“There are a lot of vacant lots. We can build family-size housing and fill those vacant lots,” says Hipolito Roldan, in the tone of a man certain of his facts. “You can put a lot of work and a lot of money into rehabbing a building, and it really doesn’t show that much from the outside. But if you put up new housing, you give the neighborhood the real sense that somebody thought enough of the community to build there. The neighbors respond to that. They put up new siding, they paint, they repair.
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Roldan is of Puerto Rican extraction. He is tall, trim, and imposing, with curly dark hair combed back from a widow’s peak and a bushy mustache that’s shot with gray. He speaks with a Brooklyn accent that’s had the rough edges sanded off by education, and comes across as intelligent and decisive. Roldan lives with his wife, Ida, and their two children in an unpretentious dark-brick bungalow on the northern edge of Oak Park.
In 1975 a group of civic leaders looked into the total lack of housing money going to Hispanics in Chicago. It turned out that few applications for funding came in from the diverse and disorganized Hispanic community–or communities; Roldan counts ten. The group decided to form one organization that would operate citywide. They needed an organized director, one with the right credentials.
The tenants are of decidedly mixed origins: Puerto Rican, Mexican, Cuban, assorted South American. “In Diversey Square, in 196 apartments, we have 23 different nationalities,” says Roldan. “Most of our projects reflect the population out there. We don’t rent only to Hispanics; we want mixed developments. They’re integrated to the extent that you see it in the communities, and we seek whites and blacks when they’re minorities. We got some real resistance at first from white tenants, but once people get past that initial fear, it all works. There’s a message there.”
“If you look at the issues in the neighborhoods, housing is only a small part of it. There are education problems, drug problems, incredible gang problems. There’s a lack of quality of life in the neighborhoods, and they need attention. We need to address whether we’re going to let our youth develop their talents or if we’re going to house them in jail 15 or 20 years down the pike.”
