Commission on Aging

WHEATON HOUSING COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING MINUTES February 8, 2018 I. Call to Order and Roll Call: The regular meeting of the Wheaton Housing Commission was held in the Gamon Room, Wheaton City Hall, at 303 W. Wesley Street, Wheaton, Illinois. Housing Commission Chair, Bob Barger, called the meeting to order at 7:02 pm, on Thursday, February 8, 2018. Present: Bob Barger, Chair Steve Limp David Horton Mike Rybinski Bill Gilbertson Tom Zullo Stu Johnson Joe Kreidl – City of Wheaton Jan Kay Absent: Andrea Petti Observers: none. II. Public Comment: None. III. Approval of Minutes: Correction: Tom Zullo was not present. The date of the meeting was January 11th. Commissioner Gilbertson moved, and Commissioner Limp seconded, a motion to accept the minutes of the January 11, 2018 meeting, as corrected. The motion was unanimously approved by a voice vote. IV. Correspondence Received: 2017/2018 Housing Assistance Program Summary www.affordablehousingonline.com/housing-search/Illinois/Wheaton V. Old Business: a. CHAD - CHAD has many affordable housing apartments/houses for rent in the city of Wheaton. The have HUD money so they can offer sliding scale rents based on the ability to pay. Invite CHAD to our next meeting. b. Update list of senior resources - Commissioner Barger said he would update the list of senior resources that we handed out to our seniors receiving housing/apartment assistance last year. c. Distribution of flyers to Lorraine road apartment owners - Commissioner Limp said he distributed the flyers to the apartment owners and to a number of other businesses in the area. d. SALT - Commissioner Gilbertson got a paper list of households in Wheaton by address of the owners/renters who are 65 years old or better. He will try to get the list electronically. This might give us the information we need to continue to target people who live in apartments who might qualify for assistance and don’t get our flyer in their water bills. Such a list might be valuable to several groups within the city of Wheaton  e. Water Bill notices - The information on people who qualify of housing/rental assistance was sent to every resident of Wheaton in their January water bill. f. Milton Township - Commissioner Gilbertson reported that Milton township will assist us in getting the word out later this year about our housing assistance program. Someone from the Housing Commission will need to go to their board meeting and then they will put our information into their fall newsletter. g. Housing Commission Website/video content approval - The commissioners reviewed our current Housing Commission web site. The commissioners reviewed the web content proposed by Ms. Qualkenbush and liked the brevity of it. There was discussion about having a housing commission web site and then a separate Senior’s page of if they should be all under the Housing commission web site. A final decision will be made at next month’s meeting. The commissioners then reviewed the detailed contents of the proposed web site material. Commissioner Barger noted that many of these content pages will merely be links from the housing commission web site but that we needed to know the contents of the site we were linking to. In general, the commissioners agreed that only governmental programs will be referenced directly in our web site. Private entities will be eliminated to assure that we do not seem to be endorsing them. The first change was that the annual housing income cannot exceed $25,800. The number in the handout was the income limit for the prior year. The legal source of income section will be deleted at this time. The federal Fair Housing Act addresses the legal source of income issue. In the Fair Housing and Discrimination section, replace “it is the policy of the city” with “Your rights under the Fair Housing Act” all individuals etc. The Tenants and Landlords section will be replaced with the material provided by Joe Kreidl containing property maintenance, sanitation etc that is linked to current City of Wheaton current ordinances. The Fair Housing Resources list will be eliminated. We will have a link on our web site to the DuPage County CRIS (Community Resource Information System) related to housing resources only. Several videos will be made and incorporated into the web site once the content is finalized. The videos could also be put in the Channel 10 content for broadcast. The formal vote will be made on the contents of the web site at the March meeting. VI. New Business: a. Wheaton Affordable Housing information - Commissioner Barger suggested that the commissioners review the content of the web site referenced under “Correspondence” above. He said there was an Illinois Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act. The city of Wheaton, as configured, is apparently exempt from the Illinois Act (as are many other municipalities). Many cities, such as Lake Forest have developed their own Affordable (or Inclusionary) Housing ordinance. Wheaton does NOT have any current  ordinance related to Affordable housing. We will review the Illinois Act and the Lake Forest ordinance in an attempt to use these templates to develop an Affordable Housing ordinance for the City of Wheaton. There was discussion among the commissioners about inviting the major home builders in Wheaton to the commission meeting to get their input into creating an ordinance that would be fair to all. The commissioners wanted the ordinance to focus on the need for “mixed housing” in any housing/condo/townhome development in the future. VII. Commissioner Comments & Discussions a. AIRBNB - Joe Kreidl said that AIRBNB are not allowed in the city of Wheaton VIII. Discuss Items for Future Meetings a. Habitat for Humanity - There was discussion about having someone from Habitat for Humanity come to one of our next meeting to discuss what they have done and can do in the City of Wheaton IX. Adjournment: A motion was made by Commissioner Rybinski and seconded by Commissioner Gilbertson, to adjourn the meeting at 8:40 pm. The motion was unanimously approved by a voice vote. Next regular meeting of this commission will be held on Thursday, March 8, 2018