North Cook News

The city of Skokie has adopted an affordable housing plan after tabling it from a previous meeting.

During the May 1 Skokie city council meeting, officials discussed a report from the housing committee recommending an affordable housing policy. The council tabled this item at its previous meeting due to time constraints. 

"As you are all aware, the planning commission deliberated and produced a report which was sent and reported to the board at our last board meeting. We tabled the report in order to give everybody an opportunity to read, digest the report, give it due consideration, and this evening we will be taking it up," Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen said at the meeting.

The plan identifies five main goal areas: Study and assess the ongoing supply and demand for inclusive affordable housing in Skokie; preserve, protect, and improve Skokie’s existing affordable housing to be accessible and sustainable; reduce “jobs/housing mismatch” and ensure that housing is available to all of Skokie’s workers; create new opportunities to increase Skokie’s supply of affordable housing; and support local and regionwide partner efforts to promote and expand fair housing efforts.

These recommendations would affect any new developments that have 11 or more units. Any new developments or projects with 10 or less units would be exempt. New developments include new construction, renovations, or conversions to rentals. The committee recommended rates of 5% for developments with 11-150 units, and 10% for developments with 151 or more units. Developments would have to make the appropriate amount of units into affordable housing with rates between 60-80% of the area media income (AMI), and the units would have to be spread across all units types in the building. If a building has both one- and two-bedroom options, the affordable units must reflect that. The percentage also rounds up to the nearest whole number; for example a 126-unit development falls under the 5% rule which would be 6.3 and rounds up to 7 units.

After discussing the plan at length, the council thanked the housing committee for all their research and work in producing the plan. Council members asked several questions of community development director Johanna Nyden before opening the discussion up for public comment. Public comments ranged in opinions and advice, as some residents urged the council to do absolutely everything they could to create affordable housing, especially for the elderly who are being forced out of Skokie. Others urged caution in making drastic changes to housing due to current market volatility.

Trustee Alison Pure Slovin requested the plan be enacted in stages, starting with adopting the goals and a 5% requirement for all new developments, increasing their adoption of regulations slowly as they fall into place in the community. Trustee Sue Sutker added onto the recommendation and made an amendment to the motion for the committee’s recommendation of 5% and 10%. Trustee Khem Khoeun made an amendment to require a review of the impact of the inclusionary policy after one year. All of those amendments passed, so while the plan was not fully approved, the major points made it through. 

Trustee James Johnson attempted to make some additions after the full motion was approved. His motion to change the zoning to allow accessory structures failed, as well as his attempt to approve a vacant residential homes registry.