Executive Summary
Impact for Equity (formerly known as BPI) has represented public housing residents and applicants as plaintiffs in the Gautreaux lawsuit for more than five decades, seeking to remedy race discrimination in the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) public housing construction and resident assignment.
The case was filed to challenge CHA’s construction of massive, high-rise buildings restricted to redlined, racially segregated areas of the city of Chicago, and to challenge tenant assignment practices based on race. Public housing plaintiffs won the case in 1969, and since that time the lawsuit has been about remedying the public housing segregation of the past that denied Black families opportunities to live in any neighborhood of their choice.
By requiring the construction of new public housing on a smaller scale and outside of neighborhoods in which Black residents were segregated, by enabling residents to utilize federal housing vouchers to move anywhere in the Chicago region, and by promoting investments in communities and resources at historic public housing developments, Gautreaux has opened and improved housing opportunities for public housing residents across the Chicago metropolitan area.
While Gautreaux has fundamentally reshaped public housing in Chicago, it is also true that housing opportunities in Chicago remain racially segregated, and a shortage of affordable, available housing options, along with slow progress by CHA to complete construction of mixed income housing on sites where large public housing developments were demolished, continues to limit housing options for public housing families and applicants, even after more than five decades of litigation.
