Relations, and inaugurating a community relations
network—still at work today—to ease racial and
religious disharmony.
The policy on
religious diversity was important because Cleveland Heights has one
of the largest Jewish communities in the Midwest. The Jewish
Community Federation later provided financial support for young
Jewish families willing to remain in established Jewish
neighborhoods that were undergoing change. In this way, they could
stay close to the synagogues and the kosher markets that were at
the heart of their communities.
In 1972, in
association with the Jewish Community Federation and the Catholic
Commission on Community Action, the city encouraged formation of
the Heights Community Congress. Two years later it established the
Heights Housing Service to show black and white prospects available
property anywhere in the city. These measures followed publication
in 1972 of an audit by the Social Justice Committee of St. Ann's
Catholic church revealing that real estate firms were showing black
prospects homes only in Cleveland Heights and failing to show
potential white buyers homes there. Five years later the Community
Congress joined with the city in a suit charging an area real
estate firm with racial steering; they won a favorable judgment in
federal court in 1983.
CHANGES
AFOOT
The Cleveland
Heights experience drove home to Shaker Heights officials the value
of adopting pro-integration approaches that extended outside the
city to include other jurisdictions. Significant changes were afoot
in the entire pro-integration movement.
The city was
looking for a new director for the Housing Office. Shaker officials
conducted a national search for a professional with a reputation
for achievement in the field of integration. Donald DeMarco, who is
white, came to Shaker Heights in 1982 with extensive experience in
supporting integration in the Chicago suburbs and in two other
Midwestern cities. He was hired to direct the programs of the
Housing Office, newly reorganized as the Community Services
Department.
Strategy as
well as policy changed as DeMarco assumed direction of the Shaker
Heights program. As DeMarco provided the vision for change, Alfred,
who became Shaker Heights' mayor in January 1984, provided the will
and the political persistence necessary to achieve it. They
recognized that they had to alter the program if it was not to be
perceived as helping whites only. They had to find more visible
ways to help blacks find housing. They recognized, too, that they
could no longer focus narrowly on Shaker Heights. They had to open
markets in other parts of the region.