It takes a village
Without plan for affordable housing, some fear area may change for worse
December 7, 2006
By Eva McKendrick staff writer

Dec. 1 was a cold and blustery day: Temperatures were reported below 20 degrees; 6 inches of snow had fallen earlier in the day; and it was a Friday. These obstacles were enough to keep most people tucked in their homes - most schools even closed for the day. But they didn't stop more than 200 people from showing up at St. Joseph's Church in Downers Grove for an informational session on affordable housing.

Figures shown at the meeting offered cause for concern. Living in Downers Grove has become much harder for the average resident. Between 2000 and 2005, the median income rose 9 percent, but the median housing cost rose 68 percent, according to the DuPage Homeownership Center.

What's next

The next DuPage United Downers Grove Housing Team Project will take place at the end of January or the beginning of February. For information, visit www.dupageunited.org.

John Hazard of DuPage United started looking into the housing issue a few months ago and quickly realized how many residents shared the same concerns. "We want to give people a chance to talk and to make a public statement," he said at the meeting.

DuPage County has the highest median home price of all counties in Illinois at $343,500. That means a typical buyer would have to earn $122,920 to afford the median-price home. People who want to downsize their homes after retirement, move to Downers Grove to start a family or move back after college might have to look elsewhere.

And low affordability can cause a slew of other problems. Teachers, police officers, firefighters and nurses who don't make enough money to live in the neighborhood are forced to live far from work, contributing to the traffic problem in the county. This also makes it hard for employees to retain workers and for the village to keep its diversity.

Defining affordable

One goal of the meeting was to let people know what affordable housing really means. When some people think of this kind of housing, they think they will be staring at Cabrini Green when they look out the window. Susannah Levine, senior policy analyst with Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, spoke at the meeting to crush some of these myths.

"Truly there's a range when you think of affordable housing. There's very low-income housing that's subsidized like public housing projects all the way to housing that is needed for folks earning $60,000 a year - working-class people who are struggling to find affordable housing," Levine said.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the definition of affordable housing is "housing for which the occupant is paying no more than 30 percent of his or her income for gross housing costs, including utilities." Levine found examples of affordable homes in wealthy areas across the U.S. that resembled their neighbors because they were able to blend in with the surrounding area.

Hinsdale's lesson

Carol Lee Cikanek, a real estate broker and former Hinsdale planning commissioner, said Hinsdale waited too long to take action when it was dealing with the problem. She said Downers Grove is an ecosystem of builders, residents, diversity, environment and a strong downtown, and to keep that mix strong, people of all income levels need to be able to live in the area. For example, Cikanek said that in Hinsdale, the lack of diversity and high rents have created rows of vacant windows downtown.

"All these little stores go by the wayside because everybody wants big, huge rents. And so the ecosystem of the downtown area gets completely destroyed when you only have one type of person living in your town," Cikanek said.

Plan for the future

So what can Downers Grove do to keep history from repeating itself? Cikanek said the village needs a comprehensive plan created by local government. With the knowledge of where others went wrong, she said Downers Grove is much better suited for a plan than Hinsdale was in the mid-'80s, when she helped rezone the village.

Bob Walgren, executive director of the Community Housing Association of DuPage, had another solution: a land trust. With his program, he sells homes to qualified families, but they only pay for 60 percent of the house. When they want to move, they sell it back to the program and the home can stay subsidized forever. He has done this with about 40 homes in Glen Ellyn and Carol Stream. In breakout groups, audience members shared what they were thinking.

"I guess I was amazed at how many other communities have been struggling with this problem for five, 10, 20 years, in some cases," said Mary Anne Troy, a longtime Downers Grove resident. "I think to keep affordable housing is to ensure the kind of quality that we have right now in Downers Grove."

Martin Tully, a member of the Village Council, came to the meeting to see what the public had to say. "In an ideal world, you would like to have your teachers, police, firemen, public works folks live in your town, because who better is going to understand the needs of the community than the people who live in it? But they can't afford to live here. That presents an issue. That's something I'm thinking about very seriously," Tully said.

In other Chicago suburbs, such as Evanston, Highland Park, Arlington Heights and Wheaton, local governments have enacted many of solutions discussed at the meeting.

"If some of these more affluent suburbs can do it, we can do it here," said Pat Sullivan, a deacon at St. Joseph's.
Contact Eva McKendrick at emckendrick@scn1.com or call 630-416-5103.