The fight over a low-income housing development in Chicago`s Kenwood community may get bogged down in the city`s council wars, but the issue is much more sensitive and complicated than the usual 29 vs. 21 spitting match.
Like Hyde Park, its neighbor to the south, Kenwood is racially and economically integrated. Like Hyde Park, it has a core of long-term, devoted residents–black as well as white. You can count the number of Chicago neighborhoods fitting that description on the fingers of one hand, maybe with a finger or two left over. That`s why the battle erupted.
A developer with a good track record plans to restore two abandoned apartment buildings in Kenwood. No problem with that. But all 48 units would be federally subsidized, guaranteeing that all the residents would be low-income. And, given the population pressures in surrounding areas, it`s likely that nearly all would be black. That makes it convenient to pin a ”racist”
label on the Kenwood residents who object to the project, even though they`re as mixed a lot as the neighborhood itself. And when Ald. Edward Vrdolyak decided that his city council neighborhoods committee should hold a hearing on the matter, the project`s opponents got trapped in the tiresome City Hall battle.
The Kenwood dissenters should be heard, and they don`t deserve to be smeared as bigots or as pawns in the Washington-Vrdolyak games. They have worked for years to maintain a racial and economic mix in their community. They didn`t run away from problems of rundown housing or crime or poor schools, but stayed and struggled to make things better. And they have good reason to be concerned about upsetting the fragile balance they`ve achieved.
The 48 units on two blocks in Kenwood would not, by themselves, upset that balance. But they`re not isolated happenings. Time after time, public agencies charged with furthering integration and the private developers they subsidize have refused to look beyond Chicago`s smattering of racially and economically mixed neighborhoods. The big stretches of all-black, all-poor areas are largely off limits because of court orders or financial
considerations. The big stetches of all-white, mostly nonpoor neighborhoods are off limits because public officials and private developers don`t want to deal with the hassles involved.
So, in return for their openness, the few communities that have welcomed low-income minority residents could lose the stability they`ve managed to attain.
There certainly is a need for more decent, affordable housing for people who are black and poor. Plenty of sites are available throughout the city for small, scattered developments. They should not be targeted on the few communities trying to prove that racial and economic integration can work. If that practice continues, the communities will lose their case and the city will be poorer.
