Will County Ad-Hoc Modern Housing Solutions Committee met April 13.
Here is the minutes provided by the committee:
III. ROLL CALL
Chair Amanda Koch called the meeting to order at 3:00 PM
| Attendee Name | Title | Status | Arrived |
| Amanda Koch | Chair | Present | |
| Rachel Ventura | Vice Chair | Present | |
| Herbert Brooks Jr. | Member | Present | |
| Gretchen Fritz | Member | Absent | |
| Debbie Kraulidis | Member | Present |
IV. APPROVAL OF MINUTES
1. WC Ad-Hoc Modern Housing Solutions Committee - Regular Meeting - Jan 12, 2021 3:00 PM
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Rachel Ventura, Vice Chair SECONDER: Debbie Kraulidis, Member AYES: Koch, Ventura, Brooks Jr., Kraulidis |
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Debbie Kraulidis, Member SECONDER: Herbert Brooks Jr., Member AYES: Koch, Ventura, Brooks Jr., Kraulidis |
1. Overview of Housing Action Illinois Programs and Current Efforts (Bob Palmer)
Ms. Koch stated I connected with Bob Palmer through a long series of events. He has a program that I think fits very well with this committee. I will let him tell us a little bit more about who he is and why he is here. I look forward to this presentation.
Mr. Bob Palmer stated I am the Policy Director at Housing Action Illinois. I don’t have slides but I have four web links to various fact sheets that I will put into the chat. You can look at them now or afterwards. Some of you may know us; we are a statewide advocacy and capacity building organization. We are based in Chicago but we are a statewide organization with members throughout the state. We currently have 150 organizational members; including some groups in Will County like the MorningStar Mission, the Will County Center for Community Concerns, and the Spanish Center for Housing. Our membership base is mostly homeless service providers, nonprofit housing developers, housing counseling agencies, centers for independent living, and few public housing authorities. We even have some lenders and other financial institutions. Our mission is to work with our coalition partners and allies to ensure that everyone in Illinois regardless of their income has access to a safe affordable place to live. As the policy director I have worked on our advocacy and public education programs doing work mostly at the state and federal level. Trying to pass state laws or get more resources for the state budget; or work on administrative issues at the state or federal level. Anything from expanding available home ownership to getting more resources for extremely low income renters. We have a couple of other programs at Housing Action Illinois that I don’t work on but will briefly tell you about. One is our Capacity Building Program that’s mostly focused on providing resources for HUD approved counseling agencies that are working with first time home buyers; or people that are trying to avoid foreclosure. In short, we do group training sessions but also one on one technical assistance for those agencies to build their staff capacity; so they can do a better job serving their clients. We also have an AmeriCorps VISTA program and in our member organizations it is on a somewhat competitive basis; we place people doing a year of service through the AmeriCorps program and the Federal Corporation for national service at a relatively low cost. If you have ever had an AmeriCorps VISTA member you know that there is a lot of paperwork involved with the federal government. We handle all of that, it makes it relatively easy for a nonprofit or a government agency to host an AmeriCorps member. I believe that at any one time we generally we have about 35 AmeriCorps members placed at our organizations around the state. It is somewhat competitive and we generally have more organizations that want to host a member, then positions we are able to fund. If you are interested in either of those programs at the end of the discussion I will put the web link to our organization website which is housingactionil.org; and people can get information about those. I was invited to discuss our policy and advocacy work at the state and federal level; things we currently are working on and things we have been dong during the last year. I am sure like everyone who is working on housing issues on this committee; or in some other part of your life. Your work has been very much been impacted by the pandemic and the same is true at Housing Action Illinois. When the pandemic started we had a whole advocacy agenda we were working on at the State Capital, and with our national partners in Washington DC; to get more resources for affordable housing and homelessness. We have pretty much stopped working on all of those specific issues and focused on pandemic response more than a year ago. I would say a lot of the issues we have been working on during the pandemic are the same; preventing evictions, getting more resources for homeless prevention, trying to increase resources for rent assistance and foreclosure, prevention assistance and that sort of thing. At the federal level we partner with a few different groups that are based in Washington DC to do our federal level advocacy but the one that we work more closely with is National Low Income Housing Coalition that maybe many of you are familiar with. They have the equivalent to Housing National Illinois in every state in the country that they work with; their state partner in Illinois that we focused on getting more federal resources to help people pay the rent and respond to homelessness. The first major COVID-19 relief bill that passed during the pandemic was the CARES Act. From that the discretionary funds that were available; Illinois used more than any other state in the nation for rent and mortgage assistance. The General Assembly in May of last year, working with the Governor’s Office and the Illinois Housing Development Authority, committed about $325 million for rent and mortgage assistance. Two thirds of which went for rental assistance; I think compared to other states around the country, Illinois actually did a very good job of getting those rental assistance out to people in need. As well as mortgage assistance dollars because they designed a program that had relatively few documentation requirements while still also having safeguards to protect against fraud and the program. Many local governments; I’m sure like Will County used their CDBG
