‘Bullies get bullied:’ Local man opens DeKalb tenant advocacy office through Sir Donald Foundation

DeKALB – John Walker of DeKalb said he has seen the many walks of life as a local UPS driver for more than two decades.

Walker, 45, said he didn’t pay that much attention when he started delivering packages around the city. As he started to become more aware of his surroundings and more involved in the community as a youth football coach, he said he started to notice the living conditions of the more disadvantaged people in the city.

“It reminded me of me and my mom and my brother when we were coming up,” Walker, who is originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, said.

Walker said a lot of the stories that have been going around about troublesome residential landlords reminded him of his upbringing as well. That’s why he’s opening an Equity and Justice Center in DeKalb to guide locals struggling with landlord issues and advocate for individuals in need of fair and equitable housing.

“I don’t like people getting bullied, you know what I’m saying? And I felt like coming up, seeing how landlords treated us, you know, we kind of got bullied,” Walker said. " ... But where I come from, bullies get bullied.”

Walker said it started to get personal for him when he started to see the kids he previously coached dealing with landlords who don’t hold up their end of the lease and make necessary repairs in a timely manner, for example.

“I wanted to educate and bring a lot of knowledge without just talking, like everybody else did,” Walker said.

Growing more impatient by the pace of local government bureaucracy and as someone who is looking to run for local government office in upcoming elections anyway, Walker (who also sits on the City’s Human Relations Commission) said he decided to try to see what he can do to help provide useful and easy-to-understand information for tenants struggling with their landlords.

“I like to think I got big shoulders and I can stand up to help people wherever needed,” Walker said. “So that’s why I got this office.”

Walker said he also remembered how the Sycamore community provided his family with “overwhelming support” when his wife Amy, who is a kindergarten teacher at Southeast Elementary School in Sycamore, previously was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“It kind of made me think, it’s always more than about yourself,” Walker said.

How it works

Earnell Brown – founder of the Sir Donald Foundation, which is meant to address and reduce recidivism in the community and is currently leasing office space in the City of DeKalb’s Belonging center – said Walker’s formal office title is the Equity and Justice Center, which will serve as an extension of the foundation. He said Walker also oversees the foundation’s youth division.

“So it’s advocacy,” Brown said. “The primary purposes of the equity and justice center is to advocate, support and provide opportunities for fairness, equality and things like that.”

Walker said anybody who comes to his office in the Belonging center, 217 S. Fourth St., can expect to receive information found in the City of DeKalb’s landlord and tenant regulations narrowed down to a couple of pages, with information in layman’s terms. He said he also can provide certified mail letter templates for tenants to work off of when making official repair requests in writing.

Brown said one of the guiding principles of the foundation’s center is that “housing is a right.” He said it’s important to have fair, equitable housing that is habitable and it produces opportunities for people’s overall growth.

“If you come into your house every day and it stinks like piss in the hallway, rats and roaches everywhere, somebody got shot downstairs last night, all of that – that’s not conducive to a person’s mental health to be able to actually make a decision that they can go somewhere with themselves,” Brown said. “All they see around is despair. That’s not going to work.”

Walker agreed with Brown. Earlier, he recounted the story of someone telling him about how they woke up in the middle of the night to check on their kids and saw bugs crawling all over them.

“How do teachers expect the kid to be focused and do what he’s supposed to do when he just got done seeing that or smelling that?” Walker added.

The City of DeKalb recently announced its intent to purchase the Hunter Hillcrest complex following the City’s settlement with embattled landlord Hunter Properties in April, which includes the landlord selling its Hunter Ridgebrook, Hunter Tri-Frat, Lincoln Tower and Hunter Hillcrest properties in the coming years as part of the settlement. Current residents previously expressed concerns about being displaced and local leaders expressed concerns about the areas becoming subject to gentrification.

Walker emphasized he is not a lawyer and the purpose of his office is not to provide legal help to tenants, although he’s hoping to start some partnerships with area lawyers soon. He also added his main objective is to help the responsible tenant who is not delinquent on rent payments but can’t get their landlord to fix their stove, for example.

“If you don’t pay your rent, if you are a nuisance, if you’re getting caught doing stuff you shouldn’t do, don’t come here,” Walker said. “Don’t call me. Don’t come here. I can’t do anything for you.”

Brown said he hopes that future housing-related developments for Sir Donald Foundation include expanding shelter housing in the community to also include more transitional housing for those who were recently incarcerated. He said he’s also looking to implement a transportation program soon to help defendants make it to court and court-ordered services and prevent failures to appear in court.

In the meantime, Brown said he wants to help the current tenants living in buildings of absent landlords to improve their quality of life and to help prevent gentrification in the Annie Glidden North neighborhood.

“Because those buildings aren’t horrible,” Brown said. “They’re just not maintained. ... This is for the people who live there to enhance their living.”