Embracing new statewide housing mandates and opportunities, the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus is promoting the use of their user-friendly guidelines to municipal leaders.
Historically, state housing
policy has been almost exclusively the responsibility of mayors and
volunteer commissioners serving the 1,290 municipalities throughout
Illinois.
In recent years,
a number of mayors joined housing advocates and business leaders in advocating
for the State to assume more leadership, offering incentives and guidance to
local jurisdictions to forward policies that better link housing to job and
population growth and transportation
networks.
In 2003, Gov.
Rod Blagojevich signed an Executive Order articulating the Illinois' first
housing policy, and appointed a Task
Force, including an intergovernmental committtee, to forward its
implementation. He also signed into
law the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act (Public Act 93-0595), which requires counties and
municipalities with less than 10 percent affordable housing to adopt a
housing plan and encourages them to “incorporate affordable housing within their
housing stock sufficient to meet the needs of their county or community.” The
law further allows developers to seek relief from local regulations that inhibit
the construction of affordable housing. A proposed amendment , supported by MPC, provided technical clean-ups and
deadline adjustments. (That amendnment was signed into law in
June.)
Whether or not a
town has less than 10 percent affordable housing, there are several
compelling reasons to incorporate housing into broader comprehensive plans. Toward that end, the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus
(MMC) has worked with MPC and other local partners to develop guidelines for a model housing plan (including numerous tools
and even communications strategies) to forward the governor's new housing policy
and MMC's own Housing Endorsement Criteria. These guidelines were developed
based on the stipulations of the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeals Act, but can be used
as the basis for any community's plan, regardless of whether the town is
required to submit a plan under the new law. MMC has further
worked with MPC and the Campaign for Sensible Growth to publish Sensible Tools for Healthy Communities, a companion document for volunteer commissioners interested in
implementing sensible growth and housing policies.