(County Development Block Grant) funds or their ESG (Emergency Solutions Grant) funds that came from the CARES Act to meet people’s housing needs during the pandemic to stay safe. Then obviously there was the evection moratorium at the federal level for people with federally insured mortgages that were protections against foreclosure. Then at the state level we appealed to Governor Pritzker along with many others for there to be a state wide eviction moratorium that still is in place; that’s almost stronger than a federal moratorium. In December of 2020 through the COVID-19 Relief Package that passed then; the federal government came through with a lot more money for rental assistance. Illinois is getting about $835 million in rent assistance; which about $560 million plus is going to the state and various money going to local governments. I know that Will County is actually partnering with Illinois Housing Development Authority to get those rent assistance dollars out. I know Will County has just created a website that will direct people to the state program once that gets going; but also the dollars that are available through Will County. Then through the American Rescue Act plan that has passed in March there are even more dollars that are coming for renters and homeowners and people experiencing homelessness; but we haven’t got specific allocations of how much is coming to Illinois or local governments through them. Then also we are working on the Infrastructure Bill that President Biden is working with Members of Congress to pass. The two fact sheets that I shared in the chat; one is the summery of the American Rescue Plan Act dollars. The other one is the priorities for the Infrastructure Bill through the campaign that the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) has started called hoUSed; with the u capitalized and the s capitalized to focus that it’s about all of us in the United States. One of the main priorities for that campaign and this is legally ambitious, is to get really significantly increased funding for the Federal Housing Choice voucher program. Moving it from the discretionary side of the budget; where it is limited to what there is funding for; to the entitlement side of the budget where it would be more like the food stamp or SNAP program. Where if you are income eligible you would get those resources. We are currently appealing to our Illinois Congressional Delegation; Senator Derbin, and Senator Duckworth just signed on to a letter providing general support for those sorts of goals. As did some members of the Illinois House Delegation including Tu Garcia, Jan Schakowsky, and Bobby Rush. We know that it is going to be sort of a prolonged effort for Congress to pass an Infrastructure Bill so we want to work with as many of our members and allies around the state to focus on that and keep reaching out to our congressional delegation. I will pause here and see if there are any questions or comments on the federal level advocacy; before going back to talk about a couple of the state bills that we are working on.
Ms. Koch stated I do have one question. I noticed that a lot of the assistance that we are hearing about is really helping folks that rent; which is great because a lot of times those are the folks that are more housing insecure. However, is there anything that is really targeting our homeowners that might have a hard time making their mortgage payments? They’re also being given some relief right now from not paying the bills; but they are going to owe when that is lifted.
Mr. Bob Palmer replied yes; excellent point. You are right; during the whole pandemic renters and also people experiencing homelessness have got a lot of the attention. The focus on homeowners was particularly on the people who had federally insured mortgages; which I think among the lower income homeowners is definitely the great majority. But the mortgage payments are still due when these forbearance programs are over. Actually in the American Rescue Plan that was passed in March; there is $10 billion nationally for homeowners. I don’t know how much will be going to Illinois. It will be going to the Illinois Housing Development Authority; and I know they are working on developing a program that is similar to the Hardest Hit Program that was created after the foreclosure crises that happen in the aftermath of the great recession. I don’t know many details about how that is going to work or what the eligibility is going to be or exactly what the roll out timeline is for that.
Ms. Koch said we will watch for that.
Ms. Ventura stated I do have a question; I don’t see that Ms. Sojka is on but I know that Mr. Bob Palmer said there was a website up for the ERA. I have had some people ask about that; I didn’t know if we had a projected launch date for people to start applying for those funds.
Mr. Schaben stated we have not gotten a date yet from IHDA when the applications will be launched. They initially indicated it would have been mid-April; but they have pushed that date back to May. We just don’t have a firm date from IHDA.
