» Community Organizing

The Interfaith Housing Center is proud of its grassroots origins. The organization was founded primarily by local women and clergy in the early 1960s. These little-known local activists and their descendants form the nucleus of north suburban residents who instinctively know that a healthy community is an open community.

Interfaith organizes at a variety of levels:

• Direct organizing of low-income individuals threatened with displacement;
• Direct organizing of residents by suburb of all income levels and backgrounds into grassroots fair and affordable housing advocacy groups;
• Direct organizing of religious leaders; and
• Building coalitions of community and civic groups, and congregations, into a unified voice for housing justice.

Suburban Residents Organize for Justice Across Racial, Religious, and Economic Lines

Wealthy and poor families are living in closer proximity, and the suburbs are beginning to show a new level of creativity in response to the growing number of low- and moderate-income residents who are having difficulty staying put; and of commuters who cannot afford to move in.

That affluent north suburban residents whose own housing is secure are willing to fight for affordable housing in their communities is the most striking aspect of Interfaith and its organizing campaigns. It goes against the usual “self-interest” explanation for why people organize for change.

For example, Wilmette homeowners, renters, and clergy who came together between 2001 and 2004 around the redevelopment of the 17-acre Mallinckrodt College campus had a positive and multifaceted vision for this site. This campaign demonstrated that poverty and its alleviation are not only “inner-city” issues.

Healing society’s ills depends upon residents working together to realize a vision of justice that extends beyond the traditional organizing notion of a “doable win,” and regardless of whether or not they will individually benefit from the result.

Organizing Highlights

The following is just a sampling of Interfaith's organizing campaigns over the last decade:

• Assisted more than 200 tenants of motels in Morton Grove, threatened with displacement because the Village decided to tear down their homes as part of its Tax Increment Finance (TIF) district, to organize, meet with elected officials, and stage protests as they sought to save their homes (1999-2001) -- see photo at right;
• Worked with Wilmette residents and religious leaders to organize "Mixed Use for Mallinckrodt," a campaign to include affordable housing in historic building, and ultimately gained twelve units for older adults out of 86 (2001-2005);


  Jean Cleland, Gail Schechter, and Mimi Ryan accept Golden Trowel Award from Housing Action Illinois for their successful Wilmette campaign, in Springfield, 2003.

• Assisting residents in Wilmette, Winnetka and other suburbs to organizing local affordable housing campaigns;
• Helped to organize religious leaders into an as-needed coalition, "Religious Leaders Acting Together for Equality" in the wake of hate-motivated shootings in the area in 1999.


  RELATE (Religious Leaders Acting Together for Equality) at anti-hate rally in Skokie, 2000.

• Worked with other local groups to create "North Suburban Housing Partners," an ad hoc coalition that has organized four major public forums on affordable housing and predatory lending, and which contributed to strengthening housing opportunities for Section 8/Housing Choice Voucher holders in north suburban Cook County; and


  Standing-room only north suburban housing forum, at St. Francis Xavier Church, Wilmette, 2002.

• Organizing the predominantly Mexican, low-income tenants of Northshore Estates, a 252-unit rental complex in Highwood that is threatened with a condominium conversion. (2005-present)

  
    Northshore Estates tenants discuss the future of their complex, 2007.

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