Evanston’s Housing and Community Development Committee provided a forum for affordable housing advocates, committee members and some members of City Council to evaluate revisions to the Envision Evanston 2045 Comprehensive Plan, a seminal discussion item in the upcoming City Council and special Envision Evanston 2045 meetings next week.
Following updates on city programs like the Evanston Green Homes pilot and the walk-in pilot with the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, as well as the reappointment of Joanne Zolomij as committee vice-chair, committee members shifted to the hot topic — which had dominated the public comment portion earlier in the night.
Third ward resident Scott Roberts took to the dais to argue that the political pressure on the unelected Land Use Commission during their reviews of the Comprehensive Plan “wiped out all real guidance and conception” from the draft recommended to City Council. The LUC hosted several meetings for public feedback on revisions to the plan before voting to recommend it at its May 21 meeting.
Roberts critiqued the LUC’s editing of a commitment to allow Evanston’s diverse housing types, including “townhomes, small flats and college clusters” to the statement “preserve and increase Evanston’s diverse housing choices.”
“That is a sentence that doesn’t really tell us much, and it could be used to justify a wide range of positions,” Roberts said. “In some people’s minds, it’s almost contradictory.”
Sue Loellbach, who acts as Connections for the Homeless’ director of advocacy, said the city should openly boast its commitment to increasing the amount of affordable housing in the plan.
“We are asking for changes to the language that make it an explicit priority, both an increase in affordable housing and an increase in housing supply, not just in diversity of housing,” Loellbach said.
Both Loellbach and Roberts pointed to specific passages in the recommended comprehensive plan that seemed “muddy” when they were previously clear in earlier drafts.
Committee member and Northwestern political science Prof. Chloe Thurston agreed with Roberts and called it a “missed opportunity” to not include the varieties of missing middle housing needed in the revised draft.
“These are types of housing that we’ve traditionally had in Evanston that (are) part of our local heritage and culture,” Thurston said. “It would be wise to include that explicitly in the guidance, if it’s something that the council cares about.”
Thurston also supported the concept of “neighborhood scaling” density brought by Roberts during public comment, which would tailor development to individual neighborhoods to preserve their shape and character.
In providing independent review of the Comprehensive Plan on behalf of Connections for the Homeless, Loellbach also called for the explicit prioritization of housing affordability in the Comprehensive Plan by increasing the number of housing units accessible to middle and lower income groups.
After gathering the extensive feedback from committee members and public commenters, committee chair Ald. Bobby Burns (5th) said it is crucial for the council to know and understand the Land Use Commission’s revisions when evaluating the comprehensive plan next week.
Burns told The Daily that the City Council’s review of the comprehensive plan will most likely be a gradual process spanning multiple public meetings and involve many edits and referrals.
He compared the deliberation process to that of the Healthy Buildings Ordinance, which took four meetings and multiple amendments to pass in March.
Burns also reminded his constituents that Monday’s council meeting will be the first time the 2025 council will deliberate on Envision Evanston as a body, despite speculations on individual alders’ opinions on the plan.
“The only way you know how we feel as a group is when we take a vote. You know we haven’t voted on anything yet,” Burns said.
Ald. Shawn Iles (3rd), a committee member and one of Evanston’s newest councilmembers, said he is “very excited” for a robust comprehensive plan discussion next week, as Envision Evanston was such a prominent campaign issue in April’s municipal elections.
Iles told The Daily that the most important thing is that his constituents feel that they had a say in and a look into the City Council’s process during the comprehensive plan discussions.
“I’m not in any sort of panic to get done,” Iles said. “So I’m excited to see where we’re all at, or find out where we align and where we need to have some discussion, and I think that’s a good aspect of democracy — we get to see it in action.”
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