By Vincent Bradshaw and Matt PresserThe Daily Northwestern

In Tuesday’s election, Evanston voters rejected a tax referendum that would have increased the city’s real estate transfer tax by 20 percent to help fund affordable housing initiatives.

With 66 of the 70 precincts reporting, 48 percent of voters checked “yes” to approve the referendum. At 10,056 “yes” votes, the referendum failed by less than 700 votes.

“I can’t imagine that it didn’t pass, and I am very disappointed,” said Ald. Delores Holmes (5th). “People should be able to live near where they work.”

Holmes said residents she spoke to before the vote said they would support the tax increase. She said she was encouraged by the pro-referendum signs she had seen on the lawns of 5th Ward residents.

Holmes said she was unaware of how the votes varied between precincts. Vote counts will not be official until all absentee ballots have been counted, which could take as long as two weeks from Election Day.

The real estate transfer tax collects $5 per $1,000 of the sale price of any property in Evanston. In August, aldermen agreed to include the referendum on the ballot after members of the real estate community complained that the city’s efforts to provide affordable housing were unfairly taxing developers.

The proposed referendum would have raised the tax by $1, and the additional revenues would have been placed in a special fund for affordable housing.

On Wednesday Evanston residents had mixed opinions on why the referendum failed.

Resident Gerald Adler said the aldermen did not adequately educate the public or stimulate debate in the community about it, although information about the referendum was posted on the city’s Web site and advertised in several newspapers.

“I’m a little angry at the aldermen,” Adler said. “Why didn’t they go out and ring doorbells? It’s their responsibility to go out and sell the referendum. They didn’t do that.”

Marilyn Justman, member of Evanston’s Affordable Housing Future, said she was not disappointed by the final results.

“A great deal of people were in favor of it,” she said. “If it were back on the ballot a second time, it would pass. You put your troops out harder next time.”

Some real estate agents in Evanston said the transfer tax is already high enough.

Coldwell Banker realtor Joan Farquharson pointed to Skokie and Wilmette, where the real estate transfer tax is only $3 per every $1,000, as a reason why the referendum may have been voted down.

“It means an increase in the price they’re going to have to pay to sell real estate,” she said. “It’s a lot higher than a lot of other communities already. Why penalize people selling their property?”

The city council did not present a clear plan as to how the money in this fund would be used.

Voters had to cast their votes without knowing whether money would be given to low-income families directly, or if the money would be used to build new affordably priced homes.

Although the referendum did not pass, the city has other options for making housing stock available for low-income families. In October aldermen passed an ordinance that would require future developers to pay into the same fund for affordable housing.

Reach Vincent Bradshaw at [email protected] and Matt Presser at [email protected].