of living closer to their employment. In 1999, there were about 300 escorted moves to Oak Park; 42 for Apartments West.

Apartments West: This is a wholly voluntary program designed to expand options for African American clients in 45 western suburbs. Due to steering (by outside forces) these choices might not otherwise be considered viable options by our clients. In 1999, a total of 972 clients registered for Apartments West. Total moves for this program were 73.

Listings: The Housing Center works closely with building owners and managers to assure high quality housing for clients of all races. We are constantly approaching owners to expand the number of listings available to our clients and to encourage them to use our services.

Appendix 5
A SAMPLE OF HOUSING CENTER ADS

1. 1982 Ms. Magazine

2. New Republic early 1970s

3. Chicago Herald 1972

Appendix 6
Fair Housing Considerations
Diversity Assurance Program and Housing Center Counseling

Legal Landscape

04/16/00

Summary: Race-conscious pro-integration counseling, and listings are permissible so long as they expand information and opportunities, and do not have the effect of closing off particular housing opportunities for people of a particular race.

HUD Affirmative Marketing reptations. Require developers who receive federal -subsidies for their developments to create and implement an affirmative marketing program. The goal is to ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that all racial groups will be made aware of, and will compete for, particular housing opportunities. If the circumstances warrant, special out-reach may be conducted to persons of any racial group, including whites. An affirmative marketing plan has two key components

· Identify the racial group(s) that would not normally be expected to be attracted to the housing.

· Design special outreach efforts, targeted to t