In advance of the March 17 primary, the Naperville Sun asked the Democratic candidates running for the four-year seat representing Naperville’s District 5 on the DuPage County Board to answer a series of questions on the issues. This is the second article in a series. The first one, which covers biographical information and what each candidate views as the biggest county issue, is available online.
What specific actions do you support to address housing affordability in DuPage County and to help residents struggling with rising living costs? (Answers edited lightly for clarity.)
Sadia Covert: What I have supported is down payment assistance for new homebuyers and also a program for the property tax deferment for retired seniors, if they qualify.
I supported (the passage of an ordinance) allowing accessory dwelling units to be built. … And just working with our state legislature to see what else we can do to make homes affordable. What I brought up was the overbidding issue that creates an artificial imbalance in the market. … A lot of constituents came to me and said, “We were going to buy a house, we sold our house and we wanted to buy another house, but people were outbidding us by significant amounts of money,” and it became unaffordable for them.
The problem with that is that when there’s a corporation or a buyer or whoever it is who comes in that significantly overbids on a property, it creates this artificial imbalance in the market and it causes the prices of houses to soar, making it harder for people to buy houses.
Now, we can’t do anything at the county board level because we can’t affect that. We don’t have home rule. There are limitations that we have. However, we can work with our state legislature. We always have a partnership with them to come up with solutions and laws that we could work together on.
Ian Holzhauer: I’m actually a big subscriber to Ezra Klein and his abundance philosophy. There’s this book (called) “Abundance” (that’s) being discussed on a lot of podcasts right now. The basic idea is … that sometimes we’ve gotten in our own way in just having too much red tape for the creation of affordable housing to a point where it gets very cumbersome, slow and expensive to build.
I think first and foremost, there’s a supply problem, and the first priority has to be just increasing the stock of housing. In Naperville, I can say increasing the stock of housing is something that I’ve pretty consistently pushed for. We’ve had creative solutions like approving micro-units in Naperville, which … the basic idea is you can have very, very small apartments, like 350, 400 square feet apartments, which may be for a single, young professional a really good option that’s much more affordable than the other stock in the county, which has become unaffordable.
Another thing we looked at in Naperville is fast-tracking permitting approvals for developers that are willing to set aside a certain percentage of their housing to be affordable. And that’s something I hope to be discussing further this year while I’m still on the Naperville City Council. But also I think it would be great within the county.
So I’d say, first and foremost, I think increased supply is the answer, and less red tape. I would also add that to an extent policy can can help incentivize the creation of more affordable housing. So, for example, in Naperville, we are looking at an an inclusionary zoning ordinance right now, which would mandate that a portion of any development that is built from now going forward contain a portion of housing that is affordable. So I think there are a variety of policy tools to help supply catch up with demand in DuPage County.
Marylee Leu: One of the ideas I have is something that is kind of a passion project. It is the concept that we could take some of the blighted lands that are not appropriately utilized and zone them for kind of an in-between. But the concept is instead of, let’s say, building an apartment structure, just utilize shipping containers, partner with our local colleges and have their architecture programs like North Central or Benedictine, or even College of DuPage … any of the local schools, and have one of their class projects be to design tiny living spaces that would be suitable for different pockets of our population.
For example, as a former first responder — firefighters, police — you run into the face of danger (yet they) are not paid that well. So housing affordability after they do that training in school is really challenging (when they first get hired). So these tiny houses would maybe serve that population, let’s say, for a year or maybe longer, depending on what the program was. There could be a section that’s (set aside) for teachers that are planning to then live and work in the district or someplace locally.
We could also zone different areas that would address transitional housing, people who are in-between or at-risk of losing housing type-thing. So it wouldn’t be housing that was meant for everybody, but it would kind of serve different populations for different reasons based on the different zoning. So, it’s a lofty, big project. It’s not something that would happen right away, but it’s a concept that I think we could fish out.
Do I think that addresses the long-term solution of making overall affordability? I do not. It’s just kind of an example. I’m open to creativity and creative ideas.
cstein@chicagotribune.com
