How can more people afford to buy a home in a town where prices won’t stop going up?
That’s the question Oak Park village trustees were asking during last week’s board meeting, as village leaders heard testimony from a group of local realtors, a representative of the Illinois Housing Development Authority and the founder of a housing assistance non-profit who has found success helping grow the affordable housing stock in Lake County and northern Cook County using the “land trust” model during a study session on how to advance home ownership opportunities in the village.
Increasing opportunities for affordable homeownership across the board and addressing historic barriers to home ownership faced by racial minorities were both among the goals included in Oak Park’s “Strategic Vision for Housing” report published last year.
Opening up opportunities for affordable housing for both renters and owners has received attention from the village board in recent months, as the board authorized a $3.3 million fund to support affordable housing developments. In January, the body voted to allocate more than $1.9 million from that fund to help two non-profit organizations build affordable housing complexes in Oak Park.
“Our interests in our economic vitality plan is also to increase the sense of belonging here, attracting a diversity of people who can call this their community,” said Village President Vicki Scaman. “We’re not just here to hear about how we can use our housing fund, we’re here to see how we can remain diverse socio-economically.”
That report revealed that there is a more than $230,000 gap between the median cost of a single-family home in Oak Park and what a household bringing in the median income for metro Chicago can afford.
Supporting down payment assistance programs, developing more multi-family housing properties and expanding the village’s inclusionary housing ordinance were all among the potential policies recommended by that report.
Trustee Cory Wesley said the board needs to act soon before the negative impacts of a stratified housing market become even harder to solve.
“If we don’t, in 10 years the medium sale price of a home in Oak Park might be $1,000,000,” he said. “There’s a cost of doing nothing that I don’t think we talk about very often.
“You’ve got to be intentional about keeping the thing that you’ve built.”
2022 Census Bureau data also revealed that rates of homeownership in Oak Park lag behind nationwide averages across most demographics, but the largest disparity is among Black Oak Parkers. According to the census, 35% of Black Oak Park households own their home, compared to 41% for Black households across northeast Illinois and 43% for Black households nationwide.
There’s a 35% gap between the Black and white homeownership rates in Oak Park, which is five points larger than the gap that exists nationally.
During their testimony, representatives from the Oak Park Area Association of Realtors said that the village is suffering from a lack of inventory. Oak Park homes available for purchase are turning over at the highest rate on record, as it now takes less than six weeks for the housing stock to turn over completely, according to the Realtors Association.
“Lack of inventory in and of itself is one of the biggest barriers to accessing housing in Oak Park,” Oak Park Realtor Elissa Palmero said. “Simply put, first time home buyers and families have been priced out of the market.”
The realtors recommended that the board consider enacting zoning policies that will allow developers to build projects that will promote density and take steps to streamline the permitting process for developers.
The board also heard from Amy Rosenfeld Kaufman, from Community Partners for Affordable Housing, about the land trust model that her organization has used to provide affordable home ownership opportunities in Lake County and in Chicago’s northern suburbs.
The land trust process works when an organization buys a property, often a blighted or dilapidated property, makes improvements to it, then obtains subsidies in order to sell it to an affordable price to a prospective homeowner making less than the median area household income. The sale is made with provisions in place blocking the buyer from reselling the home for more than a certain maximum price, keeping the property affordable in perpetuity while buyers are still allowed to make some profit on the home’s appreciation.
No organization using the land trust model is operating in Chicago’s western suburbs, Kaufman said.
“The idea of the community land trust is to bridge that gap between what someone earns and what the housing costs,” Kaufman said. “The whole idea is permanent affordability. When you develop under the land trust model it stays affordable for the next buyer, the next buyer, and the next buyer.”
This study session will guide future board action on this topic