These are perilous days at the Oak Park Regional Housing Center.
Oak Park’s village government, which has partnered with the Housing Center and supported it financially since its founding 52 years ago, is debating whether to continue funding it, a result of the nonprofit agency’s financial missteps — mismanagement, not malfeasance.
Back in 1972, the Housing Center was Oak Park’s most audacious effort to intentionally nurture a racially diverse housing market at a time when integrated communities simply did not exist in America.
Read that back. In the early 1970s, there were no racially integrated communities anywhere in the United States. There were neighborhoods in rapid transition from being all white to being all Black. There were a handful of suburbs, such as Evanston, that had a Black community fully segregated from the majority white community.
But there were no villages or towns which chose, which consciously acted, to become integrated racially. Oak Park, facing the block-by-block resegregation of the West Side, made that bold choice. The Housing Center was founded to maintain white housing demand, especially for the 50% of housing units in Oak Park that were apartments. The goal, effectively, was to steer white apartment seekers toward apartments on Austin Boulevard and Washington Boulevard while urging Black people toward apartments on Maple Avenue or Harlem.
Controversial? Yes. Effective? Yes.
That program, now called Live in Oak Park, has continued over the decades. There have been legitimate questions about how the effort has adapted, or not, to the online apartment rental world. It will now be shut down, given the elimination of Oak Park funding, says Athena Williams, the agency’s director.
Here’s the core issue: It is easy to take Oak Park’s racial integration for granted. But that is a mistake. Oak Park is strong and it is fragile. There are still forces at work that discourage integration, and Oak Park needs a steady effort to respond.
We understand the village’s deliberation, although the village is not blameless in this rolling debacle. But where is the conversation about intentional support for diversity and integration? Just as the Housing Center must do some soul-searching, so must the village board. What efforts will Oak Park stand behind in 2024 to maintain and grow this core aspect of our community life?