With an eye toward history, Jessica Merritt is researching how neighbors can best navigate housing Bronzeville’s shifting landscape.
by Troy Gaston
Frank Lloyd Wright Townhomes located near East 32nd Street and South Calumet Avenue in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. (Photo: @artistmac/Flikr)
Jessica Merritt knows what it’s like to feel the housing deck is stacked against you. And she’s looking to do something about it.
Merritt, a Bronzeville resident who also works as a community center site director, is embarking on a data project with the Black Researchers Collective to determine what Bronzeville residents need most when it comes to navigating the neighborhood’s changing housing market.
“I’m an aspiring homeowner myself. I went to college, I got a decent job, and yet it’s still an unattainable thing for me,” Merritt said. “People leave the neighborhood and then they can’t afford to come back, and I don’t think that’s fair.”
She hopes to probe the effects of gentrification in Bronzeville and build better access to housing programs and resources for longtime residents who want to stay in the neighborhood or buy a home there.
Born and raised in Bronzeville, Merritt said her lifelong connection to the community inspired her pursuit to understand and combat the forces reshaping the neighborhood she calls home.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What sparked your interest in studying Bronzeville?
Everything you know about Black culture, I feel somehow, Bronzeville had a role in it. It is important to keep that integrity and culture and community of people who were born there and made it what it is.
I grew up in the Ida B. Wells housing projects. I went to Wells Prep Academy and Phillips High School. Growing up, there was a sense of community. The neighborhood was home to a lot of legends: Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones. The Harlem Globetrotters were all from Phillips.
But as years went by, they demolished everything they built that was meant to keep people concentrated. That drove property values down, and then people say these are unlivable neighborhoods and unlivable conditions. Then they build housing that costs like a half-million dollars to usher in “a new way.”
You see displacement of people who created the history of the neighborhood. You see rapid gentrification, and it’s usually incoming residents of a certain economic status. And historically and systemically, that economic status usually doesn’t include people who look like you or me.
Why is housing such an essential aspect to the struggles surrounding Bronzeville and its residents?
Housing is the biggest focal point, because that's the core of our lives. The communities we create, the schools that we go to, the culture — they're all centered around housing. The less likely it is that people in the neighborhood own homes, the less involved they are. They don’t feel like stakeholders or feel committed to making changes, because it’s temporary for them. So I do think having a sense of housing security helps in the sense of community as well.
How does your research foster discussion around Bronzeville, and why is the project important to Bronzeville community members?
I feel like, as Black people, we’re in a constant mode of survival and migration. Just like the Great Migration: people came up here for a better life, and then some of them went back South. As soon as something happens, we move to a place that’s more convenient for us, versus staying and creating our own place where we are.
But the Black community is an integral part of Bronzeville. It’s right there in the name. We see what happened in Harlem and other historic Black neighborhoods across the country [that lose Black residents]. It’s important for community members to know that they are a part of a very important legacy and sort of take ownership of that.
What do you hope comes out of your research?
If more people knew where we come from and things like that, it would bring back more responsibility, and maybe we can go back to having more Black-owned businesses and homes owned by people [in Bronzeville]. It’s important as an investment, generationally and historically.
And if people can consider that and see the policies, maybe we can put pressure on political figures. There are vacant lots all over Chicago. [City officials] know these lots are vacant, but they won’t tell us why. And the next thing you know, a half-million dollar structure is going up, when that opportunity could have been in the hands of the residents.
Because every neighborhood shouldn’t be the same. Every good neighborhood doesn’t need a Starbucks and frozen yogurt and stuff like that. It’s the differences that make us unique.
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