I have attended many village board meetings to express my opposition to ending single-family zoning in Oak Park. I do believe that our village board earnestly would like to find a solution to the meteoric rise in house prices and rents, especially for members of the missing middle, working-class employees of Oak Park government and businesses, retirees and the poor.
I have heard testimony pro and con, some of it rather unpleasant, with charges that single-family homeowners are racists and trying to keep people different from them out of the village. Some of the speakers are newer residents who came to Oak Park for its good schools, closeness to the Loop, and its historic charm. These speakers complain that housing prices have been a burden and a barrier to their happiness in the village whose many features they enjoy.
They are adamant about the need to get rid of single-family zoning to create more multifamily housing options to lower costs. One speaker literally said that supporters of single-family zoning need to get out of the way of progress and the future and if they did not like that they should move out of Oak Park and go west to one of many towns that remain single-family zoning.
I am convinced that the village board will eliminate single-family zoning just as they banned any energy source other than electric for new construction and have used multiple zoning variances to approve tall buildings out of character for their neighborhood. They have gone so far as to vote down a citizen request for a referendum, stating that the issues surrounding the change are far too complex for citizens to vote on, despite the fact that we were able to make the complex decision to elect them to make these kind of tough decisions. And they said that a referendum would be non-binding and they would ignore its results.
There will be a number of months until the board makes its final decision, during which village government and its hired gun, Opticos Consultants, will meet with Oak Park citizens telling them the way things will be; talking down to the very electorate that elected them rather than having a frank discussion between elected trustees (not hired consultants) and the citizens who allegedly elected them. (If you look at the votes garnered by each member of the board, the numbers are embarrassingly small since few Oak Parkers vote in municipal elections.)
Frank Vozak
Oak Park