Oak Park is considering its first public-housing project. CHA, eat your heart out. It’s a do-over of a Madison Street building rented out by Comcast for many years until Comcast moved to greener pastures in DuPage County — taxes, you know, range of employees to choose from, security, etc., we presume.
That left a big empty building a block west of Oak Park Avenue, 6800–plus West, a low-hanging fruit to be picked by Catholic Charities and others on which to develop something for low-income people. It’s to be a concentration of such, hence a good old-fashioned public-housing project such as was criticized in a 1996 report:
Although scattered-site public housing has been promoted as an alternative to large projects that concentrate poverty and problems, little systematic information is available about its characteristics and performance. However, Scattered-Site Housing: Characteristics and Consequences, by James Hogan, fills this gap with an important synthesis of survey data, secondary data, and case studies, describing scattered-site as “a demonstrably better housing choice for families than concentrated high-density projects.” [Italics added]
In fact, did not that experiment die quite a while ago, in favored of scattered site public housing for low-income people, otherwise known as Section 8? Not in the minds of some advocates for low-income people, who see no problem in putting them in a building just for them.
The village plan commission has found no problem with it. The two dissenters (of eight commissioners) had a problem with parking, a tried-and-true issue that says nothing about social engineering — “the murky tenant profile,” for instance — but a lot about traffic engineering.
It will come before the village board — for not quite half of which there’s an election coming up April 5 — on May 16. Five of seven trustees have to approve overturning the Plan Commission. (Italics added) None of the five candidates running for three trustee positions say how they would vote on the matter.
This is wild. Election time, and they won’t say? Love us or leave us, they are saying, regardless of this issue.
Blithe Spirit 
Jim, I have been following this story for a number of months, thanks to your links. Your title perfectly captures the character of what is going on.
One of your earlier links was to a January 21 story in OakPark.com, where the discussion section left no doubt in my mind about what was up. Supporters of the plan were repeatedly caught by other commenters lying about the character of the program, saying now that it was for old people, now that it was for young people from the community just starting out, now that it was for the handicapped, oh, the money would all be private, so shut up, and it hasn’t even been filled yet, and it could work! One anonymous promoter was caught lying about his previous posts. I suspect at least one supporter of using a sockpuppet (Tax Payer: “Last time I checked, OP crime is WAAAAAAAAYYYY Down!”; OPer: “Sorry bigots and racists, but crime is DOWN in OP.”). And when all else failed, they started with the race-baiting. Only a racist would oppose the project. A “gay and lesbian” member of the board supports it, and I stand with her. So, if you oppose it, you’re not only a “racist,” but a “homophobe.”
To my mind, the lies and vindictiveness of its supporters are all you need to know about the plan.
I made a post (see bottom), and left it at that. Someone else then cited me.
Opponents were emphasizing, “I’m not a bigot,” but I think people have to stop doing that. If you’ve lived in and contributed to a community for years, you don’t have to be tolerant of hostile strangers. You have a right to be as bigoted as you goddamn please.
I have no question that the promoters of this housing project seek to destroy Oak Park. This has already been done to thousands of communities in this country over the past 50 years, so it’s not like there’s some lack of knowledge where we should roll the dice, because of the possible benefits. There are no benefits to the community.
So, are the supporters from outside the community? Are community supporters planning to sell and leave by the time the project opens up? How many of the supporters stand to make money through social services or working with the “non-profit” builders?
The notion that the supporters might be starry-eyed idealists, I’ll leave to the phony “scholars” and “journalists.”
Call me simple-minded, but since there is no mystery as to what this will do to Oak Park, which already appears to be besieged by racist black thugs, I can only see its supporters as motivated by evil.
Unfortunately, as we have learned over the past 50 years of American history, there are people who get their jollies by helping to destroy wonderful communities, and turn them into dens of iniquity.
Once the wheels start turning with a plan like this one, all sorts of wonderful things start happening. In formerly crime-free neighborhoods, vandalism, muggings, robberies, rapes and murders become routine. And scatter-site housing has the same result.
Social scientists have a euphemism for the racial cleansing I just referred to: “neighborhood succession.”
Once most of the whites have left, every day becomes hell for the white holdouts. Blacks just go into elderly whites’ homes in broad daylight and ransack them, threatening to murder the owners, if they go the police. White widows get raped and murdered by teenagers in the most grisly fashion. I call these crimes “left-behind murders.”
Nicholas Stix from New York City
Posted: Saturday, January 22nd, 2011 05:14 PM
The best-version-of-ourselfers who rabidly support this project are using deceit and moral intimidation: The project, er, structure, ‘would house our kids and people just like them from Oak Park, and only a vicious racist would care, anyway.’ The building would not be home to folks like you. As one commenter noted, HUD doesn’t do that. Each occupant would not only be poor, but so dependent and dysfunctional as to require his own personal social worker. Including HUD’s involvement, that’s three red flags right there. You are guaranteed to get exclusively the worst of the worst.
adele from OP
Posted: Sunday, January 23rd, 2011 06:21 AM
@OPer – take a deep breath plz and stop channeling rosie o’donnel. Nick Stix from NYC has it just right…moral intimidation is at play – red flags should cause pause. Those who oppose are not (all) bigots etc. It is right to question how a concrete ghetto, where each tenant needs a personal social worker, will impact the community. There are only so many seats on the lifeboat before it starts to sink.
Tom MacMillan from Oak Park
Posted: Sunday, January 23rd, 2011 10:37 AM
A project that can only happen if all sorts of rules get changed and then can only house tenants if someone else (taxpayers) is paying / subsidizing their rent for them sounds like something that was not meant to happen in the first place. This is a really bad idea and it shouldn’t happen.
A. Parent
Posted: Monday, January 24th, 2011 11:38 AM
Speaking from experience, in my 30s I worked for inadequate pay in non profit sector which qualified me for HUD housing. Since it was what I could afford, I rented an apt.in a complex for almost two years. The on- site mngr. screened renters and did a good job managing. However, sharing hallways with psychos, ex cons, gang bangers and sex offenders proved to be downright dangerous. There’s no way to regulate paramours and visitors. I broke my lease, lost my secuity deposit and moved out.
Dutch Elm
Posted: Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 11:43 AM
Sorry, Oak Park has suceeded as a diverse MIDDLE CLASS community. If you can pay the freight, you’re in. Those Middle Class VALUES have helped keep the community stable. The truth now apparent, after much apparent obfuscation is that the tenants will be deeply disfunctional indivuduals, largly dependant on the state. To the intellectual hacks who keep changing the discussion to deflect the reality of the facts, I say: SHAME ON YOU!
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