Wordpress Blog, April 7, 2004, http://resmgr.wordpress
.com/2004/04/07/truth-of-diversity-hurts:

The Truth of Diversity Hurts

By Lola LOL, Anon., Residence Manager just west
of Austin

Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, Oak Park, but the truth hurts. Maybe Shakespeare could put this better than me—in fact, I’m sure he could—so rather than try, I’ll just give you a few spoonfuls of my building’s statistics:

➢ Demographic breakdown of building:

• 32 units. 1 Pan-Asian. 5 African-American. 26 Caucasian.

➢ Noise complaints in past month: 3

• 1st offender, treadmill on 3rd floor (Black. Woman. Single.)

• 2nd offender, dance instructor holding class in living room on 2nd floor (White. Man. Single.)

• 3rd offender, born-again Christian speaking in tongues on 1st floor (Black. Woman. Single.)

➢ Police called by resident manager in past three months: 2

• 1st offender, crack addiction—taken from residence to psychiatric unit in restraints (Black. Girl. Teenager.)

• 2nd offender, dealing drugs—taken from residence to juvenile detention center in handcuffs (Black. Boy. Teenager.)

➢ Late rent in past three months: 2

• 1st offender/repeat offender. Still living in unit (Black. Woman. Single.)

• 2nd offender/repeat offender. Evicted (White. Woman. Single.)

➢ Fire in past four years: 1

• Offender, postcoital cigarette on mattress in laundry room (Black. Boy. Teenager with unidentified girl.)

➢ Failure to take garbage from back deck to alley Dumpster in past month: too many to count

• Offenders—black, white, woman, man, single, married, teenager.

➢ Demographic breakdown at last resident manager Sunday brunch:

• Of 32 units, 7 attended: 6 white, 1 black.

➢ Demographic breakdown of tenants who attended last week’s monthly building-wide walk:

• 4. White.

• Number of rehabbed apartments: 28

• Number of units not rehabbed: 4

• Number of blacks living in units not rehabbed: 4

• Number of whites living in rehabbed units: 26

• Number of “other” living in rehabbed units: 1

• Number of complaints from tenants in non-rehabbed units to get units rehabbed: 3

I’ve been a resident manager in a building for four years now, going on five. You all know this. I write about it all the time! The rodents, the cockroaches, the parties, the gardening, the mopping and the sweeping and the apartment showing, and the moving in and moving out, and the lockouts, and the heat, and the air-conditioning, and the parking and all the follies and foibles of living in and managing a multi-unit residential building in this wonderful community we all call home. You’ve read about them all.

But I don’t tell you about the real stuff. The hard stuff. The truth.

Diversity Assurance. Yes. I’m part of it. A BIG part of it. And I have to say that from a philosophical standpoint I am a believer in it—but a believer with one sweeping caveat:

Because we don’t have something better.

Is my building diverse? Yes, indeed, it sure is, Dear Reader. I’ve convinced whites and whites and more whites that this is a safe and lovely community to make one’s home in—and I believe that. Five years ago, I was the third white tenant to move in. The demographics have shifted that much that quickly.

But what happens when one of the four black tenants who’ve all lived here more than fifteen years comes to my apartment with a complaint? Or for one of my quarterly Sunday brunches (to create community)?

Well, they see the truth. They see the beautiful hardwood floors I have, the new paint job, the newly outfitted kitchen. They see the rehabbed apartments that their landlord creates in part from their rent and in part from this village’s grants program. And what do they think? Do they understand that in order to have a rehabbed apartment, they’d actually have to vacate for a month or two? No, they don’t know that until they’re told. And then, say they’re willing . . . do they understand that their rent would increase by fifty, sixty, seventy percent? No. They don’t get gentrification, which is really what D.A. is most of the time. This, Readers, is what they get:

Who’s living in those nice rehabbed apartments?

. . . Everyone but them.

We have one rehabbed apartment with an African-­American—a resident at a nearby hospital who is friendly to me, but not “friends” with me, and who appears to work 20 hours a day. This makes me sad. Just one. But I’m told I’m doing a good job; I’m told my building ­demographics mirror the country at large and that is the point. But the demographics don’t take into account the staggering ­difference between standards of living of those in rehabbed units ­versus those not (who, admittedly, pay far less in rent).

I’m not saying it’s not complicated, and I’m not saying we should kill D.A. But I am saying that if the Village of Oak Park thinks there’s community here—real community, where we rely on each other, where we have each other’s backs—then they’re probably living in a dreamscape.

I don’t know the answer. I don’t believe we’ve found it—in D.A. or anywhere. I know what happened on Ilios Lane isn’t something that should be pinned on the residents of the west side—even if it was residents from the west side who did it—and I know Oak Park isn’t nearly the racial panacea that it believes itself to be—and that exists on both sides, blacks and whites. Because the blacks who live in my building and see my rehabbed apartment and curse at me when I call them to take out their garbage? They don’t want to hang with me any more than I want to hang with them. They don’t rely on me any more than I rely on them. Call this racist. Call it honest. Call it a factor of economics and culture and age, too. Call it all these things, because it probably is.

I wish it were different. I wish they were different. I wish I were different. I try. I truthfully, even in my darkest moments, believe I am trying. But mostly, I wish we were honest enough to come up with something better for ourselves, for all of us than, well, than our own devilish human nature.

Peace out, Readers.

~Lola “LOL”