Mr. Nick Palmer said like Mr. Schaben said it was originally set to go in mid-April; but it is taking them more time to get the new application portal up and running.
Ms. Koch stated one of our aims of this committee is really to create housing stock. When this committee started almost two years ago; we were not in the crisis we are today with housing stock; it actually continues to get worse, not better. I realize that, none of these bills really help with housing stock; but based on your organizations work do you have any suggestions for us as we go into our old business conversation about housing options and zoning ordinances and so on? To help us create more housing stock as we lift this eviction moratorium?
Mr. Bob Palmer stated I previously put in the chat two links to the state legislation that we are working on; two different fact sheets. One doesn’t create new housing stock but is the COVID-19 Emergency Housing Act that is HB-2877. This bill has passed the House and is currently in the Senate. Basically what it would do is provide some guidelines and requirements for how the State is planning to use those rental assistance dollars. It is very much in line with what IHDA is planning to do. It would also seal eviction records going back to the beginning of the pandemic from March 2020 and through March of 2022 so that is not an obstacle to finding housing. Then there is also foreclosure protections which why we are trying to get this bill passed as soon as possible. It would provide protections for home owners if their foreclosures got to the point where there is going to be a judicial sale; there would be a pause on judicial sales through the end of July of this year to give people a little more time to do a last ditch effort to try and sell their home. The other bill that we are working on does connect more to the housing stock issue; that is HB-805 and SB-330. There are versions pending in both chambers that will create a property tax incentive for owners; market rate housing and also non-profit and for profit owners even subsidized housing. They are creating housing with the Illinois Housing Development Authority or using other types of government funding. If they are doing a new construction project or doing a redevelopment doing a rehab in an existing building and they keep a certain percentage of the rents affordable they can get a reduction in the assessed value; that is one of their components of calculating their property taxes. This is based on an existing Cook County program that is not working as well as it used to called Class 9; basically what this state law would do is recreate the program with Cook County but also with other counties in Illinois. As a political reality of wanting to get the bill passed we included a provision that counties that don’t want to do this can opt out. Honestly we hope that counties will; because we found in Cook County at least when the program was working well, it was a way to incentivize owners to create more affordable rental housing. It’s focused at rental housing at 60% of their median income; so it’s not getting at extremely low income households or rents that are affordable to people who need supportive housing or extremely low income renters; what people call work forced housing; it’s a good resource for that. I would also say that from the American Rescue Act that passed in March there are dollars to increase housing stock. One example is that the dollars targeted for homelessness assistance that were previously funded through the CARES Act for the Emergency Solutions Grant Program, and the American Rescue Plan are coming through the Home Program. There is a wider variety of eligible uses; one is to create permanent rental housing more targeted for those extremely low income households. I think one model that can be used for this with that resource is to convert hotels or other existing properties into housing that would be affordable; either like transitional housing or permanent rental housing that would be more affordable to households with the lowest incomes. It might be complicated to do but because you might need additional funding sources beyond just what is being provided by Home to make the projects work. I know the federal government just came out in the last few days of the allocations of what is going to the different jurisdictions. The Will County Home Consortium is getting $4.6 million. It doesn’t all have to be used for rental housing development; it can be used for a variety of resources or a variety of purposes.
Ms. Koch replied outstanding; I do want to ask you a little bit about HB-805 and SB-330. They are talking about creating a tax abatement in part. Who is funding that? Is the state proposing to fund that or are they saying they want the county to sign on to fund that?
Mr. Bob Palmer stated because it is a property tax incentive essentially it doesn’t impact the state budget at all. With these property tax incentives, ok there are three factors that go into your property tax bill. There is the property tax rate, your assessed value, and then there is how much the county or taxing district wants to collect; it’s called a levy. This particular incentive only impacts the assessed value. It is not changing the levy; it’s not changing how much the taxing district will collect. It will change how much the individual tax payer or property owner is paying for taxes. When these types of provisions or incentives get passed; they are often controversial because if you give one tax break to one tax payer that means that other tax payers will pay more to make up the levy. Because this incentive only goes for people who are doing new construction or investing in their property and the reduction in assessed value comes off of that higher post construction rehab value. For example if you rehab a building and assessed value goes from $1 million to $1.5 million, the reduction would be off of that higher $1.5 million assessed value. We don’t believe this incentive is going to cause what people call a burden shift. Essentially it won’t be a burden shift from rental property owners to other types of tax payer like single family home owners or commercial businesses; because we are increasing the overall property tax base by getting people to invest in their properties. That was kind of the experience in Cook County through this program. So far in trying to pass the bill the state legislators have agreed with that and naturally when the bill passed the senate committee a couple of weeks ago it had bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans. We hope it will continue to move in that manner through the General Assembly.
