In Evanston Reparations Lottery, Ping-Pong Balls To Pick Payment Order

EVANSTON, IL — A draw of Ping-Pong balls next week is set to determine the first recipients of money from Evanston's reparations program for its Black residents.

City officials said a drawing is scheduled to take place at a committee meeting 9:30 a.m. Thursday at the Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center at 1655 Foster St. that will establish the "rankings" of nearly more than 120 Black seniors eligible for the first grants from the first-of-its-kind municipal reparations program.

The first initiative of the Evanston Local Reparations Program, which is funded by the first $10 million of municipal tax revenue from the sale of recreational marijuana as well as donations, is the Restorative Housing Program. The program offers grants of up to $25,000 for homeownership and home improvement.

The city's reparations fund was established in November 2019, ahead of the legalization of adult-use cannabis. In March 2021, the City Council approved an allocation of $400,000 to the housing program and replaced a temporary reparations subcommittee with a permanent committee. Applications for the program were open from September to November of last year.

Deputy City Manager Kimberly Richardson, staff liaison to the reparations committee, told Patch there were 674 applicants and 122 have been confirmed to be "ancestors," as defined by the reparations program — Black residents who demonstrably lived in the city between the establishment of its 1919 zoning code and its 1969 fair housing ordinance. These older Black Evanstonians will be first in line to receive the housing grants.

At Thursday's committee meeting, Richardson said those ancestors have each received a unique identification number. So far, the program has been allocated enough money for 16 recipients to receive the maximum grant. Richardson said staff had looked at various options for randomly determining the winners.

"We are just going to go old-fashioned and make sure that people can clearly see the process," Richardson said. "So we are going to do some type of selection where it's more of the pulling of the Ping-Pong ball from a device — either a cage or some other device — that either a committee member or community member pulled from."

Richardson said those who applied as direct descendants had already been notified that the city planned to prioritize awarding money to the first ancestors before reviewing applications from direct descendants.

Three ancestors who were eligible for the grants died in the past four weeks, Richardson said, emphasizing the urgency of picking the initial recipients so they might be able to receive funds by the middle of the year.

"The idea is not to dramatize this," she said. "It's really to make this part of business so that we can move forward with finalizing and identifying the first 16 and then also identifying the rest of the participants so they know where they sit in the rankings of the final 100 plus individuals who will be up for funding in the coming years."

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Ahead of the reparations committee's 3-2 vote — with "no" votes from former 5th Ward Ald. Robin Rue Simmons and 8th Ward Ald. Devon Reid — to approve a plan to distribute the first housing grants through the nonprofit Community Partners for Affordable Housing, or CPAH, Richardson said the group had already agreed to provide the service at no cost to the city. As part of the partnership program, reparations recipients could choose to work with the nonprofit if they wanted to.

Keri Williams, chief operating officer of the nonprofit, said her organization would look to ensure contractors do not take advantage of ancestors after they receive the grant.

"CPAH is recommending that we, even with the homeowner-managed construction, that we would remind the homeowner to get the proposal, that we would review the cost-reasonableness," Williams said. "Then we would administer the payment to the contractor based on completion and making sure that the homeowner, as well as the contractor are in agreement, not just with what was actually completed, but the quality of completion as well."

CPAH CEO Rob Anthony said the organization would cover the approximately $4,500 cost of project consulting for reparations recipients who opted-in.

"We absolutely don't want any of the reparations money to pay for that," Anthony said. "So what we would try to do is to do some fundraising to help cover that time, that cost. Because that's a construction manager being on site, spending a lot of time, that we have to figure out a way to pay for."

The remotely conducted meeting was at times contentious, with the voice of committee chair 2nd Ward Ald. Peter Braithwaite threatening to mute committee members several times. It was not clear from the city's broadcast of the video-teleconference whether he did so. Richardson, the deputy city manager, who is leaving the city later this month to take a job as assistant city manager in Peoria, appearing visibly frustrated at the potential for further delays in implementing the program.

Rue Simmons, who spearheaded the establishment of the reparations program and chaired the defunct reparations subcommittee before resigning her City Council seat and being appointed to the standing committee, questioned why an exclusive agreement with CPAH was needed and why turning it down would prevent the program from moving forward.

"Then, to continue to hear every time there is a disagreement with what staff has decided that, in retaliation, 'We'll just hold up the program,'" Rue Simmons said.

"I don't see why it's either a 'yes, exactly how we said it,' or 'we don't know when we can move forward with the program,'" she said. "It seems to be an extreme decision that you're putting before us and unfair."

The City Council has pledged $10 million in revenue to the reparations fund, enough for 400 people to receive grants from the Restorative Housing Program, although only $400,000 has so far been allocated to be awarded.

Reid questioned whether the application window for reparations would ever open again, or whether those who applied last fall would be the only people ever eligible for Evanston reparations. He also expressed misgivings about the planned Ping-Pong ball lottery.

"I think we want to be very cautious about the optics of this," he said. "To make it not too lottery and not too — I'm sure everyone knows this is a serious and solemn moment — I just don't want it to be too gamified."