A special City Council subcommittee is to begin its review of Evanston’s inclusionary housing ordinance tonight.
The committee will be wrestling with several conflicting goals:
- Producing more on-site affordable housing while also dispersing units across the community — when most new construction is concentrated downtown.
- Attempting to generate more funds from developers to fund more affordable units — while not stifling development by imposing such steep burdens that developers abandon the city.
- Striking the best balance between aid to the very poor and help for more middle-class households.
It also may look at adopting new impact or linkage fees so that new developments not now covered by the inclusionary housing ordinance — like single family homes or commercial properties — could be forced to contribute funds toward affordable housing.
The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Aldermanic Library at the Civic Center. A packet of materials prepared for the meeting is available online.
The committee includes four aldermen, Judy Fiske, Ann Rainey, Eleanor Revelle and Don Wilson, as well as five citizen-members.
They are Rob Anthony of the Affordable Housing Corporation of Lake County, Lynn Robinson of Robinson Rentals, Jolene Saul of Brinshore Development, Kent Swanson of Riverside Investment & Development and Stacie Young of Community Investment Corporation.
Not just “citizen members”
Not just “citizen members.” A number of these are developers, as dictated by Ann Rainey. Initially, she when coming up with this panel, she made it clear it needed to be she and developers. Why don’t we have experts, NU experts, experts who have worked on successful plans in other communities?