Park Ridge officials and advisors last week conducted two focus groups to discuss the state of affordable housing in Park Ridge and what an eventual plan to increase affordable housing in the city should include.
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The focus groups convened ahead of a meeting that city officials said will be an important step in determining the shape of Park Ridge’s proposal to improve its affordable housing stock.
Illinois state legislators passed a law in 2021 requiring municipalities with less than 10% of their housing units affordably priced to draft and file a plan with the state detailing how they would make at least 10% of their housing units affordable.
Affordably priced housing units make up about 8% of Park Ridge’s overall housing stock, according to the most recent data.
Earlier this year, Park Ridge City Council Members heard from the advisory group Metropolitan Mayor’s Caucus that 34% of renters and 26% of homeowners in Park Ridge pay more than what they can afford — generally considered about a third of their income — for housing.
The focus groups included city and school officials, local advocates, board members and commissioners and other representatives of community interest groups.
Recently retired Park Ridge-Niles Community Consolidated School District 64 Board Member Larry Ryles said he wanted to see an eventual plan promote the public’s understanding of what affordable housing meant.
“It would probably enhance your neighborhood to have affordable housing,” he said. “Affordable housing simply means that your neighbor might be a police officer; your neighbor might be a fireman; your neighbor might be a veteran from the military, like myself.”
Ryles also noted that elderly residents of Park Ridge who were living on fixed incomes and looking to downsize could also benefit from a larger stock of affordably-priced housing units.
Park Ridge Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jackie Mathews participated in one of the focus groups and said she’d mostly been there to listen.
However, she said, affordable housing could be an important part of ensuring that people who work in Park Ridge can also reside within city limits.
Maine Township High School District 207 Superintendent Ken Wallace also participated in one of the two focus groups. He said he supports the city putting together a plan to increase the availability of affordably-priced housing units so that students from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds could attend District 207 schools.
“We have to be in a position that our doors are open,” he said.
Kristin Berg and Nan Parson of the local advocacy group Action Ridge each attended one focus group. They said there was widespread agreement among participants that Park Ridge should work on increasing its affordable housing supply, although the precise meaning of that goal wasn’t a topic the groups discussed.
Besides discussing who affordable housing might serve in Park Ridge, Berg said the groups talked about incentives to preserve smaller, older homes in the city’s housing stock and how more housing units at lower prices would, or would not, bear on class sizes at local schools.
Director of Community Preservation and Development Drew Awsumb said the city would begin considering a number of options for how to proceed with its plan at a meeting set for July 24.
Awsumb said city officials would hear about other municipalities’ approaches to affordable housing at the meeting and begin discussing possible options to put into an eventual plan to be filed with the state of Illinois.
Awsumb said one source of information for that discussion will be initial results of a Community Needs Assessment survey, currently available on the city’s website.
The survey covers how residents felt the pandemic impacted their lives and economic circumstances, their opinion of housing conditions in the city and their thoughts on community life more generally.
“It is not a scientific survey, it is more of a general community questionnaire,” Awsumb said in an email to Pioneer Press.
The survey will remain live at least until Labor Day, Awsumb said. More information
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about Park Ridge’s planning process is available at www.parkridge.us. According to that page, a draft plan will be available later this summer with a public review hearing targeted for September.