From Gail Schechter Consulting:
"Gail has been a leader in tenant and community organizing, fair and affordable housing advocacy, discrimination investigation, public school funding reform, and public policy research and development since 1984. She is also a widely recognized 'thought leader' in conceiving of and implementing creative grassroots strategies for fostering inclusive, just and diverse communities, most recently through Open Communities' The Justice Project: The March Continues."
From 1993 to 2016, she served as Executive Director of Open Communities, the north suburban Chicago area’s premier housing, economic and social justice organization.
Your questions (edited and combined):
- How long have you been involved in this work?
- What career did you think about before college?
- Is Open Communities still an active organization?
- What was the worse case of racial discrimination you saw in housing?
- Why did you send the letter to Trandel (developer of One Winnetka)? Do you feel you could have asked for more than 15% at One Winnetka? Will it ever happen? Would you ever raise it past 15%?
- Do you think $4000/month is close to affordable rent?
- How big is One Winnetka (per size of the Village)? What do you think of this development?
- Why don't we have more affordable housing in our community?
- Should the required percentage (10%) of affordable housing stock vary per town on the basis of square footage?
- Is affordable housing not working because of the fear of low income black people moving in? If so, this makes me think that racism is still going on, and not a thing has been changed. Nothing can be changed unless everyone wants the change. Winnetka wants to keep their place one race -- only those who are wealthy. So those who are not wealthy will not come to their city. This has to change because some people would rather live on an apartment than a house.
