The Oak Park Village Board thinks the value of your single-family home is a problem. They approve removing any mention of protecting property value from zoning and variance decisions.
You may think that buying, improving, and maintaining your home earns you the benefit of any increase in its value. You may think that your taxes mean that your village government should help you to protect and improve your property value. No.
The village board thinks your property value is less important than their plans. Protecting your property value is a barrier to building new “middle” buildings. Your property value is too high, which is unfair to people who don’t live here. It needs to stop growing and really needs to be lower. They think you are greedy and selfish and maybe even racist if you want your property value to stay high or even increase.
They want developers to tear down the house next door to you and put in four to six units that are more affordable (smaller and cheaper per unit than your house). The units won’t be required to have parking so there will be five or 10 more cars parked out front. The consultants say you don’t need to worry about parking because developers will pave the backyard for parking. They say the new building(s) will fit in just fine. No need for you to worry. They aren’t worried. In fact, the fewer single-family homes on your block the better.
The village board also wants every block in the village affected. The changes allow for classic homes in the historic districts to be converted to multi-unit buildings as long as the street-facing exterior stays similar. Side yards can also be developed with multi-unit buildings and ADUs. Non-contributing homes can be torn down and replaced. Bracketing your home with multi-unit buildings that are sort of similar won’t hurt much. Besides, if any home values are too high, those in the historic districts are really too high. Don’t worry, it will be fine.
Be happy knowing that your loss is a developer’s gain.
Marc Martinez
Oak Park