For two months last summer Annette McClinton and some of her six children lived out of a car because a south-side housing complex had denied them housing. The operators of the housing complex, Antioch Haven Homes, say they denied housing to McClinton because even their biggest three-bedroom apartments are too small for a family of seven. But McClinton said it was discrimination and took her case to the city.
The adjudication process was created as part of a controversial overhaul of the Commission on Human Relations conceived by Commissioner Clarence Wood at Mayor Daley’s urging. The commission, created after World War II, had shied away from controversial matters for decades. Except for a brief period in 1966, when it helped broker an open-housing deal between Richard J. Daley and Martin Luther King Jr., its existence was largely irrelevant.
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When Wood’s proposal came before the City Council in early 1990, it sparked instantaneous outrage among feminists and gay activists as well as an unusually topsy-turvy aldermanic fight.
She had already been homeless for several months when on November 26, 1990, she read a newspaper ad for subsidized housing at the Antioch Haven Homes at 420 W. 63rd St. It seemed like a dream come true. The complex, developed by a not-for- profit affiliate of a local church and financed with Housing and Urban Development subsidies, was clean and well managed. McClinton visited the complex and filled out an application.
Lawyers and witnesses for Antioch (including civil rights activist Kale Williams) argued that the complex’s occupancy standards were necessary to prevent the kind of overcrowding that has destroyed many other low-income projects.
“It’s frustrating because $800,000 of my budget still goes for the special councils,” says Wood. “You have to ask yourself in times of need which is more important: special councils or adjudication? The system’s not perfect, but at least it enabled [McClinton] to have her day in court.”
