Over the past 40 years, most of which, as Professor of Politics at Lake Forest College, Paul Fischer has been studying race and housing issues in the United States. After serving as a policy analyst in the Carter Administration, specializing in the desegregation of public housing, Professor Fischer returned to the Chicago area to continue his work. Over the years he was an expert witness in a number of important housing segregation cases throughout the country, including Dallas, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. 

 

When HOPE VI was implemented his primary focus changed to the transformation of public housing in Chicago and the utilization of housing vouchers as an anti-poverty strategy. Among his research papers were two reports exploring the relocation patterns of families displaced from high-rise developments  One of these papers was the basis of the lawsuit settled with the Chicago Housing Authority. He determined that most public housing families being relocated were ending up in neighborhoods as poor and segregated as the communities they had left, contradicting the aims of the Plan for Transformation. Subsequently he co-authored a study, under the auspices of the Metropolitan Planning Council, which made a series of recommendation to improve the way the Chicago Housing Authority dealt with displaced families who chose to return to new mixed income housing under the federally funded HOPE VI program. 

 

With support from the Woods Fund of Chicago, Professor Fischer completed a study on the redevelopment in Bronzeville, a predominantly African-American neighborhood on the south side of Chicago and the impact of the Plan for Transformation of public housing in Chicago on changing housing market in that community.  He also authored a study funded by the MacArthur Foundation titled “Affordable Housing in the Chicago Region: Applying the Montgomery County Model and Beyond”.  In April 2002 Professor Fischer was featured on CHICAGO MATTERS: INSIDE HOUSING on WTTW Channel 11, Chicago’s public television station, and WBEZ.

 

Working under the auspices of the Metropolitan Planning Council Dr. Fischer helped developers of mixed income housing in their community building efforts in conjunction with the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation as well as evaluating a pilot program to facilitate the residential mobility of mostly African-American families in the Chicago region through the use of federal housing vouchers. 

 

Working with the Shriver Center prepared a report describing the high degree of racial concentration in public housing in the Chicago suburbs.  That study became the basis of a law suit against the Housing Authority of Cook County. As part of the remedy in settling that case the Housing Authority agreed to fund what became known as Housing Choice Partners of Illinois. Professor Fischer eventually chaired the organization for over a decade. Over the past 30 years it has become one of the premier housing mobility counseling agencies in the country.