Last May the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities marked its 25th anniversary with a celebration in the Grand Ballroom of the Palmer House; the party drew 1,300 guests who marveled at the progress Chicago’s made in integrated housing during the past quarter century. Those achievements, noted Kale Williams, director of the council, are “truly astounding,” “unmatched anywhere in the nation.” Others, like Barry Sullivan, chairman of First Chicago Corporation, toasted the dedicated professionals and volunteers, who took to heart the words spoken here by Martin Luther King in 1966: “We’re going to make this an open city because it’s right, because it’s practical, and because it’s sound economics.”
CHA lawyers argued that the complaint was frivolous; they produced bundles of application forms showing that prospective tenants wanted to live in the ghetto; overwhelmingly, blacks had specifically requested CHA apartments in solidly black neighborhoods, ignoring the handful of sites in white or integrated areas. Months of arguing and foot-dragging stretched into years, the suit narrowly dodging a battery of CHA legal maneuvers aimed at its demise.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
In September 1971, the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed Austin and said HUD was indeed part of the conspiracy to keep blacks in the ghetto. That ruling opened the door for the Gautreaux lawyers, led by Alexander Polikoff, to seek a remedy involving both city and suburbs to alleviate the CHA’s tradition of racial isolation. A five-year game of legal Ping-Pong resulted: Austin said no to the metropolitan solution; the U. S. Court of Appeals reversed him again; HUD appealed; then in April 1976, the U. S. Supreme Court declared (by an 8-0 vote) that the “relevant housing market” included both city and suburbs and ordered the exhausted Austin to work out the details with the CHA and the Gautreaux lawyers.
The eventual settlement called for HUD to fund a rent-subsidy program enabling public-housing tenants to move into privately owned apartments, mostly in suburban areas. Implementation of the program was assigned to the Leadership Council, which has overseen the operation ever since. Since 1976, some 4,300 families have quietly moved into private housing, more than half of it in 113 different Chicago suburbs, the rest in nonghetto areas of the city. Though the exodus from the CHA has not changed the look or life-style of the projects, those 4,300 families amount to nearly 15 percent of the 28,000 family units of public housing in the city.
Throughout CHA projects today, the Gautreaux name is familiar even to those who know nothing of the woman or the lawsuit–it’s a code word for escape. The name also lives on in Altgeld’s Dorothy Gautreaux Child-Parent Center, constructed five years after her death and named in her honor (after a considerable hassle with city officials) because local residents insisted that her name would be a symbol of hope in that desolate setting.
In late May, James Phillips, a businessman from Homewood who owned a string of car washes on the south side, viewed the property and was immediately smitten. He brought his wife, then his two teenage children to look the place over. Phillips offered $600,000. Broderick countered with $700,000. During face-to-face negotiations at the Darien Country Club (owned by Broderick), they agreed on a figure of $675,000 and signed a contract. Phillips put up $75,000 in earnest money and went about selling his own home. A July 21 closing date was set. Everything went smoothly, and no one seemed to notice or care that James Phillips and his family were black.
