According to The Washington Post, Dixon Romeo, creator of the community group Not Me We, said, “This is the community that helped send him into the White House, and we deserve to be the community that is given the opportunity to remain and benefit from the new presidential center.””We are not opposed to the center, but we are opposed to gentrification.” According to the Guardian, Romeo stated, “We are against displacement.”
“Our demands demonstrate that there is an option to have the Center without being displaced or, at the very least, policies set up to mitigate it. Right now, there aren’t any,” he explained.
According to the Post, a recent referendum that garnered 90 percent support from Chicago’s South Shore citizens asked for the city to guarantee that affordable housing is available around the center.
Michele Williams, 80, is pessimistic.
At a recent neighborhood meeting, she stated, “The Obama Center isn’t being built for Chicago. It is being built for the entire world.”
Barack Obama, was one of the most controversial presidents?
Those folks “do not want us to be here. So, what do you expect will happen?” She stated.
The Obama Center’s executive vice president for civic involvement, Michael Strautmanis, stated that the foundation aims to discover a method to make everyone happy.
“When the center is operational,” Strautmanis said, “it is our hope and intention that the residents there now can take advantage of the center. This has the potential to be a success story.”
When the Post dug deeper, it discovered that typical rents in three zip codes surrounding the center had risen by 43 percent since the news of the site’s selection in 2015. Home prices have increased by more than 130 percent.
Author: Scott Dowdy
