Evanston’s new Housing4All draft plan received equal parts praise and criticism from 9th Ward residents after a presentation by Ald. Juan Geracaris (9th) and a city employee at a ward meeting Wednesday night.
The draft was announced Friday alongside a study from the city analyzing the Evanston real estate market’s affordability relative to buyers’ budgets. The study found a “sizable affordability gap,” with renters below 80% of the city’s median household income most likely to spend over 30% of their income on their housing, making them cost-burdened.
Throughout Evanston, approximately 48% of renters and 24% of homeowners are cost-burdened, according to the study.
Among several other goals, the new plan aims to reduce this percentage of cost-burdened households, largely by preserving and building affordable options and relaxing zoning laws to build more types of housing.
As the draft enters a community feedback period until Oct. 12, 9th Ward residents outlined areas where the plan might help and raised concerns about potential pitfalls.
9th Ward resident and Land Use Commission member Luke Harris-Ferree said they would benefit from the plan’s promise to create more accessible housing options. Harris-Ferree moved to Evanston four years ago with their wife and two children to work as a pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, they said.
“My apartment is too small right now for my family, and we’re cost-burdened,” Harris-Ferree said. “There are four of us in two bedrooms.”
The plan would help them find somewhere affordable that meets their needs, they added.
Harris-Ferree said that they attended the meeting because they are involved in Grace Lutheran Church’s exploration into selling its parking lot to the city to be converted into affordable housing.
Geracaris said the city usually keeps negotiations over land sales under wraps, but because the Housing4All plan includes ambitions to develop housing with community groups, he announced the talks early.
In addition to solving an affordability gap, Geracaris said one of the plan’s goals is to help seniors move out of larger homes that outmatch their needs.
“There are a lot of folks who are aging in place and would love to have a condo instead of a home,” he said. “The lack of affordable senior housing, coupled with interest rates, basically stick people where it’s not the most ideal fit for their housing, so they stay put.”
9th Ward resident Lorraine Williams voiced concerns that some residents are being “squeezed out” of their properties due to rising costs, which she said can make households even more cost-burdened.
She referenced initiatives designed to help residents mitigate housing costs, but said those programs have income caps that make them inaccessible for some cost-burdened households.
The city’s emergency rental assistance program has a gross household income cut-off set at 80% of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s area median income.
“If I want to be a senior who’s going to age in place, you’re actually going to force me to move out,” she said. “Aging in place means just that … being able to stay in the home and retire.”
Williams pressed Geracaris and Community Development Director Sarah Flax for assurance that the city would coordinate with banks for mortgages in affordable housing projects.
She said she had once been involved in a community effort to add more units to her property to make it more affordable. But because she couldn’t get a mortgage, the project fell apart, she said.
“That’s a hard nut to crack, but it has to be dealt with as part of this plan,” she said. “Otherwise, we’ll come up with a lot of ideas that are really wonderful, and then have the banking industry just shut it down.”
Community feedback will be presented to the Housing & Community Development Committee on Oct. 21, Flax said. From there, she added that the committee will work to flesh out the plan’s finer details before it reaches city council in December.
“Evanston’s racial and economic diversity is what’s at stake,” she said. “We ultimately will lose lower-income people if they cannot afford to live here. So, we’ve got a bunch of strategies included to spark discussion in our community.”
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