To the Plan Commission:
I agree with the village consultant’s recent report that eliminating single-family zoning won’t provide more affordable housing in Oak Park. Acquisition and construction costs are simply too high. Although increasing supply ordinarily reduces prices, Oak Park is just a small slice of a large metro market with a housing shortage. Subsidies will be required to add affordable housing in Oak Park. Property taxes are already a barrier to affordable home ownership. If subsidies result in higher taxes, they could make housing less affordable.
Abolishing single-family zoning will make housing less affordable for another reason. To maximize profit, developers will tear down the lowest cost homes and replace them with more costly multi-family units. Consultant Opticos says if we do nothing, we’ll continue to see lower-cost homes replaced by costly ones, so Oak Park will become increasingly less affordable.
Surely there are options other than eliminating single-family zoning. For example, could zoning restrict how much the new construction/remodel’s square footage exceeds the existing home?
To increase housing supply, focus multifamily development on commercial streets instead. This development will be maximized if you eliminate the requirement for ground floor commercial space, as proposed. Right now, developers either struggle to rent these spaces or undergo a time-consuming — and therefore costly — special-use process to build ground floor residential.
I specifically urge focus on North Avenue. On the Oak Park side, we have three vacant lots and several vacant or high-vacancy commercial buildings that can be repurposed. More multifamily housing will accelerate the gradual revitalization already underway.
In the Urban Land Institute’s revitalization plan for the North Avenue District, the chief overall recommendation is more multifamily projects.
So more multifamily housing in our district will not only provide additional housing but also stimulate business with more customers and foot traffic. I believe the same is true for Oak Park’s other commercial streets, especially Roosevelt Road. Affordable housing could perhaps be subsidized with TIFs.
Source:
Urban Land Institute, Revitalization Strategies for the North Avenue Corridor, Oak Park and Chicago, Dec. 12-13, 2018. See page 9: https://ulidigitalmarketing.blob.core.windows.net/ulidcnc/2019/05/NorthAv_FinalReport_reduced.pdf
Judith Alexander
Oak Park resident
North Avenue District founder