Jody Mancera, manager of Glendale Terrace Apartments in Hanover Park, said there often is a cultural gap between her tenants, most of whom are Hispanic, and other residents in town.
But beginning in August, the village and the Tri-Village United Way will embark on a program to help bridge that gap.
A combination mini-police station and social service agency, called the Neighborhood Resource Center, will open in Apartment 5 at 2380 Glendale Ter.
Police, including crime prevention and community service officers, will spend 52 hours a week in the Resource Center, officials said. The eight owners of the 216-unit Glendale Terrace Apartments, north of Lake Street and Walnut Avenue, donated the apartment for the Resource Center.
Staffing the Resource Center will cost the police department approximately $64,000, about 2 percent of police salaries, officials said.
But the expenditure makes sense because 4 percent of all police calls currently go to the complex, Chief Robert Sauer said.
The police hope to develop a rapport with residents by seeing them regularly in a relaxed setting, instead of encountering them only during tense situations, village officials said. It is an approach that is also being tried in Rolling Meadows.
”You got to let people know we`re not dictators. We want to hear their problems. We want to solve their problems,” said Village Trustee Irv Bock.
”You can`t ignore someone because they can`t speak English.”
About 90 percent of the residents are Hispanic, including many Mexican immigrants working as landscapers, construction workers and factory workers, Mancera said.
Police help is welcomed by residents, but with some reservations.
”Before they gain the trust of anybody it`s going to take a while,” said Glendale Terrace tenant Jan McKay.
The violent gang crime that has afflicted some neighborhoods in nearby Elgin is largely absent at Glendale Terrace, police and residents say.
Still, residents said police help is needed to curb the public drunkenness and occasional fights that erupt some nights.
The establishment of the Resource Center will not be the first time Hanover Park has tried to help the neighborhood.
In an effort that Bock now calls a failure, the village used a combination of federal grants and private money to rehabilitate the apartments in the early 1980s.
This year, the village will invest more money, but this time the investment will be in the people of Glendale Terrace, not bricks and mortar.
Joining the police in providing services at the Resource Center are 15 local charitable organizations and units of government. They will pay for classes in homemaking, English, driving, tenants` rights, tutoring for children, job placement services and a clothing and food pantry for the needy. Especially welcome will be English classes, residents said. Gustavo Lopez, a landscaper who has lived at Glendale Terrace for nearly four years, said immigrants know that English fluency means higher-paying jobs.