Ms. Koch stated that is a really great explanation; I appreciate that. I hope it goes through too; that is pretty outstanding.
Mr. Brophy said I have a question regarding your earlier comments about the Cook County program that is set to be extended statewide; the assessment credit program. You mentioned that it performed better and then it performed poorly. Do you know the conditions or the market? When did it perform poorly when did it perform better and what should we expect?
Mr. Bob Palmer answered I should say it was a Cook County specific issue; the program was called the Class 9 program and it was created back in the 80’s. If you are somebody who knows about property taxes you know that Cook County has a much more complicated property tax system than other counties because they have classifications for different types of properties like larger rental properties, and promotional industrial properties and single family homes. What happened was Cook County made some changes in how they classify rental properties overall. They eliminated the benefit of the Class 9 Program. My comment doesn’t really apply to other jurisdictions in Illinois; because you don’t do your property taxes in the same way what we are doing is going to fix issue that Cook County had.
Mr. Brophy stated without getting too weedy; do you expect conditions in Will County and other parts of the state; do you think that our conditions will yield better results or poorer results?
Mr. Bob Palmer replied I think in all the counties the goal is to have this work in the best way in every county. It is hard to know; it is a property tax incentive so obviously the unknown is who is going to try and take advantage of it. Basically what we tried to do is figure out if owners in a higher cost market and they are charging lower rents than they could get on the market; how much rent are they actually giving up. Let’s say they are lowering rents from $1,500.00 to $900.00 per month they are giving up $600.00 per month in rent. In the course of a year they are doing that for multiple apartments. This is how much of a property tax incentive you would need to try and make up for a loss of that rent. We did that calculation in both higher and lower cost markets; the amount of the incentive is to be in line with what those lower rents are. Although it is just an estimate; it is not calculated for any individual property and we tried to structure the incentives where it would be attractive enough for owners to charge lower rents. But not so much of an incentive that it is just a giveaway; obviously it has to be new construction or owners have to invest in their property. It is defined in the legislation about the investment level or threshold in terms of how much you have to spend if you put a new roof on the building. Or you replaced the plumbing or heating system and that type of thing.
Mr. Brophy stated I just wanted to make sure that the incentive is worth it before we spend too many resources on it. It doesn’t sound like it at this point; but I would have to see more examples to evaluate it.
Mr. Bob Palmer said when you sign up for this the reduction is over ten years. The example I gave was simplified because you would be getting the reduced property taxes over ten years.
Mr. Brophy asked the reporting required to determine for those future years; do you still have qualified tenants; that sounds a little complicated.
Mr. Bob Palmer stated there is paperwork involved to be managed by the local Assessors Office; the owner would have to income certify that tenants have the income eligibility level.
Ms. Koch added if you have any other information if you could please send it to us. I am interested in what comes out of that. Does Housing Action Illinois have a monthly newsletter that talks about priority legislation?
Mr. Palmer replied we do have a monthly newsletter; it talks about legislation and I am happy to add people to that. I should also say there is actually so much going on in the General Assembly. There are other bills that are being worked on that actually get at increasing the rental housing supply through new state funding. Or at a state level; tax credits. Due to time limitations I couldn’t go there. When we work on things at the state and federal level we do really like to try and get input from people around the state. We would appreciate keeping in contact with your coalition to get information about what your local needs are. To work ideally in partnership to craft proposals that meet people’s needs.
Ms. Koch thanked Mr. Bob Palmer for coming today. I really look forward to reading your newsletter.
Handout from Bob Palmer at Committee (Handout)
VI. OLD BUSINESS
1. Affordable Housing Options In Residential Areas within the Will County Zoning Ordinance
(Margie Kenny)
Ms. Farrell stated I just wanted to catch us all up to speed; to go over the purpose and goal of what we were doing. We were looking at our existing zoning ordinance and evaluating areas of opportunity. Things like text amendments; that could be under taking to make some changes in the more immediate future. We are talking a couple of months; as opposed to bigger picture ideas that might take several months to years to really vet out; and then adopt. This includes things like the clarifying language, adding additions, scanning certain instances that we already have codified. The goal was to address some housing related building permit, and zoning issues that we actually currently see today; through these minor zoning ordinance text amendments. Our takeaway from February's meeting were things that you all have asked us to prepare and come back to you with. We have Colin Duesing who is going to be reviewing a chart of some of the housing related uses that we discussed last time. Margie Kenny is going to go into some of the definitions that we discussed last time. I will talk about some pros and cons. After that we will look at prioritizing different issues, making some recommendations and what the next steps are.
