As Wednesday Journal continues reporting on the candidates for the village board and other local elections on April 1 and publishing their campaign statements, we are pleased that you will follow a standard of requiring readers who submit op-eds and letters on significant and controversial issues to show evidence and that sources be included.
Before the new WJ guidelines, in Luzane Draughon’s interview with village president candidates Ravi Parakkat and Vicki Scaman on Sept. 17, Trustee Parakkat makes unsubstantiated, even factually inaccurate, statements about housing affordability. Indeed, he ignores the very studies and data he rightly insists should guide policy.
By omission and commission, he rejects the findings and recommendations of the richly documented Metropolitan Mayors Caucus Report (MMCR), drafted by independent experts on regional housing challenges and presented to trustees on March 19, 2024 (“Strategic Vision for Housing: Village of Oak Park”). This landmark study, conducted with six months of community input, contains data-rich sources that should guide trustees’ and voters’ decision-making. Starting with the fact that, according to the state of Illinois, Oak Park is in the bottom 7% of the state in affordable housing stock (“Affordable Housing and Appeal Act 2023 Report on Statewide Local Government Affordability”).
Unfortunately, in the Sept. 17 interview and the four months since, President Scaman chooses to be silent on the well-established evidence of Oak Park’s affordable housing crisis, offering no policy rebuttal to Trustee Parakkat.
Oak Park’s affordable housing crisis threatens our housing, economic, and racial diversity. At the Aug. 27 village board meeting, contrary to Parakkat’s claim that the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, designed to increase affordable housing, is working and needs little revision, he offered no supporting evidence. The MMCR found that “of the 1,676 total rental units built in the last 12 years, only 50 were affordable for the average resident.”
Further, Oak Park’s Inclusionary Housing Ordinance has yielded zero affordable units because developers choose to pay the extremely, and unnecessarily, low buy-out fee of $100,000 instead of building affordable units.
Data from the MCCR connect declining housing affordability with racial and economic diversity — a relationship both Scaman and Parakkat ignore in the September interview and Parakkat’s December essay [A vision for change in Oak Park, Viewpoints, Dec. 18]. The MMCR documents that Oak Park’s Black population decline is linked to a lack of affordable housing. Data from school report cards confirm this loss, with districts 200 and 97 losing more than one-third of their Black students since 2010.
As our community reviews candidates’ positions on housing policy and proposed revisions of Oak Park housing programs like the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, we will look to WJ to ensure that candidates back their positions with evidence and not simply default to false claims, or fail to acknowledge that Oak Park, like the rest of the country, has a serious problem of housing affordability.
Melissa Alabsy, Mary Bird, Dan Burke, Meaghan Carter, Charlene Cliff, Zach Corn, Marie Alexandre Drake, Mary Dunge, John Duffy, Gail and Joseph Durczak, Carol Elazier-Davis, Henry Fulkerson, Dan and Sara Giloth, Paul Goyette, Juanta Griffin, Burcy Hines, Steve Krasinsky, Camile Lindsay-Kumi, Ralph Lee, Michelle Majors, Aaron McMananus, James Nolan, James and Stacie Pflueke, Michael Papierniak, Cate Readling, Paul Sakol, James Schwartz, Tim Thomas, John Tulley MD, Caren Van Slyke, Lisa Vertner-Pintado, Alex Weber and Molly Dula-Weber
Oak Parkers for Affordable Housing