On Monday night, Evanston's city council approved a cash option to its Housing Restorative Program. Now, the program includes direct cash benefits for those who qualify.
Reparations activists from across the country are in Evanston for the 2nd Annual National Symposium for State and Local Reparations Leaders.As a child, Robin Rue Simmons didn't know the Evanston neighborhood she called home was an area where Black families were once forced to live.
"There were specific anti-black zoning laws and housing practices that are responsible for our racial segregation -- not only our physical segregation, but our wealth gaps and home ownership gaps and all other racial gaps that we have here in Evanston," she said. On Monday night, Evanston's city council approved a cash option to its Housing Restorative Program. The meeting lasted three hours and it took the council three seconds to approve the cash option. Now, the program includes direct cash benefits for those who qualify.
"We have stalled because of complications," Rue Simmons said. "It has taken longer than we expected. And some of those challenges have been really underestimating, operationally, the work." "It is one thing to identify a harm and prescribe a remedy," Rue Simmons said. "In the case of Evanston ...we have been led to understand and appreciate that home rule taxes are our most viable way to fund reparations being that they're within our purview."Ramona Burton is among the 14 people who have received the $25,000 grant so far. The 74-year-old woman has lived in Evanston her entire life but was born in Chicago.
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