DuPage to establish community land bank, trust to incentivize more affordable housing
The county is establishing a land bank. Authorized by the DuPage County Board last month, it will essentially put county-owned surplus land on reserve for future affordable housing projects.
With DuPage being a virtually built-out county, the idea is to carve out space for more local affordable units by breathing new life into underutilized properties, county staff and officials say.
'People that work in DuPage and contribute to our economic stability (being) able to afford to live and raise their families here seems like it should be a fundamental right, but it's something that we're struggling with,' DuPage County Board Chair Deb Conroy said. 'We want to fix it.'
The average median household income in DuPage County as of 2023 was $106,961, according to census data. Meanwhile, as of last month, the median sale price of a home in DuPage was $425,000, per data from Redfin, a national real estate brokerage.
As for renters, the typical cost of rent in DuPage County in May was $2,113 a month, a 5.1% year-over-year increase, according to the Zillow Observed Rent Index, which measures changes in asking rents over time.
Land banks have existed for a long time, said Paul Hoss, the county's planning and zoning administration coordinator. The concept just hasn't been implemented in DuPage before. The county is, however, uniquely primed to see the idea through.
For years, DuPage has been building an inventory of county-owned property through its standing 'Neighborhood Revitalization Program,' which seeks to repair or remove dilapidated or abandoned buildings in unincorporated areas.
Through the program, the owner of property in disrepair is given the chance to address issues on their own. If they don't, the county tackles the work and bills the property owner. If the owner abandons the property, the county puts a lien on it. Should that lien go unsatisfied, the county can seek to foreclose and could acquire the property as collateral for the unpaid lien.
Alternatively, the county is sometimes just gifted dilapidated property through the program.
Either way, DuPage has been able to accrue a 'de facto' inventory of property that can now act as a starting point for a land bank, Hoss said.
Not stopping there, the county — hand in hand with establishing a land bank — will also be seeking to partner with a nonprofit community land trust (CLT), per board action taken last month. A community land trust is a similar mechanism to a land bank but instead of property, the CLT manages funds that can be loaned out to developers or property owners for the purpose of developing a certain type of housing that a government is looking for, Hoss said.
The board has directed staff to prepare a request for qualifications to seek out a CLT.
Both the CLT and land bank are the product of a recent effort to ramp up affordable and attainable housing throughout the county.
In March 2023, Conroy established the Ad-Hoc Housing Solutions Committee to further the creation and expansion of DuPage's affordable housing stock. As part of that work, the committee engaged with Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Grounded Solutions Network to partner with the county on its housing strategies and solutions.
The effort, an 18-month venture, culminated in a comprehensive housing action plan.
'These folks helped us organize our thoughts and crystallize what we needed to do moving forward,' Hoss said.
Grounded Solutions presented its plan at a board meeting earlier this spring, including pitches for a DuPage land bank and trust.
District 1 Board Member Sam Tornatore said that since the creation of the Ad-Hoc Housing Solutions Committee, which he co-chairs, 'The progress has been significant.'
'It may not be as quickly as some people would want it, but we had to develop a foundation in order to get where we're at right now,' he said.
With the county's new affordable housing strategies, Conroy said she especially hopes to make housing accessible more to the county's 'missing middle,' or those who make too much money to qualify for subsidized housing but not enough to afford market-rate housing or to buy a home.
'It affects (anyone) from college graduates to seniors downsizing to professionals that are in teaching or firefighting or police,' Conroy said. 'You know, those professions which are so important to the fabric of our communities, (they're) struggling to be first-time homeowners … here in DuPage (where) it's difficult to find anything under half a million dollars that has more than two bedrooms and maybe a bath and a half.'
Conroy said she's 'incredibly proud of the investment that my board and staff have made into this.'
'It's been a very long process,' she said. 'It's taken a lot of time.'
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