At this juncture Ms. Farrell, Mr. Duesing and Ms. Kenny reviewed the PowerPoint presentation. Attached.
Ms. Farrell stated like I discussed at the very beginning; we are looking at the next steps and prioritization. From our meeting last time we had a lot of discussion and great ideas. Some of the ideas we did feel were better suited for a comprehensive plan update; or longer term ideas such as green building initiatives, energy efficiency; we don’t have that codified at all in the zoning ordinance right now; we would be starting from scratch. As staff we were talking about this taking the language we already have existing and making some minor tweaks would be a lot easer and quicker. Of course this would require input from agencies and other entities specifically the Will County Health Department in regards to the accessory dwelling units; an impact of multiple dwellings on a parcel on a well and septic. That has become a topic of discussion of having separate facilities for the separate structures. Ensuring the parcel is sized appropriately; but what if they are on city services; does this even matter. We are requiring them to have a special use permit but it is much easer for them to tap on to the existing services. The next step would be for the Modern Housing Solutions Committee to make recommendations for assignments to the Land Use & Development Committee which is the ultimate committee who reviews the text amendments and assigns to staff to undertake those drafts.
Ms. Koch stated I did think about going through these each one by itself; but it is kind of a lot; you did a very good job clarifying what we are going to consider changing on those pros and cons. Like you said it is really in the eye of the beholder but it did really help understand issues that you all see regularly. Let’s go ahead and start with item #1. I would love to think of how we could define them to help a town home stand out from a regular multi-unit and so on. Did you have any suggestions for language Ms. Farrell or do you want us to come up with suggestions?
Ms. Ferrell replied that is one big thing; is right now if we don’t have a definition; we default to something else. In the instance of a town home we have to default to the building code. So ensuring that building code definitions would match the zoning definitions would make life easier for the applicants but also for staff reviewing it. To further that, like you were talking about how a duplex is not permitted right now but a town home is permitted in R4. We don’t have definitions for either of these. A town home is typically 3 units per building code definition; a duplex is typically 2. Why wouldn’t a duplex be allowed in R4. There are some of these common sense type of things that could be easily codified in the use table and then in the definition to just make some improvements to the zoning ordinance. I think using building code definitions would go a long way.
Ms. Koch stated I think we should start with that low hanging fruit; stuff that really doesn’t make sense; I did see that too. A lot of this is not intuitive at all; maybe we could add some of that language from the building codes like you said and try and streamline this a little bit. There is not a big difference between a town home and a duplex but there is a big difference between a town home and multi-unit structure that might have different homes on different levels like a condominium or apartment. Maybe we need to figure that out. I also see a two flat on here; it’s the same but opposite of the duplex. I don’t know if there is anything that we can use to define that differently or do we see that as something different or is that very similar to a duplex.
Ms. Farrell replied what we found is that different counties, different municipalities separate the two out. They will talk about where the shared wall is; whether the shared wall is horizontal or vertical basically. As a two flat or a duplex that’s side by side; they will treat them separately.
Ms. Koch said then I would say we have something similar going on with manufactured homes and modular homes. Because those are a little bit similar or could be. That may be another one where we could literally pull the definitions from the building code and then maybe if we need to tweak them at all to make it make sense for you; when you are doing your permits. We should take everything that is in the chart; and is everything on the first page where it defines each thing. Maybe we could add the ones that were missing with the building code language.
Ms. Farrell said I think that makes sense; for next month we can start bringing together some of those definitions for review.
Ms. Koch replied once we have them all down then maybe we can nitpick a little bit just to make the most sense. Maybe put the building code definition; and then maybe put in parentheses or a different color that Land Use staff finds that this would also be helpful to add to or subtract from that definition. Because you see the cases regularly; the end goal is just to make your jobs a little bit easer. Let’s talk about the accessory dwelling unit attached. When I look at this it seems like it is really restrictive; 650 sq. ft. isn’t a lot for size of the home; some homes are just big and have big rooms. As of 30% my thought is why it couldn’t be 40%; not full half because that would make it a duplex but why couldn’t it come close to that.
