EDITORIAL

The City Should Extend The Affordability Period and Recapture Grants Made Under Its HOME Grant Program

In the last four years, the City of Evanston has approved HOME grants totaling approximately $2.7 million to subsidize nine housing projects containing a total of 33 condominium units, townhouses or homes. The average grant per housing unit is about $80,000.

In the case of grants of $40,000 or more made through the federal HOME program, HUD regulations require a city to recapture the grant or to impose a resale restriction on the subsidized property for a minimum of 15 years, referred to as the "affordability" or "control" period. The 15-year period is a minimum; cities are allowed to impose a longer affordability period.

During the affordability period, if the original homeowners decide to sell the subsidized home, they must sell it to a qualified household at a price that remains affordable to a reasonable range of low-income buyers. The home thus remains affordable during that period, and the public continues to benefit from the grant. After the affordability period expires, however, the subsidized home may be sold in the open market at a market price. A HUD representative told the RoundTable that after the affordability period expires, the City may allow the owner to keep the proceeds of the sale, including the equity attributable to the HOME grant. Alternatively, the City may require the owner of the subsidized home to repay the HOME grant to the City.

The City of Evanston has generally set the affordability period under its HOME grant program at the minimum or close to the minimum period required under federal regulations. The affordability period set for 32 of the 33 units subsidized over the last four years has been 15 to 20 years. After the affordability period expires on these 32 units, the units will no longer be in the pool of the City's affordable housing units; and under the City's policy, the City will not recapture any portion of the HOME grants made for those units. The average grant per unit is about $80,000. The City is in essence making a gift averaging $80,000 to the owners of these units.

We think the City should change its policy with respect to HOME grants which exceed $40,000. First, the City should extend the affordability period to the maximum - rather than the minimum - period permitted by the law. This would enable the City to preserve a larger pool of affordable housing units in the City. Second, the City should recapture the HOME grant if the subsidized home is resold at market prices after the affordability period expires. This would enable the City to put those dollars to use to develop additional affordable housing units in the future.

John Emmeus Davis, research fellow with the National Housing Institute and author of the report Shared Equity Ownership, told the RoundTable, "Cities cannot afford - and cannot justify - allowing precious resources and scarce subsidies to be lost after 15 years." We agree. We see no reason why a sizeable public grant to create affordable housing should turn into a gift to a private individual, rather than continue to benefit the public's interest in affordable housing.

Can We Talk?

By Charles Wilkinson

"Enough already," I have heard others say about the issue of racism in the presidential campaigns. "There are other problems that are far more pressing: the economy, the war, immigration, healthcare, world hunger, global warming, you name it. Our next president, whether female, Afro-American or same-old-same old-male and white, will have an overloaded agenda as it is." No lie there. But racism has been an issue through the ages and there is no way our next president can ignore it, since it permeates most of the other issues as well.

Racism has forever been a part of the human experience and will undoubtedly continue to be so. But that does not mean it should not be named, talked about and confronted both on national and local levels.

As an issue racism is not unfamiliar to Evanston and these pages. Over a year ago, the editor of the RoundTable called for a dialogue on the problem, realizing that change, a catchword in current campaign rhetoric, happens more realistically at the local level. A personally honest letter from Candace Hill tried to jump-start such a dialogue in these pages, and this column offered some guidelines. But not much else came of the editor's call.

Like it or not, however, the issue is alive and, well, in our faces every day - which is not all bad. If anything, Senator Obama's campaign has raised the level of consciousness in all of us about the problem, uncomfortable though it may be. The level of dialogue is another matter.

To talk about racism requires awareness, sensitivity and honesty. Any dialogue about the issue lacking any one of these will be a waste of time. All three demand a commitment and a level of risk-taking without which nothing can happen. But there also needs to be a willingness, if not an urgency, to talk.

It is too convenient to think that racism in self (and to some extent it is in all of us) is about the color of an other's skin, or ethnicity when actually it is about the size of one's own mind. That is why the beginning of a willingness to talk about it is the acceptance of differences among us. It is also too convenient to think that racism is one-sided, that it is someone else's problem when in fact it belongs to all of us.

"Can we talk?" is not a simple question. "Will we?" seems to be the real challenge.

I do not think I am off-base by repeating the RoundTable's invitation of early last year to voice your opinions and concerns in its pages. Politically, the time will never be riper.

Bigotry and Bullying

By Peggy Tarr

A bigot, as defined by Webster's dictionary, is "a narrow-minded person who is intolerant of other creeds, opinions, races, etc., that differs from one's own." Bigotry is defined as "the actions, beliefs, prejudices, etc., of a bigot." What Webster's definition does not touch on is the fact that bigotry can be directed against members of one's own group - e.g., women who are bigoted against other women.

