It wasn’t so long ago that dope dealers and prostitutes were peddling their wares from the front entrance of the Rosemont Apartments, a nine-story building at 1061 W. Rosemont, in Edgewater.
“I don’t think many people could do what Candace has done–she’s a remarkable woman,” says John McDermott, a community organizer for the Edgewater Community Council. “But there is a message here for other communities. Candace created a problem-solving partnership with the police to crack down on a local trouble spot. That’s what community policing is all about.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“This man needed someone to live in his house, so he rented it to us and we took care of his grape fields,” says Howell. “We cut and packed the grapes and sent them to the Welch’s factory. It was country–real country. An outhouse and everything. First time I ever got chased by a cow was in Michigan. I didn’t like it at first. I tried to run away. Actually, I tried to walk away. Me and my sister just started walking up the country road. We wound up in Paw Paw, Michigan, before the police drove us back.”
Howell went to high school in Decatur, another rural town in Michigan.
In 1977 she quit her union job, got divorced, and moved with her two daughters (her son stayed with his father) back to Chicago. She lived in Evanston then and worked in telemarketing. She wanted a job as a police officer, but the Evanston police department didn’t accept her into the academy (she eventually initiated a class-action suit against Evanston, which did not then have any black women officers).
Howell says the owners asked her not to file any official complaints with the police. They didn’t want any trouble because they wanted to keep the place filled. “I was calling 911 all the time, but I wasn’t pressing charges,” says Howell. “Finally, this one policeman tells me, ‘Listen, if you don’t file a complaint, we aren’t coming here anymore.’ That’s when I made my stand.”
“The bank foreclosed on the original owner, and Candace was the one who showed prospective buyers around,” says McDermott. “One interested buyer was a man who had a terrible reputation as a slumlord. She told us that he had visited the building, and we were able to organize a whole campaign to pressure the bank not to sell to him.”