Ms. Farrell added really that is what we’ve seen here as you mentioned; we actually went more restrictive for an attached accessory dwelling unit; we used to call it related living in 2018. The permits that we have seen; we have routinely had to tell people to down size the accessory dwelling unit; to the point to where people have removed it all together; to not have to apply for variances, or go through zoning actions. At a staff level we would recommend to see it as a percentage of the house; like you said certain homes are larger so having an 800
sq. ft. accessory dwelling unit attached; would be a lot different on a 5,000 sq. ft. house as opposed to say a 1,000 sq. ft. house.
Ms. Koch stated that is something that I would defiantly like to see and for #2 and #3. For #2 40% you wouldn’t want to go over that or that might be crazy because you are looking at a two flat. But with #3 we might even be able to say that it could be as large as 50%. Just because it is not attached; so we are talking about a carriage house or something like this. My goal is to make it less restrictive for residents; so there are not as many special use permits or variances. They are then able to do this as more of a permissive use. Does anybody have any thoughts on that?
Ms. Ventura replied I agree.
Ms. Koch said I don’t think that you are going to necessarily put a lot more people in it; I think it is just allows people a little more freedom with the design. Item #4 is mobile homes; we did have a presentation about these mobile home parks; the lots and how all of that works. I do think that this is one of things where we get into a density situation. Do you have any input on that for us Ms. Farrell?
Ms. Farrell responded it is difficult because we have individual mobile homes; and we have the mobile home parks themselves. For my time at the county I really have not seen many issues on the mobile home parks itself. People are typically doing larger mobile home parks where having that special use permit and assuring that there are adequate roads and utilities provided to them. There are developers that come into this, it’s basically the individual mobile homes; we have seen requests for people who would like to put an individual mobile home on a residential parcel; or perhaps an agricultural parcel that is not 10 acres. As it stands right now it is only allowed, in A1 with a minimum of 10 acres.
Ms. Koch said I suppose when you look at agricultural; what are the sizes for E-1 and E-2?
Ms. Farrell replied E-1 is 4.9 acres and E-2 is 2.4 acres.
Ms. Koch said those are kind of small; I guess we really would probably stick to agricultural but what are people’s feelings about lowering the number of acres required.
Ms. Ventura said we did have something like this on Land Use Development Committee before; but they wanted to put it in an industrial area. I don’t remember if it was a security mobile hut or something. I don’t know if we are going to open that up to other areas or just keep that as a special use or case by case. I think if you have a smaller acreage then you should limit the number on it. I don’t think you want to get into the case of someone taking their estate and making a mobile home park out of it.
Ms. Koch said I think what we are talking is just adding one with a regular resident; or in lieu of another resident when they are building. Right?
Ms. Farrell replied correct so it would be a mobile home as your primary residents. Just one mobile home and that is all that you have on the property. But it is something to think about with the accessory dwelling unit detached; where we allow two homes on a property. We actually have that request. To go to County Board Member Ventura’s point to two mobile homes on a property; currently that would not be allowed. You have to have an actual permanent home built on the property.
Mrs. Kraulidis said I was wondering if the acreage right now is acceptable; there is no one asking for more or less or having a problem with 10 acres.
Ms. Farrell replied currently we have requests for less than 10 acres. We do have some smaller A-1 parcels around the county and some other parcels that were divided up thirty or forty years ago whatever it may be. People are looking to put a single mobile home on there; it might be 6 acres and currently that wouldn’t be allowed.
Ms. Koch stated I personally might be comfortable lowering it to 5 acres because that would not allow this in the E-1 and E-2; but it would allow it in agricultural 5 acres or more. I don’t know if anybody has any strong feelings one way or another on that. We could make this a less restrictive use by just lowering that thresh hole in the special use.
Ms. Ventura said I don’t see any problem with lowering it unless staff has something against it. I think that is fine or limiting it to one with the possibility of the accessory unit; above a garage or something that is fine. So they may be renting out that accessory unit and then living in the mobile home on their property; so that makes sence.
Ms. Koch stated for #5 we have non-conforming structures and I have some questions with this. You talked about the accidental or intentional damage. When I was thinking about the state of disrepair; when people are not doing regular maintenance; but I feel we are being kind of punitive of people. A lot of times I think if they are not doing that it is because they probably don’t have the money to. I am almost not keen to punish somebody that probably doesn’t have the money to do it; and if they finally kind of get their act together or get the money together; or whatever the case may be. I almost want to make it easy for them to make the property better not harder. Or am I understanding that incorrectly?