A bully, as defined by Webster, is "a person who hurts, frightens, or browbeats those who are smaller or weaker." A Chicago paper recently had an article on office bullies (RedEye April 21) that categorized a variety of bullying tactics. Since bullies and bigots frequently employ the same methods, either label may be appropriate for the perpetrators.

I witnessed a Caucasian woman bully several women of color under her supervision in a workplace. Several other Caucasian women in that workplace were horrified to witness this blatant bigoted, bullying behavior. One of these women even overheard the bigoted bully (=BB) boasting about her victimization of one of these women with another bully in the office. Was anything done about BB? Of course not. If a company's philosophy is based on bigotry and bullying, why would it do anything about its BBs other than promote them to higher positions? And that's what happened. BB was promoted. The women of color who were bullied as well as the Caucasian women who were horrified by the bullying left the company. As one woman who left said, "You just decide that nothing is going to change, so you might as well leave." Now if we do some simple math, it doesn't take much to figure out that if more people leave a company because of their intolerance to bigotry and bullying, the greater the concentration of people left in the company that tolerate or even perpetrate bigotry and bullying. I understand why people decide to leave dysfunctional companies/organizations. On the other hand, just as in the Civil Rights movement(s), somebody has to take a stand, and sometimes companies (stockholders) see the evil of the company's ways when a major lawsuit is filed against them or their dysfunctional activities are made public.

The perpetual question in my mind is why do people want to bully others? Without consulting papers on this subject by psychologists and sociologists, I assume that bullies (like bigots) are so unhappy with themselves for whatever reason that they decide to pick on others. Acting out one's bigotry and bullying are both dysfunctional displays of power. When an attractive woman once asked me why I thought a coworker picked on her, I flippantly replied that the unattractive woman that picked on her probably got angry whenever she saw herself in a mirror. ("Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all?" The mirror would break into pieces.) All jokes aside, if a person has no substance (solid quality), bigotry and bullying prevail.

Letters to the Editor

‘Crown Evanston History Center' Would Be Acceptable
Editor:

In telling the Evanston History Center that it needs to vacate the Dawes House by next summer, Northwestern University said that it had "other priorities" for the $4 million that would be needed to install new ventilation and sprinkler systems.

I guess by "other priorities" they must mean projects along the lines of the Crown Sports Pavilion, Norris Aquatic Center, Ryan Field or the proposed Music Administration Building. These are all nice to have, and prestigious, but none are as essential to Evanston as the Evanston History Center and its relationship with Dawes House.

I think that at this point, it would be appropriate for one or more of the alumni with deep pockets who has been willing to give to other NU projects in the past to step forward and donate the money to cover whatever repairs and upgrades are needed in order for the EHC to be able to remain in the Dawes House. Money could also be donated to establish a fund to cover future repairs and maintenance. Perhaps there could be naming rights involved -- could there be a Crown Evanston History Center or a Ryan Evanston Historical Society? This is not an ideal scenario, but it's better than the alternative of kicking the EHC out of the Dawes House and Northwestern selling the house to a private party.

Since Northwestern obviously places so little value on the EHC and its relationship with Dawes House, perhaps there is an even better alternative to propose to potential donors: Donate money directly to the EHC so it can buy the property from Northwestern, make the necessary repairs and upgrades and establish a fund to cover future repairs and maintenance. That takes Northwestern out of the picture entirely and would probably be the best long-term scenario for the EHC.
--Lisa Dimberg

A Visitor's Impression
Editor:

I have just returned to Florida from a short visit to your interesting, attractive and seemingly prosperous town, but I am not exaggerating when I judge your road surfaces to be among the worst I have ever seen in the United States. Their dilapidated and dangerous conditions stand in stark contrast to Evanston's handsome residences and up-scale shops.

One wonders what the priorities of your town's infrastructure maintenance departments are; how much longer can the roads be neglected before they result in serious damage to the cars trying to navigate them? I have driven in numerous Chicago suburbs but have seldom seen roads needing such extensive repair as those in Evanston. I would be surprised to hear there have been no complaints from residents.
--Anthony Skey

Blake Remake
Editor:

Tower, tower, soaring sight,
In a forest of less height;
Whose amoral hand we'd see
Framed this awful symmetry?
-- Robert Bagby

St. Francis Believes in ‘Health-Care Coverage for Everyone'
Editor:

At Saint Francis Hospital and Resurrection Health Care, we believe we have a special responsibility to improve the health and well-being of the communities we serve, both inside and outside the hospital. That is why we are constantly working to identify unmet community needs and develop programs and services to address those needs.

