How An Englewood Artist And Activist Is Helping Black Families Keep Their Homes

ENGLEWOOD —  Before Melvin Walls’ mother died, she asked him to fix up their green-shingled home on 65th and Aberdeen, Walls said.

She’d bought the home in the ‘70s. Four generations have gathered around the dinner table for the holidays, and it became Walls’ responsibility to keep the tradition going.

But Walls didn’t expect the work — or the costs — that would come with owning a home with decades of wear and tear, he said. His mother took out a second mortgage before she died. He had to work with the bank to buy it back, Walls said.

“If you get a home where the bills are backed up and there’s work that needs to be done, you’re working against a stacked deck. It’s hard to win,” Walls said. “I’ve been trying to keep this up, but it’s a lot of work. It’s been a Band-Aid here, another one there.”

That’s where Englewood artist and activist Tonika Lewis Johnson stepped in.

Johnson, whose work has highlighted racist practices preventing Black people from owning homes, is taking her work a step further with unBlocked Englewood, helping South Siders keep longtime homes in their families.

Partnering with the Chicago Bungalow Association, the project helps pay for costly repairs to older homes. That gives owners breathing room to keep pace with the expenses and helps them build equity without pulling from their pockets, said Amber Hendley, researcher and Johnson’s frequent collaborator. 

The project aims to help every Black homeowner on this stretch of Aberdeen Street, Johnson said.

Neighbors once struggling to keep their homes afloat estimate unBlocked Englewood has collectively saved them hundreds of thousands in expenses. The block has come together in a way many haven’t seen since they first moved to the neighborhood, they said.

But there’s more work to be done, Johnson said.

Johnson hopes to raise more than $1 million to continue repairs on 65th and Aberdeen, she said. She’s partnering with Hendley to estimate the equity gap discriminatory practices have caused Englewood homeowners to quantify how much needs to be reinvested into the block.

You can donate to unBlocked Englewood here.

“If horrible discriminatory housing practices can’t be redressed in a formal, municipal way, then we have to be creative about solutions until then,” Johnson said. “$1 million is just a start.”

‘This Is Going To Bear Fruit For Generations‘

The green-shingled home actually was the second Walls family house at 65th and Aberdeen.

Years earlier in the ’60s, the family moved into a white brick home at 6529 S. Aberdeen St., becoming one of the first Black families on the block, Walls said. 

Black doctors, lawyers and judges with notable names bought property on the street, but everyone knew the Walls family — all nine of them — and their home before they moved across the street.

So Walls was stunned when, nearly 60 years later, he saw Johnson post a bright yellow sign in front of his parents’ now-vacant white brick property: His family home was “legally stolen” through land sale contracts. 

It was part of Johnson’s project, “Inequity for Sale,” a live art installation that used “landmarks” to document the dozens of homes sold to aspiring Black homeowners through the predatory practice.

Prevalent in the ’50s and ‘60s, land sale contracts required Black families to pay exorbitant monthly payments without ever receiving ownership of the property. A Duke University study authored by Hendley showed 75-95 percent of homes sold to Black families in Chicago during the ’50s and ’60s were sold this way. 

“At first, I was shocked. I never knew. And out of all the houses on the block, this was the only one with a sign,” Walls said. “Then I started talking to Tonika, and I asked, ‘Well, what can we do about it?’”

Johnson’s answer is unBlocked Englewood, combining art and rehabilitation to redress decades of discrimination by helping current Englewood homeowners build equity.

Johnson named the project after the term “blockbusting,” a practice speculators used to persuade white homeowners in Englewood to sell their homes so they could raise the price for aspiring Black homeowners, she said. 

Johnson conceived the idea after meeting Thomas “TJ” Townsend — Walls’ grandson. Townsend grew up on 65th and Aberdeen and still lives on the block with his grandparents.

Townsend contacted Johnson when she placed the sign at his great grandparents’ home, and they discussed the common challenges homeowners faced to keep their homes, he said.

