Arlington Hts. task force to look at affordable housing
Arlington Heights will establish a task force to develop potential funding sources for affordable housing in the village.
The Village Board recently approved a request from the Housing Commission that Village President Arlene Mulder appoint nine people to a task force, with a mandate to report back in a year.
Five years ago the commission wanted to assess a $7,500 fee per residential teardown to fund affordable housing. The village board was cool to that idea and asked the village staff to find other revenue sources.
The options presented at that time included a property tax increase, a $1,000 teardown fee, a fee on new construction or additions, grants from corporations or foundations and a real estate transfer tax.
The commission came back in 2008 with a request for a much lower teardown tax, but the village board again postponed action following a confidential legal opinion from Village Attorney Jack Siegel.
Siegel, who is also city attorney for Evanston, was involved with a lawsuit against a teardown tax in that municipality. The merits of the lawsuit were never ruled on because the federal court decided it did not have jurisdiction, said Siegel.
He said he could not comment because he assumed the lawsuit will be refiled in state court.
Mulder said she turned against a teardown fee when it was pointed out this puts the cost of supporting affordable housing on 1 percent of the village's population.
Still, one rationale for assessing teardown developers is that replacing smaller homes with larger ones reduces the village's stock of affordable housing, said Patricia Lindner, a member of the Housing Commission who supports such a fee.
Mulder, however, said she believes this is not the climate for new taxes, and she hopes the task force will investigate a regional alliance with surrounding communities to pool money and support affordable housing somewhere within that area.
Mulder likes projects such as Timber Court, where 80 percent of the units are sold at market rate, 20 percent are sold for lower prices and the two are indistinguishable.
In the 2000 census, Arlington Heights met the state requirement that 10 percent of its housing fit affordability standards - in fact, 15 percent of housing stock in the village qualified, said Norah Boyer, the village's longtime housing planner.
The village will have to wait until the 2010 census to learn whether that is still true in the wake of teardowns.
The type of area agencies the housing commission wants represented on the task force are: CEDA Northwest; Greater Wheeling Area Youth Outreach; Interfaith Communities; Resources for Community Living; Faith Community Homes; Journeys from PADS to Hope; WINGS; Wheeling and Elk Grove townships and Catholic Charities.
The commission also will help Boyer produce an analysis of impediments to fair housing that is due in March.
In 1977 Arlington Heights was the subject of a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the village did not discriminate when it refused to rezone property in a single-family neighborhood to allow multifamily housing for people with low and moderate incomes.
The village reached an agreement that allowed Linden Place to be built near Golf and Goebbert roads in an area zoned for commercial and multifamily homes.