History of Activism

The Interfaith Housing Center has its roots in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

A group of young mothers in Wilmette were worried that their children were growing up in a community that lacked diversity, and they began to discuss how they could organize for change.

There were no fair housing laws at that time, and housing discrimination was common. But although local housing ads often stipulated, "No Negroes, Orientals or Jews," the women believed that many community members shared their concerns about housing discrimination.

North Shore Summer Project

These initial discussions led to the organization of the North Shore Summer Project, which was an effort to convince realtors located in the northern suburbs of Chicago that they should show and sell homes on a non-discriminatory basis.
The project recruited college students to survey as many of the current home sellers as possible, to determine if local residents actually did believe that race and religion were important considerations for home sales. The group also worked to support local housing projects.

The project culminated with a rally on the Winnetka Village Green in 1965, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to a crowd of reportedly of as many as 10,000 supporters. Newspaper accounts quoted Dr. King as saying, "We must now learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools."

Building the Organization

The Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs was formally founded by member congregations in 1972, under the leadership of an inter-religious group of clergy leaders headed by Rev. Paul Allen of the Winnetka Congregational Church, with the assistance of veteran civil rights advocate John McDermott of the Community Renewal Society in Chicago.

The organization was launched as a result of a successful conference, "The Inclusive Community: Challenge to Church and Synagogue," attended by hundreds at North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe. The invitation, agenda, and follow-up announcement of launching the "North Shore Interfaith Housing Council," Interfaith's original name, can be found here. As Rev. Allen and the coordinating committee wrote in one of these documents, the main purpose of Interfaith is "to provide an on-going vehicle for the expression of the religious concern for more inclusive communities and the provision of housing for persons of moderate and low incomes."  Here is the original Statement of Faith of the North Shore Interfaith Housing Council, with statements from Msgr. Eugene Lyons, Rev. Paul S. Allen, and Rabbi Harold Kudan from the early 1970s.

Interfaith has has continued to grow and expand over the years in response to the evolving challenges facing our communities.

The Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs is proud of its grassroots history as an integral part of Chicago's Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In 2007, Interfaith worked with Shorefront Legacy Center, an Evanston-based archive of African-American history in the area, to document this multifacted decades-long quest for diversity, fair and affordable housing in the region through a series of display panels and a slide show presentation.

"The Face of Fair and Affordable Housing"

VIDEO: "The Face of Fair and Affordable Housing" 

The Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs is pleased to release this video:

The video was debuted September 18, 2008 in honor of Interfaith's 35 years (and counting) of accomplishment. It profiles those assisted by Interfaith's fair housing, Homesharing, foreclosure prevention, and community organizing and advocacy work, with reflections by a founder, Jean R. Cleland.