Carbondale Bytelife

Carbondale offers a variety of housing grants in an effort to encourage lower income and family purchases of homes within the city limits. In a effort to target the grants better, housing inspectors, as noted in the email below, will survey households throughout the city during August.

Housing Surveys to be Conducted in Carbondale for Housing Rehabilitation Program

The City of Carbondale will be conducting a City wide housing survey to determine the target area for future housing rehabilitation grant applications. Information gathered from the housing surveys will provide the City with an accurate picture of the neighborhoods where focus of housing rehabilitation assistance is needed to improve the overall housing stock of the community. The target areas will be based on the greatest concentration of lower-income, owner-occupied households in need of rehabilitation.

City Neighborhood Inspectors will be conducting the door-to-door surveys from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday in the month of August. The housing survey consists of statistical and housing related questions that are required to qualify an area for assistance and should only take about five minutes to complete. The statistical data will include questions such as the number of people living in the home, ethnicity, gross household income, if there are any household members who are physically disabled, if there are any household members who are age 62 or older and the gender of the head of household. The survey will also gather data about the home such as if the home is owner occupied or rental, how many rooms are in the home, the general state of the home and if major improvements are needed.

All information will be used for statistical analysis to determine the housing rehabilitation target area for upcoming grants and will be kept strictly confidential in accordance with the Privacy Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-579). Residents are urged to participate as this will be vital in the City’s efforts to continue securing funding to improve and enhance our residential neighborhoods.

For more information, contact:
Khristina Vaughn, Housing Programs Administrator
(618) 549-5302 ext. 346

Labels: Carbondale, housing

Our local Representative just sent out the following email regarding proposed housing legislation:

Labels: housing, Jerry Costello

According to this story in the Southern, the moratorium passed by the city council last May puts a hold on the 1000 or so rental units that are on the planning board for Carbondale. Abut 850 units were constructed last year and another 400+ units beat the moratorium's cut off date.

Seeing all this development makes it hard to argue that C'dale has a poor economic future since given the current state of the housing market, it's not likely these developers are willing to risk the kind of money they are investing in their properties if they didn't see a significant upside to C'dale's economy. According to their banner, even Lewis Park is investing a million bucks in upgrading their units. Of course, the owners probably wouldn't have done that without all the competition coming from new development.

Labels: business, Carbondale, housing

In a 5-2 vote last night, with Mayor Cole and Councilman Haynes voting against, the council passed the originally proposed $35 rental inspection fee. Mayor Cole was in favor of a smaller fee, with a $200 re-inspection fee and it's not clear what Councilman Haynes was in favor of. Only one landlord spoke in opposition to the fee. I especially liked Mr. VanAwken's comment below:

"I though they ought to put a hold on it (the proposal) until they got more citizens participating in the process," he said. More citizen involvement, VanAwken, added, "articulates a vision landlords can buy into."

Seems to me, giving the length of time between proposal and vote, this measure has gotten more citizen particpation than the sales tax increase did.

Labels: City council, housing

In case you're free tonight, the City Council meets at 7 p.m. Here's the agenda. Looks like the last item under general business is the rental inspection fee proposal. There are 4 options proposed for the fee proposal: do nothing; implement a flat $35 per unit fee (the original proposal, for those keeping track); implement a $25 per unit fee with an additional $5 per bedroom and waive the fee for the year or two years following a successful inspection and a re-inspection fee if a unit needs inspection more than once; charge $10 per unit per year with a $100 re-inspection fee if a unit is not in compliance. The recommended option for ease of record keeping and a stable revenue stream to cover the costs of the program is still, ta-dah, option 2.

The Chamber of Commerce had a meeting last Thursday to hash out some alternatives to option 2 so I'd guess that options 3 and 4 result from that meeting.

Labels: City council, housing

The empty spot next to Pagliai's Pizza, home in the past to New Beginnings Church, Cafe Euro, and La Roma's Pizza is now occupied by the leasing office for The Reserve at Saluki Point, a good sized student housing complex going in on the south side of town. Apparently, the lease is only temporary, until The Reserve opens its official leasing office at the apartment complex. In the mean time, maybe the company could apply for a housing grant from Carbondale Main Street to improve the signs on the windows. The Reserve's website only lists one staff member, the community manager, of or those of you looking for jobs, it looks like there'll be a lot of community assistant positions to fill.

Labels: downtown Carbondale, housing

The DE has a more extensive report on Tuesday's council meeting, as far as the inspection fee and conversion grants go. As far as the inspection fee goes, I'm neither a renter, nor a landlord so it doesn't affect me directly. However, having rental properties up to a certain standard does affect the overall quality of life in the 'dale and past experience has show that relying on voluntary standards or good intentions doesn't work.
I know of a restaurant in town that's had the building inspector out three times so far this year because of leakage from its dumpster. Each time, employees have gone out, washed out the dumpster and washed down the pavement. Would they do that without the inspector's warning? Doubtful, since it keeps happening even with the warning. Are they intentionally thumbing their nose at the law? Doubtful as well. They're running a business keeping customers coming through the door is a much higher priority than keeping grease in the dumpster. When they're reminded, they take care of it promptly. That's the purpose of the building inspectors, not to catch people and fine them for the city coffers but to remind landlords there's a certain standard our society has decided they should offer their tenants. Unfortunately, instead of viewing it as an additional level of security for their tenants, the comments I have read from landlords have viewed the fee solely as money coming out of their pockets.

Labels: City council, housing

According to this report from the New York Times, this year will see the largest drop in the median price of a home in the US since the federal government started keeping records 50+ years ago. The drop's going to be slight, about 1-2% but it will probably keep going down until 2009. Even here in the Midwest, where prices didn't hit the levels they did on the coasts, you can expect to see the value of your house decline. There is good news from the article:

Unless the real estate downturn is much worse than economists are expecting, the declines will not come close to erasing the increases of the last decade. And for many families who do not plan to move, the year-to-year value of their house matters little. The drop is, of course, good news for home buyers.

Labels: housing, southern Illinois