North Cook News

Through the efforts of 5th Ward Alderman Robin Rue Simmons, Evanston will be funding reparations to black residents in the amount of $10 million.

It will be distributed in $25,000 increments with funds sourced from the 3 percent tax imposed on legal recreational cannabis sales, ABC News reported according to People.

The program aims to provide housing assistance to black residents to hopefully recompense the "lack of affordability, lack of access to living-wage careers [in the city] and a lack of sense of place," Simmons said.  

Simmons started working on the reparation program in 2019 and has worked with historian Dino Robinson to review and understand the town’s racist history that can be traced back to the late 19th century.

Redlining was a racial homeownership practice “once used by the government-sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) from 1933 to 1977,” according to brookings.edu.

It “was the practice of outlining areas with sizable black populations in red ink on maps as a warning to mortgage lenders, effectively isolating black people in areas that would suffer lower levels of investment than their white counterparts.”

Simmons explained that it has impacted the community, stating that "that map still is the map of our concentrated black community, our disinvestment, our inferior infrastructure.”

She said she “can’t wait to celebrate the family that receives their first reparation benefit. I cannot wait for that day."

The first batch of reparations is set to be granted this spring.