By Greg HafkinThe Daily Northwestern

Dear Mayor Morton,

Last week, you vetoed an inclusionary housing ordinance that was the closest the city had come to addressing the affordable housing crisis. While I appreciate your worthwhile efforts on issues from glaucoma testing to town-gown relations, I think your last decision was a bad call. The ordinance now has to go back to the legal department and the city will wrangle for another three years before they come up with something new. By that time, the real estate bubble might already have burst.

The council needed to strike while the iron is hot, while the city is engrossed in its development boom and aldermen can actually require developers to add units that a regular Joe can afford.

From losing Kendall College to Chicago to losing elm trees to Dutch Elm Disease, Evanston has been losing a lot lately. But what we’ve gained at the same time is wealth. For better or worse, the city has become a hot real estate market, and people are willing to dish out more than $600,000 for a 2-bedroom condo at Sherman Plaza. While the newcomers are moving in, we need to make sure that Evanston’s long-time residents aren’t squeezed out by housing costs.

The good thing about the ordinance that you vetoed was that it required developers to build affordable units in their developments. What you’re proposing is an impact fee, and who knows where that money will go? Probably it will be used to build affordable units off-site, but this will just add to economic segregation in the city. If we’re going to be serious about affordable housing, shouldn’t we build it in places where people actually want to live? After all, we want square feet, not just dollars.

The impact fee will just delay the creation of units, while the ordinance that you vetoed would have created residences as fast as developers could build them.

It makes sense to have market-rate units and affordable units together in the same buildings. Most of the new housing is going up near the Purple Line, providing residents with easy access to public transportation. We should give low-income people the opportunity to live next to the El instead of sticking them in polluted neighborhoods where they have to take the bus. But I’m not writing this to complain about the bus. They often run faster than the El and tend to smell better, but you can’t buy a CTA card at a bus stop unless it’s next to an El station.

And for some reason the CTA has a 25-cent surcharge for people who pay their bus fares with cash.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons you gave for your veto. You were worried that the ordinance would discourage developers from building in Evanston. But if they’re already willing to put up with neighborhood groups opposed to any type of progress, not to mention Evanston’s snaillike bureaucracy, they shouldn’t have a problem with an affordable housing law.

You also say you’d rather see affordable housing in vacant houses. While I wholly support efforts to root out blighted buildings in the city, this solution does nothing to further integration. Abandoned homes are usually in poor neighborhoods to begin with.

Mayors sometimes do strange things and say it’s in the best interests of their cities. In 2003, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley cited security concerns in his decision to destroy Meigs Field in the middle of the night. Perhaps it was for the best. At the very least, your veto gives the city an opportunity to write a stronger law, one that I hope will address a wider segment of Evanston’s population. What should we do with people who are too poor for market-rate housing but whose incomes exceed the inclusionary housing threshold? An Evanston family of four making a bit above $72,400 could very well find itself in this real-estate no-man’s land. Or they could just leave town and buy a cheap house in a suburb of Waukegan. I hope you and the council find a way to have them stay.

Assistant city editor Greg Hafkin is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].