This summer HUD will be reinstituting its rule on the Affirmative Furthering of Fair Housing. The rule will require all government recipients of HUD funds — like the village of Oak Park and the Oak Park Housing Authority — to increase their efforts to promote racially integrated and equitably resourced communities.
This enhancement of a rule that was unenforced under the Trump administration includes a greater emphasis on meaningful actions, community engagement, and measurable outcomes. It also provides a private enforcement mechanism for the first time. Fair housing advocates across the nation are generally favorable about the new direction as it pivots HUD’s focus from analysis to progress.
This pivot is clear from the rule’s requirements regarding the “equity plans” that all government recipients will be required to create every five years and report on annually. Those plans require government recipients to address residential integration, concentrations of poverty, significant disparities in where services are provided, geographic disparities in the siting of affordable housing, equitable investments in infrastructure, and public policies that might impede equity and integration.
Of course, in Oak Park we have a head start on the rest of the nation. One might even wonder if the rule was based on the Oak Park Strategy. Stakeholders in our community have long understood that residential integration is fundamental to ensuring a welcoming, equitable, and prosperous community.
As such, village government has consistently supported the operations of the Housing Center, incentivized landlords to participate in fair housing activities, established an equitable infrastructure improvement schedule, and supported affordable housing development. Likewise, the Housing Authority has prioritized housing choice vouchers as its primary mechanism for subsidizing low-income household rents. Vouchers provide a wider choice of housing options that reduce concentrations of poverty.
Other local bodies not receiving HUD funds have also taken important actions. The park district invests equitably in our public spaces and has sited community centers in ways that enhance neighborhood equity. District 97 has demonstrated a continuous effort to ensure integrated and equitable schools.
Thanks to the Oak Park Strategy, no other community can demonstrate as great and persistent a commitment to promoting residential racial integration as Oak Park. But as the HUD rule indicates and research supports, residential integration, and the equity it fosters, requires continuous effort to sustain. We might be well ahead of the rest of the nation, but we still have a long way to go on the path to our ideals.
The rule is an affirmation that multiracial residential integration is the foundational structure for providing equitable systems in our communities. Just as HUD has recommitted to these principles, we in Oak Park can as well.
The Housing Center welcomes your participation in the Oak Park Strategy. Please consider volunteering and donating to the Housing Center so that we can continue our role in promoting and improving residential integration in Oak Park. We also welcome you to hear more about this work at a presentation we are co-hosting with the Oak Park Public Library this Saturday, April 29 at 2 p.m., in the Veterans Room of the Main Branch, 834 Lake St.
This moment offers an opportunity to reestablish our commitment to our core values. Doing so, will allow us to fulfil the promise of a welcoming, equitable, and prosperous community for all.
Athena Williams is executive director of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center.