Let’s talk about something that is both a national issue in the presidential campaign and a local issue here in Oak Park: the lack of affordable housing. A recent poll from the Bipartisan Policy Center showed that nearly 75 percent of respondents believe the lack of affordable homes is a significant problem in the U.S.
In Oak Park, we have the full panoply of housing affordability issues, whether it is homeless people living outside the Metra station, rents that now average more than $1,800 for a two-bedroom apartment, and single-family homes that sell for an average of $450,000, according to Zillow.
This same trend is happening in Austin, Galewood, River Forest, Forest Park and Berwyn.
This means that housing affordability is no longer an issue just for low-income families; it has trickled up to many middle-income families. Who vote.
And so, both presidential candidates have responded.
Vice President Kamala Harris has promised to build three million new homes and provide down payment assistance to first-time home buyers.
Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has vowed to reduce regulatory hurdles to building new homes and make federally owned land available for large scale housing developments, something we won’t see in Chicagoland.
Housing experts say we can either provide subsidies to increase the supply of affordable housing or we can impact the demand side by providing government subsidies, such as the government guaranteed low interest mortgages for veterans after WWII.
And in Oak Park? We have withdrawn into binary opposing views: NIMBY and YIMBY.
Any proposal to build affordable housing, luxury units, even modest coach houses here, can expect to be met with a howl of opposition. Too dense for our historic town. Not near my house. And apocalyptic prophesies that home values will tumble if a low-income person moves nearby.
Others encourage any housing project, the taller the better, to help staunch ever-increasing real estate taxes that are driving middle-income families out of the village, turning Oak Park into a town where you live until the day after your kids graduate from OPRF High School and then move out.
In the same way that incremental change is unlikely to prevent climate change, housing affordability in our neighborhood will not improve with incrementalism.
We need more low-income affordable housing, such as the new 6-story construction on Austin at Van Buren near Harrison and the recently approved affordable housing project on Madison next to Al’s Grill.
We also need more non-subsidized larger developments such as the newly completed building across from the Carleton Hotel, which bring greater vibrancy to our downtown retail businesses.
And news flash, Oak Park can’t improve affordability alone. We need a more friendly development environment regionally, including in our surrounding neighborhoods.
Example? Someone needs to complete the real estate project in River Forest at Lake and Lathrop.
We also need more housing density on the Galewood side of North Avenue and the Oak Park side.
Withdrawing into our NIMBY comfort zone may make us feel good. But one day we will wake up and find we are San Francisco and can’t afford to live here.
Sources
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/opinions-on-housing-affordability-poll
https://time.com/7020243/kamala-harris-donald-trump-housing-policy