Oak Park village trustees had a variety of feedback for the team of consultants tasked with drawing a roadmap to eliminating single-family zones from the village’s code.
In a study session that took up more than two hours of a March 10 board meeting, village board members heard about the progress made on a consultant’s report that will work to guide how Oak Park plans to overhaul its zoning code. The village board has consistently demonstrated a will to change the local zoning code so that “missing middle” housing types can be built throughout the village in an effort to support affordability and housing density goals.
Missing middle housing is defined as “a range of house-scale buildings with multiple units – compatible in scale and form with detached single-family homes – located in a walkable neighborhood.” It usually looks like duplexes, triplexes or small apartment buildings that can accommodate a few families, often in blocks that also have single-family homes.
Oak Park’s village board voted last August to award a contract to Opticos Design, an architectural firm specialized in zoning reform, to study eliminating Oak Park’s single-family zones from the code.
“Right now, the zoning is very clearly working against your affordability goals,” said Opticos’ Jennifer Settle, herself an Oak Park resident. “So, while zoning can’t solve all of those issues, it is setting the stage, and it is moving in the right direction of all those other goals and work that needs to be done.”
The village board is expected to vote on accepting a final version of the report in June. If accepted, the report would guide how Oak Park goes about the zoning reform.
The consultant group’s plan for the “Shape Oak Park” report project has included a community-wide education and awareness campaign with surveys, engagement with a “steering committee” of 12 village residents, community education events and an analysis of resident feedback and existing housing stock.
These local efforts come amid a statewide push for housing reform, with major potential changes to local zoning control teased by Gov. JB Pritzker during his State of the State address last month. Pritzker’s plan, dubbed Building Up Illinois Developments or “BUILD,” calls for relaxed restrictions on the development of multi-unit housing and cutting other forms of local red tape that have slowed homebuilding in recent years, according to Capitol News Illinois.
A study published last year by the University of Illinois found that the state is about 142,000 units of housing short and would need to build 227,000 over the next five years to keep up with demand, nearly double the five-year average of about 19,000 built annually between 2019 and 2024, according to Capitol News Illinois.
Trustee Derek Eder voiced support for the rezoning efforts saying the reforms are necessary for Oak Park to keep new families moving into the village. If the village lacks housing that’s in reach for young families, the strong schools that the village prides itself on will struggle, he said.
“There’s the cost of doing nothing that people oftentimes don’t really account for in the same way as they think about the cost of acting,” Eder said. “If we don’t make housing more affordable, one of the most important parts of this community, the schools and the kids and the new families that keep moving here starts to slow down and come to a halt.”
Trustee Cory Wesely, among the most outspoken advocates for getting rid of the single-family zones on the village board, said that the plan for reforming the code needs to get more focused to be effective.
“If this is a change without a North Star, it’s a change that will have no impact,” he said. “We need to figure out what we’re actually trying to do. Are we trying to encourage more housing units? If that’s the case, right, that will obviously encourage more affordable housing units, right? Because supply creates affordability. If we’re just trying to do an equity fix, that’s fine, but then show what this change does to actually create the impact that creates the equity fix. What I’m feeling right now is that we’re painting the existing zoning code with different colors.”
Trustee Jim Taglia stood out as a cautious voice on the planned zoning reform altogether. He expressed concern that the reforms could endanger the availability of affordable single-family homes in the village as developers look to convert single-family residences into multifamily rentals.
“I don’t know what the answer is, or how you address this, if it is addressable, but my concern is that we are depleting that entry level housing stock for the first time home buyers,” he said. “Part of the American landscape is the ability to buy a house, build equity and over time and reap the benefits of that. That is just part of our fabric.
“I don’t see how this doesn’t increase the value of those homes. We already have AirBnbs coming in, buying up homes, now we’ve got another tier of potential buyers that are competing against first time homeowners, and that’s a concern for me.”
Oak Park Village President Vicki Scaman was the only mayor present for a roundtable discussion with Pritzker about the plan shortly after the State of the State address.
She said she’s strongly in favor of the statewide development reform Tuesday night. The efforts that Oak Park is making to address the perceived flaws in its zoning code could serve as an example of how Illinois communities canapproach making ambitious housing reforms that still make sense in their local contexts, Scaman said.
“I am a full proponent of the BUILD act, while some of my colleagues might think that it takes power away from mayors, village presidents and communities, I think it provides the tools so that they can actually have a vision for their communities,” she said. “This report represents us truly understanding the decisions we’re eventually going to make. We might make decisions to make the zoning even more brave, more intentional to our board goals than what (Opticos) present, but you’re going to help us understand what we can reasonably accomplish and the potential consequences without thoughtful patience. If we make the decision to go broader, that’s on us.”
Oak Park would be legally required to hold public hearings about the zoning changes before actually amending the code.
In addition to the use restrictions in the zoning code itself, the consultants identified existing village rules around building and lot sizes, accessory dwelling units, parking and landscaping requirements and design standards as barriers to missing middle housing development in Oak Park, according to the consultant’s report.
While plenty of examples of missing middle housing can already be found in Oak Park neighborhoods, particularly on the south side of the village where duplexes are common, many of those buildings wouldn’t be allowed to be built today under the current code. A zoning reform would allow, likely over a long period of time, for many more small multi-family housing types to be built where they’ll fit the “character and context” of Oak Park’s leafy residential streets, said Settle.
Market factors also discourage missing middle housing development, Settle said. The village would likely need to offer incentives to developers to see small multi-family developments built in-place of large single-family homes in Oak Park neighborhoods.
“They are hard to make pencil in today’s market,” Settle said.