Saint Francis Hospital and Resurrection Health Care support and participate in the annual "Cover the Uninsured Week" campaign to help raise awareness of the plight of uninsured persons. Our charity care programs, financial assistance programs and eight accessible, affordable community clinics are dedicated to helping the underserved. Our commitment to improving the health and well-being of the community is integral to our mission, values and guiding principles.

Health-care coverage for everyone should be a priority for all of us.

If our communities are not healthy, life paths are unforgivably altered - and so is the path of our nation. In support of Cover the Uninsured Week and our mission at Resurrection Health Care, we ask that you please write a letter to elected officials, asking them to make health-care coverage a priority.

Visit www.reshealth.org/covertheuninsured for further details and to write your letter online.
Regards,
--Jeffrey Murphy, CEO
Saint Francis Hospital

NCLB As Yet Another Distraction
Editor:

Your comprehensive story on District 65's consideration of ways to revise No Child Left Behind (April 2) reveals the act's limitations as well an any detailed statistical analysis can - the act forces well-funded, purposefully managed schools, staffed and administered by competent professionals, to divert time and resources into complying with its details, few if any of which enhance their effectiveness as educators.

In addition, arguing over the intentions of these details diverts the community's attention from the real challenges our schools face. As a prominent historian argued recently, our schools are not failing our society. Our society is failing our schools.

A story my mother tells of the country school she attended is instructive here - the teacher would stop a lunchtime ballgame when the farm boys used poor English. Today, the most careful English I get in a community college course I teach is from immigrants - in this case, from Africa and Eastern Europe.

Neither students nor teachers are "dressing for success," as advised in a popular book a decade or so ago. That aside, maintaining order saps teachers' energy for addressing their academic responsibilities. But are not standards for dress, decorum, and language a community responsibility?

Instead, we have NCLB, which - to borrow a locution from Barack Obama's March 18 speech - is little more than a distraction. Some believe that it is honestly intended to improve student performance. But what it really does is punish schools for not providing what only parents and communities can offer.

Cynics say the act is also about destroying our public school system - conservatives tried for decades to demolish the Department of Education, until with the aid of the Bush Administration they discovered how it could be used to siphon public funds into private hands.

For example - last spring when I was teaching in a local school, a trio of young people arrived at my classroom door. They were there to tutor, but they had no one to report to, no instructions, and no students; however, they were part of an NCLB-required improvement plan. Schools are to hire outside tutors on the assumption that regular teachers are too inept to do it. This story came to mind one day last week when a young man told me of his misadventure as a tutor at a "failing" school in Chicago.

"We had no idea what we were doing," he said. "We were assigned 10 children, but we did not know what we were to be tutoring them in." Further, and not surprisingly, they had little assistance from the school's regular staff. "We were being paid $50 an hour. So can you imagine what the firm that got the contract was pulling in?"

Whether one believes in NCLB's stated goals or not, one must admit that it is a huge consumer of time. Evanston Township High School, which since long before the act was passed has been endeavoring to lessen performance differences among subgroups, must now divert attention to a "restructuring" plan.

One reason it's in that position is that we, as a community, have abrogated some of our responsibilities. Urbanist Jane Jacobs's argument about "the eyes on the street" - the grandmothers sitting on front stoops monitoring neighborhood activity - pertains here. Instead of muttering under our breath when we see counterproductive behavior by our young people, perhaps we should collectively say "enough already." And tell our legislators that NCLB is not in need of revision but redirection.

The act's predecessor - the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 - was enacted because too many school districts were being deliberately slow in providing equal education for all. That situation no longer pertains, at least in communities like Evanston. We may need a paradigm shift here - back to more local responsibility and control.

John Dewey wrote a century ago that democracy must be reborn each generation - and education is its midwife. By abrogating some of our individual and collective responsibilities to that next generation, are we also undermining our democracy?
--Connie Goddard, Ph.D.

Sign Pollution
Editor:

I find it very interesting that, for a group that cares deeply about their community, there is absolutely no consciousness regarding the visual pollution that keeps finding its way into people's front yards.

The pollution -- signs. Ibrahim, Ibrahim for Citizen, Out of Iraq, Support Our Troops, No Tower.

Just my opinion, and not slighting anyone's particular political view or stance on anything.

I am just tired of seeing signs in our beautifully appointed neighborhoods.
--Dan Bloedorn

Evanston City Council Passes Upside-Down Ordinance
Editor:

On March 24, eight of the nine Evanston aldermen voted to pass Ordinance 42-O-08, relating to the registration of rental residence buildings. The only alderman voting against the ordinance was Anjana Hansen of the Ninth Ward.

