Gail Schechter

Gail Schechter joined H.O.M.E. as Executive Director in 2018. Originally from New York City, where she launched her career as a tenant organizer in 1984, Gail has been a local and national leader in fair, affordable, and intergenerational housing; enforcement and investigation of housing discrimination; housing development; and community organizing. She is also a widely recognized thought leader in conceiving of and implementing creative grassroots strategies for just, beloved communities, most recently as the organizer of “The Justice Project: The March Continues” in Chicago’s northern suburbs. In 2012, the Governor appointed her to fill the “affordable housing advocate” seat on the State Housing Appeals Board, the enforcement body of the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act which she helped to pass. Gail is also a co-founder of the Chicago-based Addie Wyatt Center for Nonviolence Training and the author of “We’re Gonna Open Up the Whole North Shore” in the anthology The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North (2016).