Peoria city officials are asking for community aid and feedback to help build more quality, affordable housing across all income brackets.
Representatives from the city and state of Illinois came together Wednesday at the Gateway Building to discuss the future of Peoria housing and the opportunities that will be available for everyone.
The event, Moving Housing Forward, featured presentations from city and state government representatives and the Illinois Housing Development Authority [IHDA]. The room was then open for real estate agents, developers, contractors, builders, designers and Peoria residents to mingle and discuss initiative needs, wants and expectations.
Peoria Mayor Rita Ali opened the event. She said the city, state and country are facing record low housing inventory. There is a local need and demand, she said, in all housing categories: housing for the homeless, the low to moderate incomes, middle incomes and even high-end housing.
“We just don’t have enough,” Ali said. “Despite rising supply costs, we have a need to build more, to rehab more and to be more creative in the ways that we get this done for Peoria. Creating housing in Peoria is a huge and urgent priority. Today is a call to action, because we, the city of Peoria, wants to partner with you.”
Ali and the city would like to collaborate with landlords, housing and community organizations, businesses, those in real estate and housing development, and more to create additional Peoria housing.
The city is eying homebuilding and revitalization plans across the city in places like the Southside, the East Bluff and Exposition Gardens. Plans include single and multifamily structures.
Olivia Ortega, Illinois’ director of housing solutions, said Gov. JB Pritzker believes housing to be a top state priority. Illinois needs to make building housing easier, particularly houses for working families and first-time homebuyers, Ortega said.
The state is providing money to make that happen: $150 million will be administered and guided by IHDA, $100 million will be injected into Illinois housing development deals and $50 million will go to homebuyers for down-payment assistance.
Other resources for development include Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, Illinois Affordable Housing Tax Credits, first mortgage loan products, taxable and tax-exempt bond financing, the Illinois Affordable Housing Trust Fund, The HOME Investment Partnerships Program and The National Housing Trust Fund.
The city encourages Peoria residents to fill out a survey to help guide future housing initiatives, developments and efforts.
To best plan housing developments, IHDA uses community outreach, housing stock surveys, housing needs assessments, broader community needs assessments and a final, formal document with all that information sent to a city council.
“Communities can use these and several others to whatever fits into the context of what you want to do,” said Alan Quick, IHDA’s managing director of strategic planning and reporting. “So, we’re not coming and telling you what to do. You’re telling us what you want to do, and we’re helping you figure out how to get there.”
Ortega said sufficient housing is one of the state’s biggest challenges. While more and better housing for low-income residents is certainly a focus, Ortega said one of the largest housing gaps is the missing middle.
Small, single-family homes, duplexes and fourplexes are the types of housing that fall under this missing middle. There are the types of homes, Ortega said, that can meet community and family needs no matter their stage of life.
“When those options aren’t there, it’s really hard for people to stay in the community,” Ortega said, “it’s really hard for young families to get started, and it’s harder for workers to put down roots in the places where they’re finding the opportunities to grow.”
Ortega recognized Ali’s leadership in making a solution happen. She said Ali and the city are creating real opportunities, making it clear where development can occur, and building the right teams to move projects forward.
Execution is one of the biggest barriers to housing, said Ortega. She wants to guarantee a clear and predictable route for longtime and especially new housing developers.
Besides building new homes on vacant property, the city, among other goals, wants to remove dangerous structures and promote new development, invest in infrastructure, create more safe and well-maintained rental housing, and rehab existing houses. The last one is big since 70% of houses sold in Peoria were built before 1980, and almost 20% were constructed before 1939.
Quick said IHDA wants housing that is near schools, businesses and places to buy food to eliminate food deserts.
Quick stressed the use of market analysis in locating housing needs and recognizing a good deal that IHDA wants to fund. He also thinks it is important to understand the small, micro areas of a community and its needs.
“What the individuals that live there need in their housing, that’s the biggest advantage that you can bring to a process of supplying housing to a community,” Quick said. “Understanding those needs and what they are and what’s driving them, this makes us really happy, and it makes us want to give you money.”
The benefits of greater housing go beyond just having better shelter.
“Housing changes lives,” Ali said after the presentations. “It changes people’s lives. The environment contributes to crime or no crimes. So, if people live in quality, affordable housing there’s likely to be less crime in that area and that development.”
Jacob Xavier is a city hall fellow from the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. He said the pay disparity in Peoria is huge and is a problem for everyone, and he knows how long Peorians have been fighting to reduce this disparity.
“But this is not a papercut,” Xavier said. “It’s a wound that is serious and severe, and wounds like these heal only when all of us work together.”
Xavier said millennials in Boston, New York and Miami are shut out of homebuying and the American dream.
In Peoria, however, he said the average homebuyer age is 41 years old. Good housing is possible for millennials in the River City, he said.
He, too, underlined the need for housing at every price point. Without affordable homes for the home health aide or the first-year teaching assistant making $25,000 annually, they cannot live in Peoria. The city’s elderly must then wait longer for care, and local teachers have larger workloads.
On the other end of the scale, there are those making over $100,000 a year: small business owners, contractors and those who employ the community. They can live anywhere, said Xavier, but he wants them to choose Peoria. That will help build the city’s tax base and fund Peoria.
“I see a city with a lifeline running through it,” Xavier said. “I see a city, a rare city, where millennials have a shot at the American dream. I see a city where the gap between one family and another is wide, but with so many people working so hard to fix it … Peoria, if you see yourself the way I see you, then you will believe, like I believe, in the power, in the potential, in the future of this historic city.”
