St. Charles City Council candidates tackle affordable housing during forum

Candidates running for the St. Charles City Council addressed the issue of affordable housing during a recent League of Women Voters of Central Kane County forum.

At the March 5 forum, candidates were asked what efforts, if any, they would support to address affordable housing in the community.

There is a three-person race for the open 1st Ward seat with Jessica Bridges, Tom Galante and Mark Foulkes running for the post.

Second Ward incumbent Rita Payleitner is not running for reelection. Running for the seat are Arthur Lemke, who lost his seat on the city council to Ryan Bongard in the 2021 election, and Jayme Muenz.

John Edward Frank is unopposed for the 3rd Ward seat. Incumbent Todd Bancroft is not running for reelection.

In the 4th Ward, incumbent David Pietryla is facing a challenge from Laurel Moad, who lost her election bid in 2021 in a three-person race.

In the 5th Ward, incumbent Ed Bessner is unopposed after challenger Rett Humke dropped out of the race.

"We should be reducing barriers that might exist for developers in regards to affordable housing and reducing barriers for people that might be trying to get affordable housing, like maybe the existing loan programs," Muenz said in answering the question. "We want seniors to be able to downsize and stay in town. We want young families to be able to move to town."

Moad noted the city has an affordable housing ordinance.

"So often, developers pay a fee in lieu of providing affordable housing in their developments," she said. "I do believe we have a need for affordable housing so that we can attract labor, for example, to work within our industrial area, so that we can encourage young families to come back to St. Charles and raise their families here. I'm very supportive of having affordable housing in the community. It's also important that we have a place for our seniors."

Those fees are put into the city's Housing Trust Fund.

Pietryla said the city has done a great job of promoting affordable housing.

"We're one of three municipalities, I believe, in the state that has an inclusionary housing ordinance," he said. "We have a record of supporting senior housing particularly. We're doing a fine job, and as a former commissioner on the St. Charles Housing Commission, I'm really proud of the fact that we are unique in Illinois for that. It's just a matter of continuing to create general awareness and working with developers to utilize that trust fund."

Bridges sees affordable housing as meaning "quality starter homes."

"When my family first moved to this city, we moved into a quality starter home," she said. "Right now, we would not be able to afford that home or be able to afford to move here at all. So we are glad that we bought when we did, but we do need to address that issue, and I think it can be addressed with a mixed-use development on the Charlestowne Mall site. I think we can put affordable starter homes behind retail and restaurants lining Main Street. And that will encourage young families such as mine to continue to move to the city."

When Foulkes and his wife decided to move back to St. Charles, they struggled to find a house they could afford.

"It's something we have to do responsibly," he said of addressing affordable housing. "And I say responsibly because our schools are getting drastically overcrowded at this point. And adding density and adding families in here without the increased capacity of an elementary or middle school is going to cause some problems. So I'm hoping that if we do get some affordable housing, that it's done at a rate where we can still provide our children with a quality education and quality class size, because that's one of the reasons why people moved to this wonderful town, for the schools."

Galante said affordable housing was a concern brought to him by his 20-year-old daughter.

"She was talking about some of her friends being concerned whether or not they could stay in the community they grew up in," he said. "I believe that with any new developments, we should advocate for the developers to integrate affordable housing into those developments."

Lemke said the city has to review its affordable housing ordinance on occasion to see whether it's working appropriately or whether it's scaring off developers "who could otherwise afford to build here."

"If it adds several million to their development and they have to make it up through other housing, that's an issue that we've had to review because those developers have a choice about coming here or Geneva or Batavia," Lemke said. "So we have to do market reviews periodically."