Promoting Affordable Housing is an Employer's Responsibilty

Any company that hopes to be a world class competitor needs a stable, motivated, and well-trained work force. Attracting this kind of work force is becoming harder and harder in these times characterized by low unemployment, frequent job-hopping, and, at times, excessive absenteeism related to family problems.

We at Pittway are looking for new incentives to keep our best employees and to attract employees who can help us grow. We find that suitable housing is one of the major unmet needs of our work force, especially here in the Chicago metropolitan area. We have a large smoke detector assembly plant in St. Charles. A fair number of our employees cannot find suitable housing near our plant. Others rent in the area and would like to become homeowners for the first time. To address their needs we have decided to partner with Joseph Corporation, a community-based nonprofit housing organization, to provide financial and counseling assistance to a select number of employees who wish to move nearer our factory or become home owners. We have made an initial $300,000 commitment to the program. Our financial support will help provide down payment assistance for homebuyers and also pay for the all-important services that Joseph Corporation is providing.

We hope our affordable housing initiative becomes a model for other interested corporations to follow. We are asking the Metropolitan Planning Council to follow and evaluate our program. MPC has extensive experience in the area of affordable housing and will be an excellent resource for us.

We are quite mindful of the fact that the Commercial Club of Chicago has identified affordable housing, especially affordable housing in the suburbs of Chicago, as one of the region's top priorities in the next 25 years. We support the housing goals of the Club's Chicago Metropolis 2020 report, and hope to do our part to help realize those goals.

Our efforts to expand the availability of affordable housing will not be limited to our employer-assisted housing initiative. We will also work with MPC and the Commercial Club to address structural problems in the area's housing market, which prevent the construction of affordable housing in the region; problems like restricted zoning rules and housing codes. We feel that employers must take the lead in addressing housing needs, because without affordable housing, the long-term viability of our businesses becomes questionable.