Reparations Sub Committee Meets Today at Noon: Focus on Housing
Today's City of Evanston Reparations Sub Committee meeting will include presentations and discussion about damages and remedies in discriminatory housing.
The meeting begins at noon at the Civic Center, Room 2402. All interested residents are invited to attend.
Speakers are Mark Alston, national strategist, National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB Realist), and Bennett Johnson, Evanston resident and lifelong civil rights activist. Alston will join the meeting via video from California.
Mark Alston’s presentation will include the effects of redlining, foreclosures and new mortgage data, and recommendations for remedy.
Bennett J. Johnson will present an approach to investing and growing the Reparations Fund through the acquisition of real estate via a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT).
Public comment and discussion will follow.
About NAREB ...
NAREB Realist was founded in Tampa, Florida, in 1947 as an equal opportunity and civil rights advocacy organization for African American real estate professionals, consumers, and communities in America.
The purpose of NAREB is to:
Enhance the economic improvement of its members, the community at large, and the minority community it serves; and
To unite those engaged in the recognized branches of the real estate industry, including brokerage, management, mortgage financing, appraising, land development, home building, and allied fields to exert influence on real estate interests.
According to its website, NAREB has played varying influential roles in the implementation of equal rights, fair housing, equal opportunity, and community development legislation at the local, state, and federal levels.
Some of NAREB's significant policy achievements were: the first local fair-housing legislation in 1962 in New York City; the first state fair-housing legislation in 1963 in California; and the first national fair-housing legislation in both 1947 and 1968. It was the 1963 California legislation that propelled NAREB into national prominence.
Read more about NAREB here.
Read a DE interview with Bennett J. Johnson here.
Reparations updates about reparations are available on the City's reparations website here.
Reparations sub committee members are: Robin Rue Simmons 5th Ward Alderman; 2nd Ward Ald. Peter Braithwaite, and 8th Ward Ald. Ann Rainey.
