Open Communities (formerly called Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs) is a membership-based, nonprofit 501(c)3 organization serving as an advocate for fair and affordable housing in north suburban Chicago since 1972. The central office is located at 614 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, Illinois, 60093, a few miles north of Chicago near Lake Michigan. It provides services to individuals including investigating complaints of housing discrimination, predatory lending, and landlord/tenant infractions; housing counseling to prevent foreclosures; and facilitating Homesharing (shared housing) matches. Open Communities also acts as the premier voice for fair and affordable housing through education, advocacy, and community organizing.
Open Communities is designated by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as an approved housing counseling agency. It is an established organization with roots in the Civil Rights Movement, and remains the only active, grassroots civil rights group in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
Mission
Open Communities is dedicated to housing justice by advancing open, inclusive, and diverse communities throughout Chicago's northern suburbs.
In seeking to foster integrated and hospitable communities, Open Communities is committed to acting as an advocate for fair housing by conducting public education programs promoting community understanding and public support for fair housing. In addition, it acts as a resource to others seeking to ensure equal access to housing in their communities. The Center counsels people about available affordable housing options and acts as a mediator between providers and seekers of affordable housing on the North Shore.
Service programs
Open Communities provides a wide variety of services to the individuals in its service area. Services address fair housing & discrimination complaints, landlord/tenant issues, foreclosure prevention counseling and preventing fraudulent or predatory loans. It also provides a Homesharing program in order to help match those people renting out an extra room in their home, with those people seeking to find more affordable housing in the northern Chicago suburbs. Interfaith's also provides education, community organizing, and advocacy programs.
Fair housing and discrimination complaints
Open Communities works to help those individuals that may have experienced housing discrimination.
All individuals are entitled to fair housing. Unfortunately, housing discrimination still occurs in the United States, but in a more subtle way than was previously experienced by those seeking housing. Instead of being turned away on the basis of color laws or other overtly discriminatory practices, now other methods are used to keep certain people out. Comments such as "You might not feel comfortable in this neighborhood," or "We don't rent to more than three people for a two-bedroom apartment," may be a sign that you have been discriminated against.
It is illegal to deny housing to anyone on the basis of their race, color, national origin, and sex according to the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which is commonly called the Fair Housing Act (of April 1968), or FHA. By 1988, the act was extended to protect those with disabilities, as well as families with children (familial status). Illinois fair housing laws permit people to choose where they want to live regardless of age, ancestry, military discharge status, marital status, or sexual orientation. Cook County also recognizes source of income and housing status (i.e., previous place of residence, such as a shelter) as protected classes.
Open Communities is a Fair Housing Initiatives Program grant recipient with over 30 years of experience in investigating claims of discrimination, testing for fair housing violations, and enforcing meritorious claims. They also train volunteers to pose as home seekers as part of its fair housing testing program. Fair housing testers are critically important to verifying acts of discrimination. Its most recent settlement involving the use of testers was a familial status complaint, in which a Hispanic mother was refused a unit because she had a child. In 2008, HUD settled the complaint from Open Communities.
Landlord/tenant issues
Open Communities is the only tenant resource in the northern suburbs. Its service area has approximately 56,638 rental units according to the 2011 census, of which 42% (23,926) are in Evanston. The north suburban "round table" model adopted by Open Communities includes tenant leaders and landlords themselves as well as municipalities. According to Metropolitan Tenants Organization (MTO), their hotline receives over 1,000 calls from outside Chicago annually (of 10,000 received). Open Communities provides advice to individual tenants with concerns, but focuses most of its attention on assisting tenants in landlord-neglected buildings, a disproportionate number of whom house low- and moderate-income persons and persons of color, to organize as associations to improve and secure their living conditions.
Homesharing program
Homesharing, also known as "share housing," is a form of low-cost housing, intended to assist older adults to age in comfort in their homes and homeowners struggling financially to maintain their housing, while providing new housing opportunities for individual low-income home seekers.
Education, community organizing, and advocacy programs
Open Communities has a long history as a grassroots organization, consciously balancing service provision with community organizing. Unfortunately, as many grassroots groups develop specific programs they abandon social change work. However, Open Communities continues to be action-oriented in striving to create affordable housing and leadership opportunities for immigrants, while widening the reach of community education, and encouraging activism within the community that will further the breakdown of social barriers.
Early history
Founded in 1972, as a result of a conference convened by clergy with the help of the Community Renewal Society entitled "The Inclusive Community: Challenge to Church and Synagogue," Open Communities was intended to be the coordinating entity for north suburban congregations' initiatives promoting diversity and fairness.
Open Communities is rooted in the civil rights movement of the 1960s when a group of local women organized the North Shore Summer Project to protest housing discrimination. The group culminated its activities with a rally on the Winnetka Village Green in 1965, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to a crowd of 10,000, his first civil rights rally in an all-white suburb.
Former names
North Shore Interfaith Housing Council (1972-1986)
North Suburban Housing Center (a project of NSIHC, 1977-1986)
Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs (1986 - 2012)
Current projects
I LEAD
Open communities supports I LEAD, a leadership program for immigrants. Immigrants account for 25% of Chicago's north suburban population, yet are rarely engaged in civic life. Open Communities provides opportunities and facilitates workshops to strengthen immigrants as community leaders. The four-part workshops led by Open communities attract participants who wish to gain a voice in local government and reshape housing policies to inspire a more inclusive, diverse community. Open Communities has been commended for their work that assists immigrants in becoming assimilated economically and civically into their new communities.
Community writing and action workshops
Open Communities in partnership with UIC PRAIRIE group offers workshops that encourage people from all different oppressed groups to come together and address community inequities through writing. Participants strive to overcome cultural and language barriers in pursuit of sincere expression and the creation of a shared vision regarding a specific social justice issue. Open Communities hopes social change will be born from this vision in the form of community planning and policymaking.
United We Learn
Open Communities is also supporting the United We Learn grassroots organization that formed in August 2008 to support the Reverend Meeks-sponsored rally and boycott and rally at New Trier High School. Open Communities helped organize this campaign when local residents expressed interest in coordinating greater efforts to welcome Chicago school children as they prepared to boycott their first day of school and enroll at New Trier High School. While United We Learn was initially launched in support of the rally, and in solidarity with the Chicagoans protesting racial and economic disparities in public school education, the group is now looking at reforming public school education to benefit all.
Members
Today Open Communities has over 40 congregations and 15 civic organizations as members. In addition, several individuals have become members through donations. Open Communities is the only civil rights agency focused on Chicago's North Shore, a challenging region in which to operate because the housing is cost-prohibitive despite the abundance of jobs, and the region suffers from a reputation for being unwelcoming to people of color and low-income families.
References
External links
- Fair Housing Act This contains the text of the Fair Housing Act
- North Shore Summer Project For more Information on the North Shore Summer Project
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