This is a very bad ordinance because it provides almost no net revenue, it takes away a right that property owners had when they purchased their property, it discriminates in the manner in which building codes are enforced, and the cost of the ordinance is disproportionately allocated to the wrong building owners.

The ordinance is designed to provide gross revenue of approximately $124,000 annually. However, there will be additional administrative costs and possibly an additional inspector that will reduce or completely eliminate any net benefit of the ordinance. Therefore, now that the registration fee has been put in place, the ability to raise the fee as needed is very easy to accommodate. The aldermen gave no intention of anything other than future increases to the registration fee when asked that question by a concerned citizen.

For a small amount of money that will have no material impact on the City's budget crisis, the Council has stripped away a basic right that has been enjoyed for as long as this City has been in existence. That is the right for each property owner to govern his or her own property. This ordinance takes away your right to rent your property without first asking the City if it is OK with them. Now rest assured, for a "small fee," paid annually, you will be able to "buy back" that right, every year. This is a right that all former property-owners enjoyed as a simple matter of ownership, not an annual permission requested.

The City nicely packages the ordinance within its duty to "protect the public heath, safety and welfare of its residents." However, it is only using this ordinance to protect a very small subset of its residents. In fact, the subset that makes up the rental residents is thoroughly protected by the very comprehensive Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, which has been the primary means for "protecting the public health, safety and welfare" since June 1975. This new ordinance does nothing to add any more protection to the residents. It simply removes a fundamental property right for a nominal economic benefit and by its very definition expands the duties and cost of running the City. Not a good idea at a time when all of the residents just had the City's share of their property taxes increased by 7 percent.

Finally, who will be bearing the burden of paying these additional funds to the City? Well, surely it will be the owners of all those large money-making apartment buildings, right? No, those have been mostly converted to condos. As published by the City in the info package provided for the March 24 meeting in which this ordinance was passed, a table was provided that showed 3,000 "buildings" consisting of 500 condos, 500 single-family homes and 2,000 2-4 unit buildings will pay the city over $80,240 annually. This set, "the Small Buildings," represents approximately 4,000 rental units after making a small adjustment for the fact that most of the 2-4 unit buildings have at least one unit as "owner occupied." By contrast, 400 buildings with 5 or more units will pay to the City $43,600 annually. This set, "the Big Buildings," represents 9,111 rental units. Breaking it down, the small-unit building owners represent 30 percent of the City's rental units and are paying 65 percent of the fees. The big-unit building owners represent 70 percent of the City's rental units and are a paying 35 percent of the fees.

What is written above is simply the tip of the iceberg of a poorly thought-out ordinance passed by the Evanston City Council. The Council is overstepping common sense and the rule of law which has existed in the City of Evanston for over 150 years. Please do yourself a favor and read the ordinance. Do the math on the cost of being two weeks late in registering a rental residence ($4,775 fine). If you are so inclined, please call your alderman and complain. And if that is not enough, please remember to vote next time your ward elects a new alderman.
-Thomas V. Doyle

NU Stiffs Evanston Again
Editor:

Northwestern University should be ashamed of itself for refusing to cough up a paltry $4 million to upgrade the historic Dawes House so the Evanston History Center can stay where it has been for the past half-century. The University was given the property for free, yet has the audacity to "consider" offering the building at a reduced price to EHC.

Northwestern should pay the $4 million to upgrade Dawes House, and donate the building to the History Center. Shame on Northwestern's board, and in particular on Eugene Sunshine for justifying the University's stinginess to Evanston by saying they have "other priorities."

Northwestern University has an endowment of $7 billion, up 14 percent last year, according to its website. Yes, they have billions. And Mr. Sunshine has the nerve to tell the RoundTable "we don't have the money" to fix up Dawes House.

Yet Northwestern received $192 million in cash donations alone last year. That's nearly $4 million in cash per week.

Evanstonians put up with a lot from Northwestern -- crime, noisy frat parties, and in particular, excessively high property taxes because Northwestern, the largest landowner in the City, pays no property taxes. And the University continues to buy property in Evanston, pulling it off the tax rolls, pushing our untenable property taxes even higher.

Most universities with an endowment the size of Northwestern's make payments to their cities in lieu of taxes, but Northwestern has fought tooth and nail to keep from doing so here. Let's not let them take a precious Evanston resource and turn it into even more cash for an already extremely wealthy university.

It's time for Evanston to stand up to Northwestern's bullying. Yes, some residents work for the University, but most of us don't, and most of us derive little or nothing from the University's presence. Northwestern's priorities clearly are diametrically opposed to the interests of the people of Evanston.

Fight back: Force Northwestern to pry its miserly hands out of its pockets and plunk down the money to fix up Dawes House so the community can enjoy it in perpetuity. It's the very least they can do.

--Jane Huth