I am honored to serve as the board chair of the Oak Park Residence Corporation (OPRC). Together with my board colleagues, we are deeply dedicated to continuing to advance OPRC’s mission of affordability, diversity, and quality multifamily housing throughout our community.
I want to take this moment, however, to write briefly about our mission, our history, and why we’re so committed to these efforts.
As we have been advancing the proposal to replace our mid-century, 12-unit building located at 7 Van Buren, with a beautifully-designed, modern, sustainable, accessible, and economically-integrated replacement building, I think some of our fellow residents may not be as aware of why we do what we do.
The Residence Corporation was created in 1966 to help make sure that people from all backgrounds could have access to high-quality housing throughout the village. OPRC’s early years were a time of significant concern about apartment buildings allowed by their owners to deteriorate, thereby placing residents at risk of living in substandard housing. Not surprisingly, many of those residents most likely to be placed at risk had lower incomes and were disproportionately people of color.
The Residence Corporation has dedicated itself over these past 54 years to ensure that such buildings could be acquired, rehabilitated, and rented at reasonable costs to all kinds of people. We partner with the Oak Park Regional Housing Center to help attract diverse populations to all of our buildings (more than 30 in all). In addition, we own a 76-unit senior building (The Oaks), a 21-unit building (the Farrelly-Muriello Apartments) specially designed for those with serious physical impairments, and we administer the 600-household Housing Choice Voucher Program for the Oak Park Housing Authority, as well as providing the largest number of apartments directly to Housing Choice Voucher recipient households.
As a nonprofit, we also reinvest a tremendous amount of money back into all Residence Corporation buildings to ensure that they benefit their surrounding neighborhoods throughout the community. And though we are a nonprofit, we also pay over a million dollars each year in property taxes, thereby helping to help support the needs of our schools, our parks, and our community.
We are a long-term dedicated stakeholder in this community, and we are deeply committed to the well-being of Oak Park and all Oak Parkers.
We also believe that people of all backgrounds should have an opportunity to be our neighbors, in all parts of our community. That people of all backgrounds should have an opportunity to send their children to school with all of our kids. That people of all backgrounds should have an opportunity to connect with us in all of our neighborhoods, our parks, and our business districts. And that people of all backgrounds should have an opportunity to live together in diverse, economically-integrated buildings. It is these beliefs that led us to propose the building at 7 Van Buren that will be considered and voted on by the Plan Commission this Thursday, Dec. 16. And it is these beliefs that have long been the shared commitment of our entire community.
Since its founding, the Residence Corporation has been all about advancing these vitally important Oak Park values. We hope that the members of the Oak Park Plan Commission will continue to stand for these shared values as well.
Wayne Pierce is the chair of the Oak Park Residence Corporation board.