Oak Park passed its first zoning ordinance in 1921 and made race-based housing segregation a key part of its culture from then until passing the Fair Housing Ordinance in 1968. This includes hiring Harland Bartholomew to rewrite our zoning code in 1946.
Bartholomew was one of the fathers of “Urban Renewal” or “Negro Removal” as James Baldwin famously put it. He traveled the country implementing exclusionary zoning ordinances – including extended stops in Oak Park and River Forest.
As a result of that initial zoning ordinance, the construction of middle housing here crashed – going from 13 buildings per year from 1858 to 1924, all the way down to seven, total, from 1970 to 2025.
Why is this important? Everything follows housing – including integration.
Oak Park replaced the multifamily housing type that was most readily integrated into its single-family home neighborhoods with apartment buildings that were zoned to exist mainly along the commercial corridors. Over time, that created a perception that Oak Park’s character was defined by single-family neighborhoods with apartments along the main streets. But that’s not the reality.
Our neighborhoods still contain a much more diverse mix of housing, thanks to the significant amount that survives from our pre-zoning construction boom.
The surviving housing exists on blocks scattered across the village – including some blocks that are a mix of middle housing (2-6 units), single-family housing, and bigger apartment buildings (7+ units), while others are mainly single-family housing or multifamily. This diversity allows us to run a demographic comparison across three types of Oak Park blocks using 2020 block-level Census data.
Single-family home blocks – where single-family homes make up at least 90% of the housing.
Middle-housing blocks – where at least half of the housing is in 2-6 unit multifamily homes.
Apartment blocks – where at least 90% of homes are in multifamily buildings.
On single-family home blocks, Black residents make up only 10% of the population (against 18.7% village-wide). On apartment blocks, Black residents make up 30%.
On middle-housing blocks, Black residents make up 31%, three times the representation of single-family home blocks.
On those same middle-housing blocks, white residents make up 45%, Hispanic residents make up 11% (their highest representation among the three block types), and Asian, mixed-race, and residents of other races make up 13%, also their highest representation among the three block types.
Middle-housing blocks aren’t just the blocks with the highest percentage of Black residents; they are our most integrated blocks in general.
Sadly, they are also the category with the fewest blocks – only 34 blocks in the village meet the middle-housing criteria, compared to 468 blocks of single-family housing. Make no mistake, this wasn’t preference – it was policy.
It’s why we started with the history. It’s why we included the first chart. Oak Park banned middle housing from its neighborhoods in 1921 – a decision that baked 1920s segregation into the very foundation of our neighborhoods decades before the Fair Housing Ordinance was ever written in 1968. A century later, we’re still living with the segregation it locked in.
But we can change that because we can change the zoning code. The Shape Oak Park zoning reform proposal is designed to create middle-housing blocks.
Wait. That’s wrong. Let me get this right.
The Shape Oak Park zoning reform is designed to create integration by creating middle-housing blocks.
It picks up where “managed integration” and the Fair Housing Ordinance of 1968 left off. It helps us create a village integrated all the way down to its building blocks. And it shows that we care – not just about the experiences of the majority, but everyone else as well.
So when I’m asked, what has exclusionary zoning cost Oak Park? The answer is one word: integration. In 2026, it’s time we stop paying this debt.
Cory Wesley is an Oak Park village trustee.