Chicago suburb, Evanston plans to pay qualifying Black residents reparations of $25,000
A city outside of Chicago has been making a historic move in creating equality in America becoming the first city in the United States to fund reparations for its Black residents. However, some residents say it doesn’t go far enough to be reparations. Evanston, which just north of Chicago, voted to approve a groundbreaking measure in 2019 when the city announced it would compensate Black residents to address the wealth and opportunity gaps they have been subjected to.
The used community donations and money collected from a 3 percent tax on the sale of recreational cannabis, to create a reparations fund and pledged to distribute $10 million over 10 years according to NBC News. Since that time Evanston officials have been putting together a plan to disburse the funds, they decided that the first $400,000 will be spent on addressing housing needs.
The City Council is expected to vote on the issue on March 22.While cit officials prepare to move forward with a vote on the first phase of disbursements, some residents say more work is needed for the plan to be true reparations.
“Reparations is the most appropriate legislative response to the historic practices and the contemporary conditions of the Black community. And although many of the anti-Black policies have been outlawed, many remain embedded in policy, including zoning and other government practices,” said Robin Rue Simmons, an alderman in Evanston’s 5th Ward.
“We are in a time in history where this nation more broadly has not only the will and awareness of why reparations is due, but the heart to advance it,” Simmons said.
Under the program’s first phase, qualifying residents will get $25,000 to use toward homeownership, home improvement and mortgage assistance, Simmons said. To qualify, residents must either have lived in or been a direct descendant of a Black person who lived in Evanston between 1919 to 1969 who suffered discrimination in housing because of city ordinances, policies or practices. Evanston passed a fair housing ordinance in 1969, redlining and overt discriminatory housing practices were evident for years afterward.
At the time real estate brokers put together a practice of informal racial zoning by treating a section of west Evanston as open to African Americans while excluding them from the rest of town, historian Morris “Dino” Robinson told the Evanston Roundtable.
Many Evanston banks also refused to lend money to Black people to buy homes on blocks that were not viewed as “acceptable” for them. White homeowners recorded racially restrictive covenants that provided that their homes “shall not be conveyed, leased to, or occupied by anyone not a Caucasian,” he said.
If the housing reparations is approved, residents could have reparations benefits as soon as early summer Simmons said.
However, a group within the city has come together says it opposes the program in its current iteration and has been pushing back against the vote.
The group, called Evanston Rejects Racist Reparations, said in a Facebook post that the “current bill proposed by the city of Evanston never went through a racial equality, anti-capitalist process. As a result, historically racist financial institutions like banks, corporations and various individuals, will profit from this proposal. Reparations should not be monetized.”
The post added “We are demanding a name change to the current proposal. The current proposal is inherently anti-Black, and we reject this bill as any form or reparations.”
An organizer with the group, Sebastian Nalls, a former mayoral candidate, says while no one in the group opposes the idea of reparations, they do take issue with this particular program.
“This is not fully in scope and fully beneficial to the Black community,” he said. “Reparations is not just payment towards individuals that have been targeted by inequalities, but it’s also proving the harm that took place will not take place again and ensuring that more harm will not be caused.”