To get to work, Joseph Moore once boarded the No. 82 bus for the ride to the Kedzie Blue Line stop, where he hopped on the “L” and settled in for the hour-plus trip through the Loop and back out to O’Hare. Moore then caught a Pace bus at the airport to complete the trek to his job at a clothing store in Rosemont.

“All of that, and you still hadn’t gotten to work yet,” said Moore, 25. “It’s draining.”

Moore wanted to move closer to work but said he could not afford the rent at apartments on the Northwest Side or nearby suburbs that would have made his commute more manageable. And even if he could, Moore said he often felt out of place in the predominantly white neighborhoods.

“It’s almost like being an alien, you know,” Moore said. “It’s like, do I belong here?”

Moore, who lives in North Lawndale, eventually found work as a community organizer in a job that reduced his travel time by more than half.

Moore’s hunt for affordable housing, a shorter commute and a different neighborhood are among the elements highlighted in the Metropolitan Planning Council’s new report on the Chicago region’s segregation, which offers a buffet of initiatives that take aim at entrenched racism and inequities holding back the region.

Adopting a City Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, could create an extra $218 million in spending by working families, the report suggests. Expanding the Chicago Housing Authority voucher program would open up more than 3,300 housing units and promote mobility and accessibility into new areas of the city. Eliminating the use of secured money bail and criminal court fees on the poor could help put a stop to a cycle of poverty and detention.

The two dozen policies and interventions, the authors said, would help dismantle institutional barriers and offer solutions for the region’s disparities in race and income. The initiatives would allow people like Moore to move, find new jobs and improve their lives, boosting the region’s potential and economic prowess.

The recommendations are both broad and specific, offering suggestions on more equitable housing, education, public health, economic development, transportation and land use while pushing for deeper change in the ways local governments and institutions operate. The report, which will be unveiled Tuesday during a presentation in Bronzeville, offers policies and programs that can be implemented in the next two years in the city, Cook County, the suburbs and throughout the state.

The report, available at www.metroplanning.org/roadmap, also emphasizes that barriers in place for years, perhaps unnoticed or unrecognized, create and perpetuate disparities. Failing to eliminate those core disparities, the authors said, will continue to hinder the region’s potential.

“To disrupt Chicago’s legacy of segregation we have to focus on the racism and inequality that fueled it,” said Marisa Novara, vice president of the planning council who is one of the road map’s authors.

If current trends continue, according to the planning council and the Urban Institute, Chicago may experience a 17 percent drop in its African-American population by 2030.

Novara stressed that addressing segregation does not always mean integration. Improving life qualities and eliminating barriers can occur both in primarily minority or poor communities and also in white or wealthy neighborhoods. If people who live in white, wealthy areas believe the region’s problems only occur elsewhere, that is part of the mindset that holds back the region, Novara said.

The road map pays particular attention to the needs to build inclusive housing and neighborhoods. One recommendation is to expand the housing choice voucher exception rents to 200 percent of fair market rent in areas that are currently inaccessible to voucher holders, a move that would promote mobility and accessibility into new areas, according to the report.

Moore welcomes anything that will help.

“Why can’t you find affordable housing?” Moore said. “I think to myself, ‘How do I get it?’ To get affordable housing is like finding the golden ticket.”

Finding ways to expand homeownership chances also should be a priority, the planning council said. Homeownership can be a key strategy to reducing the racial wealth gap. Many families of color have long been excluded, however, because of redlining, mortgage discrimination and predatory lending, the planning council says. While 74 percent of whites in the Chicago area owned their homes in 2015, only 39 percent of African-Americans and 51 percent of Latinos were homeowners, the largest gap among the nation’s largest metro areas.

Andrew Geer, vice president at Enterprise Community Partners, an adviser on the study and many of the housing recommendations, said the region “needs to be pulling on all three levers — policy, investment and programs” in order to create fair and affordable housing options.

“We know more and more about how the ZIP code you’re born into affects your life outcome,” Geer said. “We’re trying to open up choice so people have the choice of where they live and they can change the dial on that ZIP code. Just having that opportunity to move can make a family thrive.”

Those opportunities, Geer said, can mean staying in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood or moving to another with better amenities. It also means focusing policies and investment on struggling areas.

But that’s often not easy.

“There’s lots of barriers to fair housing,” Geer said. “We have NIMBY (not in my backyard) issues in many areas of the city.”

The region also should advance legislation to create a universal child savings account program, implement a capped fare system on public transit for low-income riders and improve links between employment hubs and low-income areas, the report said.

The road map of suggested action steps is the MPC’s follow-up to its initial 2017 report on the cost of segregation to the region.

poconnell@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @pmocwriter

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