Josh VanderBerg opens his recent Viewpoints column [April 8] by noting the Oak Park Village Board is about to consider zoning “reform” in earnest, and decrying the WJ opinion pages as sprouting “anti-reform” opinion pieces “like daisies.” Interpreted: win the debate by painting your views as “reform,” and opposing ones as “anti-reform.”
He goes on, under a headline of “10 bad arguments” by citing each — within quotation marks — which he then purports to rebut.
I have read every WJ opinion piece on this topic and not one of them contained any of the language within his quotation marks. In fact his “10 bad arguments” read as recycled pre-packaged talking points kept on hand and hurriedly all put under his “anti-reform” label for the occasion.
Since one of his points resembles one I raised in the WJ — that eliminating single family zoning will prove ineffective in producing the desired effect of affordable housing — which was seconded in Daniel Beach’s well-articulated and reasoned, easy-to-follow letter, I will address the purported “rebuttal.”
First, he does not even address the point raised: that the same socio-economic factors driving up costs will remain, in all new housing of all types. Against that he merely says that, since 2012 Oak Park, has increased the number of affordable housing units by 1,300. (So what, then, is the beef?) He buttresses that with the assertion that “no progressive plan” will generate anything even close to that. Since he has described himself as a progressive, I would say certainly not even his own.
He also praises the 54 “deed-restricted” housing units built over the same time. Never having seen a deed that sets actual rental rates, I have a hard time following his point, especially since he concludes by urging the building of “market-rate” housing, as if that will increase affordability. To me, he actually defeats his whole point by implicitly confessing that markets set housing costs, and not zoning. How then is zoning “reform” going to produce affordable “market-rate” housing?
Elsewhere he urges that we “stick it to private equity,” which thinks housing is “a good investment,” as if he could do that but not also “stick it to” current single family home owners. (This is reminiscent of Trump’s Jan. 29 insistence that he did not want to drive home prices down just to make it easier for others to buy homes).
Finally, he admits that “no amount of redistribution will allow a lower-income family to buy a $500K bungalow,” again defeating his own arguments, as if he expected that the “market-rate” housing for entrants into new Oak Park multi-unit housing — whether condo owners or renters — would dictate lower costs for them. Where are his economic proofs for that?
All of his 10 rebuttals are full of similar non-sequiturs. But his opponents’ 10 arguments are all wrong — 10 straw men victoriously knocked down.
I wondered if he were an economist, and I looked him up. I was not surprised to learn that he ran for village trustee. As a 54-year resident of OP, I stopped paying attention to village politics many decades ago, after concluding it has always been dominated by well-wishers prone to pie-in-the-sky but ineffective symbolism. (I’m an old hard-line political “lefty” on substance). Having learned his positions, I more readily understood his positions — in keeping with the village board’s pursuit of the inane.
Frank Stachyra, an Oak Park resident, is a retired attorney.