Reparations for Black People Just Started in the First US City. Here’s How It Works.

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The country’s first reparations program for Black people will take hold in an Illinois city with a history of segregation and discriminatory housing practices—and government leaders around the country will likely take note.

The Evanston City Council approved the first phase of its reparations plan Monday night, agreeing in an 8-1 vote to establish a $400,000 housing grant program that will benefit residents harmed by systemic racism, according to the Chicago Tribune. The initiative is the result of a larger, $10 million plan that was approved in 2019 and will be funded in part by marijuana sales-tax revenue. 

The historic move, which comes as House Democrats continue to advocate for H.R. 40, or legislation that would study reparations for Black people on a national scale, marks a massive turning point for the majority-white home of about 73,000 people and Northwestern University.

“It is the start,” Robin Rue Simmons, an alderman who chairs the city’s reparations subcommittee, told the New York Times. “It is the reckoning. We’re really proud as a city to be leading the nation toward repair and justice.”

But some say there’s much more that needs to be done.

Critics have noted that only a small number of housing grants will be made available and that a true reparations program should include direct cash payments, according to the Times. 

Black residents might also be left out if they don’t own a home or plan to purchase one—a common reality in a nation where the gap between Black and white homeownership has stunningly worsened since 1960, when housing discrimination was legal, according to the Urban Institute. 

"I think every African American in our city was very excited about the possibility of addressing reparations at a local level," Kevin Brown, the spokesman for Evanston Rejects Racist Reparations, or E3R, told CNN. "However, I think the process has been quite flawed when you look at it next to an HR 40, which involves a really in-depth study of what the issues actually are.

Still, Evanston’s policy could act as a blueprint as more and more cities look to address the policies that made it nearly impossible for Black families to build wealth and prevent displacement within their borders. 

Here’s what you need to know: 

Through the program, eligible people can receive up to $25,000 to help with a down payment on a home; closing a sale; paying for home improvements; and paying for mortgage principal, interest, or late penalties, according to the Tribune, which cited a memo from the city’s interim assistant city manager.

To be eligible, a person must have ties to any of the Black and racial ethnic groups of Africa, have resided in the city between 1919 and 1969, or descended directly from a person who lived in Evanston during that time, according to the Tribune. People can also qualify if they were subjected to housing discrimination due to a city policy or practice after 1969. The program is not only for the direct descendants of slaves, however.

Notably, because only $400,000 was made available, it seems that just 16 applicants would benefit if they each received the maximum amount. It’s unclear exactly how many people are eligible, according to the Times. The city is 16.5% Black, according to census data. 

It wasn’t immediately clear when people could start to apply. Simmons and the city’s interim assistant manager, Kimberly Richardson, did not immediately respond to VICE News’ request for comment. 

On a city webpage detailing plans for reparations, the government wrote that “the strongest case for reparations by the City of Evanston is in the area of housing, where there is sufficient evidence showing the city’s part in housing discrimination” through zoning ordinances that were eventually banned in 1969. 

Evanston had an established Black community in the early 1900s that only grew during the Great Migration, according to a 2020 report from the executive director of the Shorefront Legacy Center and director of education at the Evanston History Center. 

But, faced with that population, white real estate brokers in the city essentially excluded them from residing anywhere but an area in west Evanston. Builders wouldn’t sell to Black families outside of that zone, either. And banks regularly refused to make mortgage loans available to Black people who wanted to buy homes on blocks that weren’t seen as acceptable to them, according to the report. 

If Black people did happen to live anywhere else in Evanston, they were eventually displaced. The city passed a zoning ordinance in 1921 that set aside almost every non-westside block where Black people lived for commercial purposes, pushing Black families out as the properties were converted. 

What’s more, white homeowners banded together to buy homes that might be sold to a Black family, or buy back the homes that had already been purchased, according to the report. And some of the white homeowners’ deeds contained racially restrictive covenants that blocked their homes from ever being occupied by any person who wasn’t white—at least until those covenants were deemed unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948. 

By then, the damage was already done. In 1940, 84 percent of Black Evanston residents lived within a single neighborhood, according to the report. The area was overcrowded, and Black residents in the city’s 5th Ward often paid higher prices for homes in disrepair, since they had limited options. 

This sort of segregation was common across the country and continues to impact Black people today. But, after a century of pushing Black people out, cities like Evanston are now trying to address those wrongs.

“Right now the whole world is looking at Evanston, Illinois,” Ron Daniels, president of the National African American Reparations Commission, told the Washington Post. “This is a moment like none other that we’ve ever seen, and it’s a good moment.”