Dozens of Evanston residents are scrambling to find a new home after the city sent a letter to tenants on Feb. 13 telling them to vacate. The city’s letter expresses concerns about building safety, specifically the condition of exterior stairs at three California-style apartment buildings.
The tenants reside at 2014, 2018 and 2024 Wesley Avenue in Evanston’s predominantly Black 5th Ward. These buildings combined hold 24 affordable housing units with many of its residents being senior citizens who have lived in the neighborhood for decades.
“I’ve lived there for 33 years. (It’s where) I raised my kids, grandkids and now my great-grandson,” tenant Patricia Aikens told the Housing and Community Development Committee on Feb. 20. “I came into this apartment in the 1990s…and now I’m homeless and we don’t know where we’re going.”
The Evanston Housing Coalition owns these properties and managed them until September 2022. The Housing Opportunity Development Corporation was brought in at that time to help the coalition, HODC Executive Director Richard Koenig told Pioneer Press.
Wesley Avenue tenants praise EHC’s initial property manager George Gauthier for prompt response and improving the building’s condition. Koenig said Gauthier managed the property until 2021. The building was minimally managed from his absence until HODC took over in September 2022, according to Koenig. Residents informed the city’s Housing and Community Development Committee of HODC’s rude customer service and false promises of improving the property, saying the nonprofit did little to improve living conditions.
“When they brought in HODC, they were really nasty,” Aikens said. “I had to stand there and tell them that I’m a woman just like you. I pay my rent on time. You treat me with respect and I’ll treat you with respect, but we’ve been disrespected ever since the HODC came in.”
This isn’t the first time HODC has sparked issues in Evanston. Opponents of another HODC project at the corner of Church Street and Darrow Avenue pointed to issues at the management company’s Dempster Street property. City officials told Pioneer Press in 2023 local law enforcement is aware of the issues at the property and has been working with HODC to mitigate the issues.
Koenig said HODC installed smoke detectors and fixed a water leak at the Wesley Avenue properties. He also said the nonprofit sought funding from the state for further repairs but was unsuccessful.
There are currently no plans to fix the external stairs, Koenig said. As the stairs are the only point of entry for residents to get to their units, he said resident’s will have to vacate regardless of if the stairs are fixed or not. Fixing the stairs would cost $1.5 million combined for all three buildings, not including other repairs that could be brought forth if other code violations are discovered, according to Koenig.
“The stairs are metal and go up the exterior so there’s no other entrance staircase,” Koenig said. “To make the repairs, you would have to tear off the entire staircase structure, and in order to do that the tenants can’t live there.”
Scaffolding was installed in late 2023 to help stabilize the stairs until it completely breaks, Koenig said, but the stairs’ remaining lifetime is “impossible” to predict and may it become unusable at any time.
Koenig told Pioneer Press these repairs would be funded by the housing coalition rather than HODC because HODC only manages the property.
The EHC didn’t respond to Pioneer Press inquiries.
Evanston officials promised to help the residents with the transition. The city is offering short-term housing, housing search assistance, financial assistance for packing and moving, six months of storage unit rental, initial apartment application and first month’s rent financial assistance and a rental subsidy to keep rent costs the same if tenants can’t find an equally priced home, according to a flier the city gave residents earlier this month.
“You will have whatever you need to get through this situation,” 5th Ward Councilmember Bobby Burns said. “If we missed anything on our list, let us know and we’ll add it.”
Burns said the city held weekly meetings to discuss the property and ultimately vacating the apartments became the most viable option. Burns said 13 other Evanstonians experienced similar situations in recent years.
Ike Ogbo, the city’s director of health and human resources, called the issue an emergency and said the city has met with residents to outline what the city can do to assist. Residents have been provided shelter in hotels which can be extended until there are permanent solutions found.
“We have faced this before where we had displaced residents and it does take time for us to figure out where to place individuals,” Ogbo said. “But we are committed to ensuring that we put all our resources, and staff and whatever is required in order to see this to fruition.”
The city’s letter told residents it’s using “the City of Evanston Code of Ordinances (and) is requiring all tenants to vacate the buildings.” However, the letter didn’t provide a date residents must vacate by. This is leaving many residents confused and frustrated considering there is no firm plan as to how the city is addressing the situation or enforcing its decision.
Housing Opportunities and Maintenance for the Elderly Executive Director Gail Schechter said the city should explore all options to keep residents in their homes. She said the properties at the dead-end off the intersection of Foster Street and Wesley Avenue are in a Tax Increment Financing district, hence TIF funds could be used to support affordable housing to help fund changes.
“Because it’s a Black neighborhood that has been under-invested in, this is an opportunity (to) use TIF law,” Schechter told Pioneer Press. “You can use TIF funds for low-income people as affordable housing so it’s just to say there are funds the city could be using.”
While the HODC was brought in to help the EHC manage the properties, Schechter said the city could explore further legal routes like having a judge assign the properties to a formal receiver that’d help make improvements. The receiver would manage the properties’ repairs and finances accrued from tenants’ rent, she said.
Community Alliance for Better Government representative Trisha Connolly said the building should have never gotten to this point and all parties who contributed should be held responsible.
The city is working with the Evanston/Skokie School District 65, the North Shore Senior Center, Connections for the Homeless and CJE Seniorlife-Adult Day Services, according to Ogbo.
Residents say the building was in bad condition back in the 1990s but residents — along with the help of Gauthier — helped improve the property. Tenants wishing to remain at Wesley Avenue say this effort built community among the three properties and hope a solution can be found.
“When I got there (in the 1990s) I was in total shock because it was really bad (but) we made it better,” Aikens said. “We became a community. We had a tenants organization. We had it where we would know the tenants coming in and now here we are (again) 30 years later.”
Corey Schmidt is a freelance reporter with Pioneer Press.
