Either to expiate their guilt – or to exploit the guilty – city council members in Evanston, Illinois, recently approved the nation’s first actual reparations program. Sensing that arguments about slavery and Jim Crow would not have much purchase in this youthful city, the activists focused on housing, a grievance of more recent vintage.
Thus, the Restorative Housing Program, as it’s called, addresses the harm allegedly caused by “discriminatory housing policies and practices and inaction on the City’s part.” In their urge to create new homeowners, Evanston activists seem blissfully unaware of what happened the last time the nation writ large attempted to put the unready in homes they were unprepared to sustain. It’s time for a friendly reminder.
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