In land sale contracts, speculators would buy a home and then sell it on contract at an 84 percent markup, on average, Hendley said. If a Black homeowner maintained their contract home, they often did so “at an extremely high cost,” Hendley said. 

That means Black homeowners would likely forego maintenance to afford payments and property taxes, “which have historically been higher in Black communities,” Hendley said. Home value in Black neighborhoods has also historically been lower “because they don’t appreciate at the same rate,” Hendley said. 

If an owner passes the home to an heir, “they inherit more of a debt than an asset,” Hendley said. 

“We can draw connections between contract homes and homes that become dilapidated or vacant lots because they haven’t been properly maintained,” Hendley said. “The equity you would have hoped to gain to maintain the home is not there.”

Townsend put it this way: After paying utilities, neighbors “had to choose between medication and putting drywall up.”

Johnson and Townsend “put their minds together” to brainstorm how to help neighbors maintain their homes and revitalize property, Townsend said.

Johnson enlisted the help of the Chicago Bungalow Association to help restore homes. Her nonprofit, the Folded Map Project, and the CBA received a $250,000 grant from the city’s Together We Heal Creative Place Program to make that work happen in 2022.

unBlocked Englewood also received grants from the Chicago Community Trust and Terra Foundation for American Art, a donation of outdoor power equipment from Zoro.com to maintain vacant lots and sidewalks, and services from Home Energy Savings program, in partnership with ComEd and Peoples Gas.

In the past year, they’ve repaired neighbors’ homes with new insulation, plumbing and furnaces. Walls — who now lives across the street from his childhood residence in the home passed down from his late mother — received a new roof, insulation and plumbing in his late mother’s home, he said.

Delon Adams and Justine Mosely Stephens also got help from unBlocked Englewood.

Adams grew up in the neighborhood, playing basketball and swimming at Ogden Park as a child. When the streetlights came on, he’d return to his grandmother’s two-flat on 65th and Aberdeen. She lived upstairs on the second floor, and his family lived downstairs, Adams said. 

When his grandmother died a few years ago, he wanted to keep the building in the family, Adams said. He underestimated the cost it’d take to do so, he said. The building needed fixed walls, light fixtures and an exhaust fan in the bathroom. The roof repairs he needed would cost thousands, Adams said. 

The Chicago Bungalow Association restored the interior and exterior of Adams’ home through unBlocked Englewood.

Mosley Stephens, a beloved neighborhood landlord, owns five buildings on 65th and Aberdeen and several of the vacant lots, she said.

Stephens has been “bolstering up the community for decades, keeping it tight-knit and within the family as a landlord,” Johnson said. She often offers affordable rent below market value.

When she can’t afford repairs that keep insurance companies from knocking on her door, the community suffers, Johnson said.

Through unBlocked Englewood, Stephens’ buildings received repairs that she can boast to new tenants and insurance companies, she said.

The Englewood Arts Collective will soon add public art to vacant lots on the block, as well.

Hendley’s next step is to take data the association collected to analyze the costs of home repairs, combine it with the age of the Englewood homes and the housing type, and calculate the costs to bring homes in Englewood to code, she said. 

From there, she’ll compare the value of a home of a similar age and type in another neighborhood to calculate the equity gap, Hendley said. The work could be “transformational.”

“This is going to bear fruit for generations from now that we couldn’t imagine,” Hendley said. “We can take this equity figure and make sure it’s poured back into the community in a way that positively impacts the homeowners and does not harm renters trying to get into the homeownership system.”

Johnson’s work can help improve housing stock in Englewood while “beginning a path to restore wealth stripped away because of policy and practices in the city,” said Robin Rue Simmons, founder of FirstRepair and a former Evanston alderperson. FirstRepair helps local communities create reparative practices. 

unBlocked Englewood is defining how “arts and culture are going to be key in us reaching out goals for racial justice,” Simmons said. “It’s inspiring.”

“That million dollars will be transformative,” Simmons said. “It will not only inspire the residents on the block, but it should inspire all of Chicago. It should be an example to artists, activists and policymakers on what is possible.”

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