Naperville weighing new rental housing regulations
Naperville is planning a free event to help people become homeowners this spring as the city council begins discussions about potential rental regulations to prevent blight and crime.
The first Naperville Housing Expo, scheduled for 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, April 11, at the NIU Naperville Conference Center, will include speakers and resources about renting and homeownership "so you can rent in Naperville, so you can own in Naperville, so you can maintain and stay in Naperville," Bill Novack, the city's director of transportation, engineering and development, said.
The event is one result of an informal group of city employees, bankers and residents who have been meeting for more than a year to discuss concerns about foreclosed homes, property maintenance, code violations and crime in rented and owner-occupied housing.
"It was a blight prevention discussion that we were having and trying to address the early stages of it and trying to address it before it became a problem," Novack said.
Another result of the group's discussions is a report the city council reviewed Tuesday that presented four options to expand Naperville's crime-free housing program, which has been voluntary since 2003. Completing the program requires participation in a police-led seminar to learn about tenant screening procedures, a site visit for police to inspect potential safety hazards and hosting a community event to teach residents about security measures.
The report found 22 percent of Naperville's 52,000 housing units are renter-occupied, a higher percentage than council member Judith Brodhead said she expected.
Rental regulation options in the report include making the crime-free housing program mandatory for apartment complexes with five or more units, expanding it to cover all rental properties, or mandating it for all rentals and adding exterior and/or interior property inspections.
Council members said they want to engage the public about the topic of rental housing regulations before making any decisions. Council member Steve Chirico said the Naperville Area Homeowners Confederation plans to address the issue during a meeting in March and the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce's legislative committee is scheduled to cover it in June.
The city's housing commission also will be asked to review potential new rental regulations at a later meeting.
Council member Joe McElroy said he thinks the voluntary crime-free housing program should be made mandatory for rental properties with five or more units, but any updates beyond that would constitute a broader policy change and should be carefully investigated. Adopting new regulations could help prevent code violations such as overgrown weeds or broken fences and deter crime, McElroy said.
Newly appointed council member Tom Miers said he's been participating as a banker in the housing discussions for the past year, but more research remains to be done.
"I think we really need to understand what we're dealing with here before we start going off with some regulation that would be imposed on the community," Miers said. "The problem to me has not been clearly articulated so that we can go to work on it."