Gail’s Bio

At home in Skokie, 2023

Gail Schechter has devoted her life to working with others to make communities diverse, just, and inclusive. Gail believes we all deserve to be treated with respect. We all should be heard. And if we’re good enough to work here, we’re good enough to live here.

Early in her life, Gail realized she could positively influence the lives of others, much like the way a courageous family took in her mother and other relatives in France during the Holocaust.

After winning a suit against her landlord while a student at Oberlin College, Gail, at the young age of 22, became a professional tenant organizer in New York City. As president of the Citywide Task Force Housing Court, she advocated for the right to representation for tenants.  

Today, some 40 years later, including twenty-two as the executive director of Open Communities in the northern suburbs, Gail Schechter is among our nation’s most experienced and effective advocates for fair housing and community development, including in Skokie, where she has lived since 2004.

In Skokie, she hit the ground running and has never stopped:
 
Gail led the purchase and rehab in 1994 of an 11-unit rental building for low-income seniors, families and people with disabilities, as executive director of what is now Housing Opportunity Development Corp. Twenty years later, she sponsored and secured funding for a Parent Mentor Program for immigrant parents in several Skokie elementary schools.

Gail co-founded Skokie Neighbors for Housing Justice in 2022 to push for a unified Skokie housing policy that meets human needs and promotes community. She led a successful campaign in 2011 to rewrite a proposed anti-crime rental-lease ordinance that would prevent discrimination against domestic violence victims and recent immigrants.

Gail worked with 50 taxicab drivers, the Taxicab Organizing Project (AFSC and the Council of Islamic Organizations), and a Skokie Trustee in 2007 to assure that a ban on overnight street parking would not limit where the cabbies – regardless of their race, national origin or religion — could reasonably live.

Gail participated in campaigns to ensure that Skokie would continue to be welcoming of group homes and new immigrants, and that the Village would not opt out of minimum-wage and sick-leave standards for workers established by Cook County.

Teaching students about fair housing and civil rights history, Washburne School, Winnetka 2007

And today, Gail is executive director of H.O.M.E. — Housing Opportunities and Maintenance for the Elderly — the only Chicago-based program of its kind to provide intergenerational affordable housing for low-income seniors as well as community programs to help seniors age in place. Thanks to the practical, direct services provided by H.O.M.E., many more Chicago seniors are living lives of security and dignity, with full access to safe housing, good food and medication.

Gail holds an M.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University and a B.A. with Honors in History from Oberlin College.

Organizing Morton Grove Suburban Motel tenants, 2000

Rally at Skokie Village Hall of the Skokie Alliance for Electoral Reform, Juneteenth 2022

Gail, together with Village Trustee James Johnson and other residents, co-founded and chaired the Skokie Alliance for Electoral Reform in 2021. The nonpartisan Alliance successfully forced reform of Skokie’s electoral system through a set of three referendums in 2022 to improve voter turnout, transparency and choice of candidates.

Gail has continued to lead the way on state and regional affordable housing policy, and ushering in political engagement by disenfranchised groups.

Gail was the main organizer of The Justice Project: The March Continues, a regional campaign focused on the Welcoming Community, whose principles were developed by a diversity of residents. Consequently, community members in multiple northern suburbs formed “Justice Teams” to promote local actions based on these principles. The impetus for the Justice Project was the 50th anniversary of the 1965 North Shore Summer Project, the grassroots open-housing movement that rallied thousands and featured Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Justice Day 2015, Winnetka Village Green

A published writer, she authored the definitive history of the open housing movement in the northern suburbs for The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North (University of Kentucky Press, 2016).

In 2012, Gail was appointed by Gov. Pat Quinn to the “affordable housing advocate” seat on the State Housing Appeals Board, the enforcement body of the state’s Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act. It was Gail and two local legislators — State Rep. Julie Hamos and State Sen. Jeff Schoenberg — who spearheaded the passage of this groundbreaking law.
 
Gail doesn’t just DO… she also mentors and trains others to carry on this important work. It’s about growing a cadre of social justice warriors.

Gail developed and taught graduate courses in public policy and civic engagement as part of Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies in its Masters in Public Policy and Administration (MPPA) programs. These courses included special sessions in 2011 for a visiting delegation of members of Parliament who later established South Sudan.

Gail co-founded the Addie Wyatt Center for Nonviolence Training in 2016 to teach and mentor Chicago-area high-school students and school communities in the principles and practices of Kingian Nonviolence. She also co-founded the Evanston-based Community Alliance for Better Government.

BridgeBuilder award, 2005

With the Evanston Youth and Young Adult Division, Addie Wyatt Center for Nonviolence Training, Evanston, IL, 2017

At Justice Day 2015, Winnetka Village Green, with Julia and William

Gail’s many honors include:

  • The Roberta "Bobbie" Raymond Leadership & Innovation Award from the Oak Park Regional Housing Center as a "Heroine of Housing." (2022)

  • Community Service Award, Evanston-North Shore NAACP (2013 and 2003)

  • BridgeBuilder Award, Justice & Peace Committee of the Chicago Province of the Society of the Divine Word (2005)

  • Champion of the Public Interest, Business and Professional People in the Public Interest (BPI) at their Annual Law Day Dinner, May 1, 2001

In her free time, Gail spends time gardening and reading in her Skokie home. She plays clarinet with the Lake Forest Civic Orchestra and the Savoyaires, an Evanston-based group that performs Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

Gail has two children: Julia Sheppard is an attorney in the City of Philadelphia’s ethics department. William Sheppard is a doctoral student in math at the University of California, Santa Barbara.