The March 25 edition of Wednesday Journal Viewpoints contains two letters that deserve significant consideration by the residents of Oak Park. I refer to the opinions of Frank Stachyra and George Uslenghi, who point out that the elimination of single-family zoning will not only result in a failure to retain persons of lower income but also will break up stable historic neighborhoods.
Presently, there are more potential buyers of Oak Park homes by far than there are homes on the market. Ask any realtor. It is a sellers’ market. This keeps home values high and out of reach of many. Additional units, whether they may be single-family or multifamily, will be subject to this same fundamental economic law of supply and demand. That translates into high prices for the multifamily units meant to attract the “missing middle income” families. As long as Oak Park remains an attractive place to live and educate children, possessing good public transportation and a highway with quick access to downtown Chicago and conveniently located between the two airports, it will attract families willing to pay high prices and high taxes to live here.
Affordability is a relative issue. Certainly there are families who cannot afford to live in Oak Park. When my wife and I moved to Oak Park, we could not afford to live in River Forest, or Oakbrook, or Winnetka. We moved to a village that was consistent with our income.
Making Oak Park affordable to anyone who might wish to live here is a lofty but misguided goal. Because of the inherent attractiveness of our village, there will be strong pressures that will keep property values high and unaffordable to many sectors of the public. Attempting to flood the village with new residential units of any kind is unlikely to change the essential features that make people want to move here, and those characteristics along with our astonishingly high real estate taxes will keep residential costs high both to buyers and to renters.
In the final analysis, the ending of single-family zoning will not succeed in creating more places for lower-income families to afford to live in Oak Park. The indoor swimming pool debacle, the leaf collection fiasco, and now this misguided single-family zoning initiative brings into question the judgment of our elected officials.
Daniel Beach
Oak Park