Ms. Farrell said that is correct; what we typically see is that the property has changed ownership. Someone has come in and purchased the home; not necessarily to flip it but to live in it. Then we tell them that the previous owner intentionally damaged the structure by neglecting it; now you are going to have to apply for variances to bring it into compliance to make renovations to it; that is usually the situation.
Ms. Koch stated we talked a little bit about not telling people how to spend their money. I do see some value in changing this to 100% of three times the assessed valuations; that would essentially be market value. We might say we don’t want you to spend more than what the market value of the home is. If we said it is in such disrepair that it’s really not worth anything; but if you spend what we think is the fair market value in this area; three times the EAV (Equalized Assessed Value) to fix it up that’s okay. I would like to strike the language that talks about intentional or accidental; because damage is damage and if somebody wants to fix a house and make it habitable I am sure the whole neighborhood would appreciate it.
Ms. Ventura asked what the thought is behind why it was listed in the past; is there a difference in the fee structure. I guess I don’t understand why we even have that defined.
Ms. Koch replied I was thinking maybe state statute.
Ms. Farrell said I don’t know; it’s something that I can see where we want to encourage people to fix up a dilapidated structure. But at the same point we don’t want someone to invest a lot of money in something that might need to be demolished; or perhaps they are just going to try to rent it out to someone making these improvements. There may be a million reasons behind it; I don’t really know and I don’t think that there is a state statute behind it. Mr. Duesing are you aware with accidental vs intentional damage; is that a state statue?
Mr. Duesing replied no I am not familiar with that standard at all. I’m just familiar with the 50% rule; like I mentioned at the last meeting the floodplain development. The Feds don’t want you to increase the non-compliance if it is over 50%. Also it’s the function of the zoning ordinance to make things compliant. By doing so you are ignoring the purpose of the zoning ordinance. So if it comes about the strong policy issue as to how the zoning ordinance is going to be enforced in the future.
Ms. Koch asked if it would be possible to split the difference a little bit; and maybe say only 70% of three times the assessed value or something; just to give people a little more wiggle room. I can definitely see the value in what we call more historic homes; homes from the turn of the last century that people would want to renovate they would put a lot of money into it; and we should stop them.
Ms. Farrell replied I was just going to say and I agree with that; and to what Mr. Duesing said about the floodplain. There are separate provisions about making improvements with structures located in a floodplain for example. Whatever is the more restrictive would be applied. If we have a permit that comes in for a structure that’s in a flood way and they are exceeding those regulations; then that one would apply to this instance. Think more of just like an average everyday house; not in a floodplain or not in a wetlands; to Chairperson Koch’s point on a historic home it doesn’t need a setback because it was built before setbacks were adopted. If it suffered somewhat neglect we would restrict how much money could be put into it with this intentional damage provision.
Ms. Ventura stated I guess I still don’t really understand why we have it that way. As to what Mr. Duesing’s point is that’s already going to supersede that. Whether it is intentional damage or not; the bank is not going to underwrite if the loans are going to be big, then FEMA, all of those things that precedence anyway. I still don’t understand why; let’s say somebody abandoned a property and it sat there for several years and maybe it is weathered, worn and other animal damage and graffiti from people. If someone wants to buy it and fix it up; why would we permit any of it; and why would we limit how much they can invest in that property? I guess I don’t understand why if it is intentional or not intentional why it makes a difference; maybe I am missing something.
Ms. Koch replied I think that is why they brought it to us; because it really doesn’t make sense.
Ms. Ventura asked if we are just able to remove it.
Ms. Koch stated that is our suggestion right? Unless the State’s Attorney tells us we can’t.
Ms. Farrell stated you are correct that is why we are bring it up; because we have seen it as an issue. As staff we really don’t understand where it came from either and this differentiation between the accidental and the intentional.
Ms. Koch stated lets strike it pending our State’s Attorney’s review of this. I am going to breeze through items 6 and 7; because I know we will be bringing this back next month with some of these changes. Six is talking about the non conforming lots; and I really wanted to cue in on the third bullet point that talks about the nonconforming date of 7/20/1978. Does staff have a recommendation of how to change that date.
Ms. Farrell stated we have talked internally when we were going through the 2018 zoning ordinance amendment; something we were going to try to put in there but we decided not to. The most recent largest zoning ordinance revision was in 2012. I think it was October 1st but I could very well be wrong. We were talking about
potentially taking that date as our new grand fathered date; that’s just an idea.
