Guest Essay by Rev. Paul Hottinger, St. Joseph Church, Downers Grove. Published in Downers Grove Reporter 8/23/06

A few days ago a parishioner at St. Joseph Church relayed a comment her husband made as they drove down a leafy Downers Grove street. “Enjoy the house,” he said, “because it’s the last one we’ll have in this town.” Sad, but probably true. Like so many families in our village, they’ll be able to make a decent dollar when they decide to sell, but it’s likely that another home here will be out of their reach.

Is it a teardown problem, as so many say? Yes and no. A proliferation of enormous and expensive new homes is not always a good thing. You’ve probably heard the complaints: changing character of neighborhoods, bad roof lines, insufficient setbacks, loss of mature trees, huge shadows, poor drainage, and so on. In many cases there are valid environmental and aesthetic questions.

But rising home prices are not entirely or even principally caused by developers and buyers of outsized houses. Prices of almost all homes in the metropolitan area have risen, in some cases dramatically. Between 2000 and 2004 the median income in DuPage County rose 3.4 percent, but the median home price rose 38 percent. True, with the housing market slowdown since 2004, the growth of that gap may have slowed as well, but there’s no reason to believe the gap itself has grown smaller.

Regardless of its cause, the problem our parishioner’s husband mentioned is a serious one. And it leads to an important question about the future of Downers Grove: Do we really want our children and seniors, our teachers and librarians and fire fighters and police, to be gradually dealt out of the housing game? Do we really want our town to turn into an exclusive community, an enclave reserved to the affluent?

Conventional wisdom says there’s nothing anyone can do. After all, rising housing costs are a natural function of the market’s “invisible hand.”

Market forces indeed are strong. But they can be enlisted to help preserve the economic diversity of a healthy community such as ours. Hinsdale, Lake Forest, Arlington Heights, Evanston, Wheaton, Chicago, and hundreds of other municipalities around the country are working to preserve the middle-income housing they have. Many even are creating new middle-income housing as well. These cities and towns have done their homework. They have found and successfully implemented intelligent solutions that are not inconsistent with the principles of a free market.

Thus, the wheel does not have to be re-invented. But what about the will?

To my knowledge, the Village of Downers Grove has made no move to protect its present or potential middle-class residents from being priced out. Indeed, there’s no sign that village leaders even acknowledge a problem. However, a number of people at St. Joseph Parish have begun to study the issue and research solutions appropriate to our village. We welcome input from the larger community. Please contact Deacon Pat Sullivan, Robert_P._Sullivan@hud.gov, or John Hazard, hazardj@comcast.net.