And that adage, coincidentally, is also the defining principal behind the social activism of Allyn Rawling, an agent with Coldwell Banker Evanston-Central, whose social campaigning for the area’s schools is everything you’d expect from a resident of the famously democratic North Shore community.

It was in the ‘80s that Evanston’s school district, the Evanston/Skokie CC School District 65, considered cutting the schools’ art, drama and music curriculum for budgetary reasons, and Rawling and the other parents in the area acted, galvanizing public support, appearing before the school board and opposing the budget cuts. When the school board responded that maintaining the district’s extracurricular programs would require a referendum for higher property taxes, Rawling and the others promptly shifted their focus – and campaigned in support of the referendum. It wasn’t just parents, though. Much of the public push for the referendum came from Rawling’s own Coldwell Banker office, which conducted a mailing campaign in support of the referendum.

The professional stake in maintaining Evanston’s schools, after all, was high for the community’s real estate professionals. The town’s sterling education system, Rawling explains, is one of the primary reasons that new parents move from the city to Evanston, and if the town lost its educational advantage, its real estate would suffer as a result; and that message, by no sheer coincidence, was the main narrative of the postcards that Rawling’s office sent to homeowners in the neighborhood.

Rawling’s activism, she explains, comes down to one essential fact in housing – regardless of where real estate agents work, they are not selling property; they are selling a home, and all of the intrinsic characteristics of the greater community that accompany that new, exciting living environment. So when, for instance, Rawling and other community members campaigned for a new public park, a venture that resulted in the citizens purchasing a vacant lot for $1 and converting it into today’s oft-used Penny Park, she was not simply looking for a fresh spot for her children to play; rather, she and the other activists were defending the sense of community an agent sells to his or her clients.

“If you take care of your community, you will help your industry,” Rawling says. “[My activism] has given me a really good understanding of the community where I live and work … You need to know about the communities you work in.”

And of course, between Rawling and Batinick, neither engages in political activities that are unique to their respective communities. For instance, there are public board meetings for the Cook, DuPage, McHenry and Kane counties with their own political parties; there are plenty of other school districts with their own commissioners and agendas, from Naperville, to Wheaton, to Antioch, to U-46; and between blogs, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, expressing views to a wide – even worldwide – audience has never been easier, or more cost-effective.

The Never-Ending Story
Though Rawling and the parents of Evanston managed to pass that referendum in the ‘80s, they have had to pass two more since to maintain the area’s academic standards; if Batinick succeeds in his campaign for Will County Auditor, he’ll have a whole new host of responsibilities as the county’s chief financial watchdog; and though Gregory and Coulson were successful in extending the National Flood Insurance Program, they still have a myriad of other issues to lobby Congress on, and a whole score of new politicians to consider when they descend upon Capitol Hill Jan. 3, 2013, when the 113th Congress officially begins.

“Sometimes you don’t get the result right away,” Gregory says.

As an example, he referenced a seemingly never-ending legislative battle with the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department that began in 2001, when the two hugely influential financial bodies suggested that Congress extend the powers of real estate brokerages and property management firms to the nation’s largest banks, a move that would have almost certainly impacted smaller brokerages and management firms. NAR opposed the policy from the start, and though it took a while to accomplish, it did succeed in eliminating the proposed policy.

“That was an eight-year campaign,” Gregory says. “That took eight years. But we won. In the end, we won.”

Mark Batinick
RE/MAX Commercial Consultants
Plainfield
815.609.0500
mbatinick@aol.com

Allyn Rawling
Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage
Evanston-Central
847.866.8200
allyn.rawling@cbexchange.com

Lake Coulson
National Association of Home Builders
Washintgon, D.C.
800.368.5242
www.nahb.org

Jamie Gregory
National Association of Realtors,
Washington, D.C.
202.383.1027
jgregory@realtors.org