Evanston City Council voted to approve the special use permit and variations for the proposed affordable housing project and Mt. Pisgah Ministry rebuild despite continued pushback from Councilmember Clare Kelly and 5th Ward residents.
Council voted 7-1 on both projects with Kelly remaining the lone no vote on each.
Kelly wanted Richard Koenig, executive director of Housing Opportunity Development Corporation, which will manage the housing complex, to address the ongoing issues at a property his company owns in her ward before moving forward with the Church Street project. The property at 319 Dempster Street has been an issue for years, according to Kelly, who said she left in tears after meeting with residents of the building last week.
“Since I got elected, I have heard complaints from a handful of residents over and over again. I have been met with unresponsiveness, almost dismissiveness, from Richard Koenig,” she said. “Nothing was changing even though there were promises made. Until I see something in place in that building, I cannot support this project. I have the back of my residents before I have Mr. Koenig’s back.”
A 15-year resident of the building, Craig Williams, spoke at the meeting and said he has been pushed to his breaking point by the living conditions in the building.
“I’m the guy who lived above the dead body for three weeks. Not three days, three weeks—plus another 10 days of horrible smell that took a little while to go away,” Williams said. “I could go on for the next two hours of things that have happened in that building that have been dangerous.”
Geoffrey Bushor, a neighbor of 319 Dempster, said problems began when HODC took over the property, adding that there are a “large amount” of emergency vehicles coming to the building.
5th Ward Alderperson Bobby Burns said that Koenig has admitted that 319 Dempster is his most challenging property and the pair is working to improve the building. An agreement is in the works between Metropolitan Tenants Organization, which serves as a middleman between tenants, landlords and the surrounding community during disputes.
“Chronic issues typically involve more than one facility,” Burns said. “If there was a pattern that this was an issue across the entire HODC portfolio, that is another issue. I have not seen that and I’ve said that repeatedly. What I’ve seen is we have one building where there’s really big issues … and we need to deal with it. But I have not seen any evidence of a chronic issue, of a chronic breakdown in management of HODC.”
Kelly said that when she brought her concerns to Koenig, he pointed the finger at Connections for the Homeless, an organization that helps house people at 319 Dempster, saying that the group doesn’t tend to their clients.
“To respect all our rhetoric about caring for our low-income and our vulnerable people, at least let’s please hold off on this until we see a plan in place, activated, (and) evidence that there has been improvement in that building. Otherwise, this is to just disregard what our residents have been going through over there,” she said. “I feel terrible for what the residents have gone through for so many years in that building. This has just been a train wreck.”
Koenig has said the problems at the building boil down to a few bad apples, and that just a few problem tenants can cause widespread issues.
“We get one person on the floor who is mentally ill, who is dangerous, criminal, whoever they are and you ask them to be quiet and they punch you,” said Williams, the resident of 319 Dempster. “Then you call HODC and they say call the police. You call the police and they say call HODC.”
Kelly also pushed back on the Mt. Pisgah rebuild, which would be moved to the corner of Church Street and Darrow Avenue in a land swap agreement with HODC. The housing complex would be built at the church’s current site with the church on the corner. Terms of that partnership are being drafted. The land at the corner is owned by the city and was previously a gas station. The lot has since laid empty for decades.
Evanston’s Community Development Director Sarah Flax said the city doesn’t require documentation of how projects will be funded if the city is not involved with them. The Land Use Commission also expressed concerns about the church project funding but Flax said this is beyond their jurisdiction.
The project is not a done deal yet, as the city still needs to approve gifting the land, which comes once the projects get fully approved. If the land swap is not approved, the project will not be able to be completed.
“We could end up with an empty lot,” Kelly said. “We give away our lot, we could end up with nothing being built there because perhaps the money isn’t available and I think that we need to look at this far more carefully than we’re looking at it currently.”
The Land Use Commission voted in February against the church rebuild but narrowly voted in favor of the affordable housing part of the project.
The housing project has received continued opposition from 5th Ward residents who say other wards need to take on more affordable housing projects because their ward is oversaturated with them. Some have called this modernized redlining.
“We are all for affordable housing,” 5th Ward resident Radica Sutz said. “This is not affordable housing.”
Burns said he has listened to public concerns, even if residents don’t feel that way, and changes he has made to the project — including reducing the height of the apartment building by a floor, adding an onsite building manager and including ground floor retail space — prove that.
“What we are having issues with is disagreement — not that I’m not listening, but we disagree. And that’s OK,” Burns said.