Aurora pulls share out of housing fund

DuPage County will take a 22 percent hit in one pool of dollars that helps fund affordable housing programs as a major contributor to the pool has decided to manage its own program.

The county, Aurora, Naperville, Wheaton and Downers Grove have all pooled one part of the federal funds they receive for affordable housing programs in a consortium since 1999. County officials distribute the dollars. The consortium has raked in about $2.8 million a year in federal dollars through the HOME program.

The HOME program is administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It is the largest federal block grant to state and local governments designed exclusively to create affordable housing for low-income households.

But this year, Aurora, one of the largest contributors of funds to the county consortium, has decided it's large enough, and its need for affordable housing is great enough, to apply for the federal funds on its own.

"The time is right to go another direction," said Michael Kamon, the director of Aurora's Neighborhood Redevelopment Division. "By getting out, we think we're gaining a good opportunity to receive and manage as much as $500,000 annually from HUD and reinvest it directly into Aurora.

"Otherwise we would just be seeding that money to the county and giving them the discretion how much to spend in which communities. We would rather receive that money directly from HUD and have the accountability to manage it ourselves," he said.

Aurora's solo act siphons out about $620,000 -- 22 percent -- from the county consortium pool. Phil Smith, who oversees the pool for DuPage County, said it made sense for Aurora to go its own way.

The loss may actually help other DuPage communities because Aurora tended to draw even more dollars out of the pool than the 22 percent it contributed, Smith said.

In comparison, Smith guessed Wheaton, for instance, contributes about 8 percent of the total dollars in the pool and probably also gets back slightly more because of its central location in the county.

Wheaton and all the other communities in the consortium must now decide if they want to keep contributing to the pool now that Aurora's pulled out. Wheaton's city council voted 5-0 to remain in the consortium Monday night.