By Bob Seidenberg
Residents of the 2014, 2018, and 2024 Wesley Ave, buildings in Evanston gathered in front of the buildings earlier today to announce they have filed a class action lawsuit, alleging “years of neglect” by groups that have owned and managed the properties had led to their displacement.
”Being a landlord carries with it a non-delegate duty to take care of your buildings,” said Sheryl Weikal, the attorney representing the residents on the case. “We believe that the people who lived in this building deserve better than the neglect that they got.”
The lawsuit alleges longterm neglect on the part of groups which owned and managed the buildings. They included the Evanston Housing Coalition, Housing Opportunity Development Corporation and Evanston Green-Bay Limited Partnership.
Evanston city officials ordered the remaining households vacated from the building May 8, authorizing a night-time board up of units based on an in-house report. The report found deteriorating stairs and platforms at the 2018 Wesley building posed an immediate threat to residents safety.
Residents with deep roots: Cannon
The Wesley residents “are seniors, veterans, and families with children, all Black and many of whom have lived in the Fifth Ward for generations,” resident Darlene Cannon, one of the spokespeople for the group.
“The fact that the city didn’t lift a finger to improve the conditions of these buildings is unconscionable,” she said at the press conference. “The city has known for years that these buildings have been deteriorating, yet they stood by and did nothing.”
”Residents also call on the City of Evanston to uphold their rights, not to abet their ultimate displacement,” Cannon said in a statement. “In 2019, Evanston achieved a historic milestone by becoming the first city in the United States to enact a government-funded reparations program, aiming to address the historical injustices faced by Black residents as they were segregated in the Fifth Ward. Yet today, Evanston has presented no plan that would make the Wesley residents whole.”
The city has maintained that the three buildings, owned by the Evanston Housing Coalition, was inspected periodically as part of a routine rental inspection program, the last vision occurring in 2015.
Several other inspections, including in the summer of 2020, and Oct. 10, 2022 were cancelled, with EHC contacting the city late in that summer, with concerns about the stairs and platforms and their inability to manage the property, a statement from the city said.
EHC then entered into a management agreement with the Housing Opportunity Development Corporation in September 2022.
HODC responded to the city’s direction to address violations at the property, the city maintained, including identifying funding sources and developing a plan to address the deteriorated conditions for the stairs and platforms and overall conditions of the building.
HODC sought funding
However, the group’s application for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits to the Illinois Housing Development Authority was not approved, the city reported.
On Feb. 3, officials agreed that due to the deterioration of the stairs and platforms, the safety of the residents could not be assured and they needed to be relocated.
Contacted later Monday, Richard Koenig, the longtime director of HODC, was unaware of the lawsuit.
HODC, which entered the picture late, “really did try” to address the situation as they found it, he said.
”We took over management, we got leases signed, we took over the maintenance of peoples’ units,” he said, “and we tried to put together funding to do a major rehab. But we’re weren’t able to do it in time,” he said, referring to the deteriorating conditions the group found.