Ms. Koch stated I like that; if somebody's house is too close to the property line and it was built 100 years ago or even 20 years ago; they can’t move the house. So why are we punishing them by making them go through a variance process or something. It just seems silly to me; I want to support people renovating a home and keeping the structure alive. Instead of saying we have to tear everything down; or make somebody pay a lot of extra money if they want to live in the house and then it just sits.
Ms. Ventura asked what that proposed change date was again. Ms. Farrell stated the most recent zoning ordinance update was October 1, 2012.
Mr. Duesing added the reason why the 1978 date is there is that is when they had the most recent comprehensive map update; not just the text. They had a major text change and then they made significant map changs as well under County Board initiative. Since that time all other map changes have been under property owner initiative. That is why the 1978 number stands and why it was anticipated; that’s when everything should have been compliant. We really haven’t changed the standards all that much since then. It would be my personal recommendation to keep the 1978; but I thoroughly understand the 2012 date being the more modern date. But the 1978 encompasses the current map very well.
Ms. Koch stated the only reason I’m interested in the 2012 is simply any home that falls in-between there, if we have a change of owner I don’t think that somebody that didn’t know the property should necessarily have to go back and bring it into compliance. Especially with a yard setback or something like this. We can talk about it more next month; at least we understand that issue a little more. Is there anything else I am missing with the non-conforming lots?
Ms. Farrell replied the only thing that we had discussed were potentially setbacks but that is something we can bring up next month.
Ms. Koch said I don’t know how much we want to change those; but if we did say whatever it was all the way up to 2012 is okay. We should talk about it a little more. The temporary use permits and this was the mobile home, RV thing that you were talking about Ms. Ventura where they wanted it in the industrial or anywhere else. Do we want to make this an allowable use for certain categories, or no?
Ms. Ventura replied I feel it should be a case by case base; if we just allow it, things could get out of hand quickly it seem;s like; especially in an industrial area where there is already kind of a free for all. There is a lot more because the I-1 is pretty broad. You can do a lot there; so I think we should limit this to case by case.
Ms. Koch stated I agree; my question for the temporary use permit is if somebody's house burns; I want to get them in housing soon. If they have the ability to be in an RV or mobile home on the property. We want to make sure that we do that quickly; what is the way we can make this the quickest for residents without burdening.
Ms. Ventura asked if this could limit it to only residential zoning then. Make it allowable and make it for a set period of time; perhaps 6 months. After 6 months they have to come back.
Ms. Koch stated that’s what I was thinking. Allow it for a certain amount of time and then you would have to retroactively and then get permission for it.
Ms. Farrell stated that’s really what we are looking for is to just allow this to be approved administratively. Because we already have a path for other administrative approvals for similar use in the residential zoning districts. We do have the provision for that accessory dwelling unit detached in the industrial zoning districts. That is a special use permit so it is a case by case basis. This temporary use is just like what you said; for 6 months they are renovating their house and they want to pull in an RV and live in it temporarily.
Ms. Koch stated we have gone through all of these numbers and have given you directions. Do you have any questions staff; about what we might be looking for next month. We would like to get this wrapped up and get this to the Land Use Department.
Ms. Farrell stated I do not and will defer to Mr. Duesing and Ms. Kenney. I have been taking notes here on all seven items and we will put it all together and come back with some building code definitions and then some cleaned up ideas on these topics.
Mr. Duesing stated I just have some things that we need to talk about in-house.
Ms. Kenney said I am the same way and I think that there is a lot of ideas and a direction for us to definitely examine and come back to you with what we find.
Ms. Koch stated at the end of the day I just wanted to make your department work better and make it better for residents.
Handout from Janine Farrell at Ad-Hoc Modern Housing Solutions Committee (Handout)
VII. OTHER OLD BUSINESS
VIII. NEW BUSINESS
1. Overview of Housing Action Illinois Programs and Current Efforts
This item was discussed earlier in the meeting.
IX. OTHER NEW BUSINESS
X. PUBLIC COMMENT
XI. ANNOUNCEMENTS/REPORTS BY CHAIR
Ms. Koch stated our next meeting will be on May 11th at 3:00 p.m.
XII. EXECUTIVE SESSION
XIII. ADJOURNMENT
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-iUyBnDwrPIxYeVoRHimSGJqmxkfJprGluSmCEv0OoI/edit
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