Gov. JB Pritzker spoke Wednesday with Bloomington-Normal area business and government leaders to discuss solutions to the ongoing housing crisis.
The roundtable discussion was held at the McLean County Museum of History in Bloomington. The discussion advanced the governor’s Building Up Illinois Developments [BUILD] initiative.
Discussion of the lack of housing supply touched on both statewide trends and aspects of the situation more focused on the Bloomington-Normal area. Local businesses and manufacturers have more workers than the area can offer homes and rental options to.
“Supply just isn't there at the moment,” said Brandon Shaffer, a Bloomington-Normal Realtor. “When a home comes on the market between that $150,000 and $250,000 price point, you don't have one buyer looking for that home. You've got a dozen buyers looking for that home.”
This lack of supply has encouraged aggressive pricing that places homes on the market beyond what a buyer would usually have to pay. Shaffer said creating alternative ways to limit community need for housing could lessen demand — and with it, the price of home buying.
“The BUILD plan is really focused on middle housing,” said Pritzker. “For people who make $75,000 to $175,000 a year, and can't rent or buy a home affordably anymore.”
Possible remedies
Methods discussed during the meeting included relaxing some of the regulations currently placed on multi-unit housing. A zoning law the governor proposed at his recent State of the State address would legalize accessory dwelling units [ADUs].
Those include so-called granny flats, above-garage apartments and backyard cottages. The overall aim of the BUILD plan, said Pritzker, is to remove some of the red tape that keeps developers from being willing to create new housing aside from high-end developments.
“It is really across the state that we're seeing a struggle to buy a home, to pay rent, and there just isn't enough housing being built anywhere in the state,” said Pritzker. “And we've got outdated laws that are making it too difficult, too expensive for there to be more building.”
Another possible change with creating ADUs would be that residents can stay in their neighborhood for longer, even as their life progresses, rather than being "priced out."
“We don't want to see neighborhoods where, let's say, you are at a different point in life now you want to downsize, you are forced to leave, right? We want to see neighborhoods that you could stay for effectively your entire life, and build deep ties, build that social capital,” said Noah Tang, founder and president of Strong Towns BloNo.
“So the build plan here, with the ADUs, with all this missing middle, you will allow neighborhoods to have different price points in there, to have people from different points in their life to stay and build and love communities that they enjoy.”
Investment from local businesses
Pritzker said he doesn't think incentives for new businesses to come to Illinois need to be made based on the condition of investment in local housing availability. He said while it typically takes about 36 to 54 months to see the return on investment from an incentive, those businesses are in the community much longer than that.
“A company like Rivian is here for many years, and companies that are planting a billion dollars into the ground and hiring hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people, that you know that a two- or three- or four-year payback time, when after that, you know, the benefit to the state is really quite large,” said Pritzker. “So it's hard to say, you know, ‘Let's put a burden on you that you've got to build housing.’”
Instead, he said there needs to be housing being built in the state that would make it more attractive for a new business to move in.
Data centers
Pritzker also sounded off on pushback to proposed data centers in downstate Illinois.
The governor proposed a pause on tax credits and incentives for data centers that he signed onto in his first year as governor. This two-year moratorium would keep data centers from having access to the same incentives that manufacturers can use in Illinois.
“We want to make sure that whatever we're doing with regard to data centers, they are paying their truly, their fair share,” said Pritzker. “Because I think one of the concerns we all have about data centers is, yeah, they're paying like what a manufacturer is paying for electricity, but the impact on the grid of a data center is much greater than a typical manufacturer.”
Pritzker said the focus on energy in the state is shifting further toward nuclear power. The Clean and Reliability Grid Affordability Act that goes into effect in June, lifts a moratorium that has prevented any new, large nuclear reactors from being built in Illinois since 1987.
“We're the best state in the country, if you're a nuclear developer, to build because we don't have the NIMBY [not in my backyard] problem in Illinois.”
