Allow construction of dense housing in the city to make homes affordable

 Dear Mayor Misty Buscher,

My name is ________. I am an undergraduate student attending the University of Illinois Springfield, where I am a senior studying social work. Living on campus, I have learned much about life in Springfield, and there is one problem that is common in this city that I would like to address: homelessness. I am writing to you advocating against a major policy in Springfield that is perpetuating this problem in this city. This policy is code § 151.10 in Springfield's Code of Ordinances Title XV.

According to the Springfield & Sangamon County’s 2022-2028 Strategic Plan to Address Homelessness report, about 260 people experienced homelessness in Springfield at any point during 2022. I have been fortunate enough to have a roof over my head my entire life so far, but I have talked to a few people that have experienced homelessness and have read many gut wrenching stories of those experiencing homelessness in my social work classes and local newspapers.

Many of these individuals are suffering from serious illnesses. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 20.8% of Illinois homeless people reported that they were enduring a serious mental illness and 10.9% of them had chronic substance abuse conditions in 2023. HUD also found that homeless are three to six times more likely to have conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS. These illnesses often are the central reasons why these individuals are homeless, as there were not proper community services available for them to build themselves up into contributing members of society. They

also might not have had funds for their treatments and for the other financial responsibilities they face, such as rent, bills, food and paying for their childrens’ needs and wants. The combination of these financial and other responsibilities, plus their ailments, plus the lack of services needed to keep up with their responsibilities and ailments can greatly increase a person’s chances in becoming homeless.

Springfield has had many successful efforts to reduce homelessness to Springfield. One of these efforts include Springfield & Sangamon County’s 2022-2028 Strategic Plan to Address Homelessness. In this plan, Heartland HOUSED, Heartland Continuum of Care, Capital Township, the city of Springfield, Sangamon County, and many other agencies have come together to create new affordable housing that include systems of support and resources for people experiencing homelessness in Springfield. Another example would be your and Ward 5 Alderman Lakeisha Purchase’s withdrawal of ordinance 2024-376, which would have allowed Springfield police to fine people for public camping along with taking people’s possessions after not moving after a 24-hour notice.

The HUD provided Heartland Continuum of Care funds to create 142 new affordable housing units for these people. I strongly suggest combining the Heartland HOUSED project and BUILD Springfield’s efforts to improve and maintain a sustainable city that can build up the people it swears to protect. One of BUILD Springfield’s goals is “community building” and working with major community organizations to make huge strides to prevent and reduce homelessness would align with this goal.

However, ordinance § 151.10 from Springfield's Code of Ordinances Title XV limits the necessary construction to create affordable housing for these individuals, along with construction to expand Springfield’s population. Under this ordinance, “the aggregate residential densities within a planned unit development shall not exceed 35 persons per acre of the net development area.” In essence, this rule prevents high rise buildings from being constructed in Springfield, IL. By amending or getting rid of this rule, the construction of high rise buildings for apartments can occur, meaning more affordable housing construction could be done for those in need of it. In addition, high rise apartments in Springfield can attract more people to live in Springfield, which would be good for the city’s economy.

Overall, I appreciate your efforts in listening to my and the rest of your constituents' information and suggestions regarding the topic of homelessness in Springfield.

References

Bandoch, J., & Tabor, Joe (2024). Regulatory reform can make housing more affordable for Illinois families. Illinois Policy.

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/regulatory-reform-can-make-housing-more-afforda ble-for-illinois-families/.

National Alliance to End Homelessness. (2023). Health and homelessness. Retrieved September 20, 2024, from

https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-causes-homelessness/health/.

Springfield, Illinois, Municipal Code § 151.10.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2023). HUD 2023 continuum of care homeless assistance programs homeless populations and subpopulations in Illinois. https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_PopSub_State_IL_2023.pdf.

            It’s a good letter, and you get right to the point, mention a specific problem, and give specific suggestions to the mayor, who does have some ability to get the ordinance repealed.  I might have followed your excellent opening paragraph with something close to your penultimate paragraph, explaining that the ordinance limits the density of housing construction. So, in essence, the main thrust of the letter would become a please for a change in ordinances that would allow construction of apartment building complexes that would make population density higher than it is now in some areas of town.  

            After you've made high density construction of apartment buildings the main focus, you could open the justification by describing the lack of affordable housing and the need for affordable housing, and then throw in some facts about the cost-per-unit of housing construction being much lower if people build denser housing development such as apartment buildings.  Your point would be that dense housing allows for more affordable housing, and increasing the supply of affordable housing is a preventative measure to avoid increasing the numbers of persons who are housing insecure or actually unhoused.

            I think you might also want to point out that we know that packing low-income persons or persons with mental health problems together into single neighborhoods is not good, and such persons ought to be dispersed around the community. To that end, you might point out that having new construction of dense housing development with 50-100 units in a few places around the city would allow a smaller percentage of residents in such buildings to be people transitioning out of a state of homelessness or needing permanent supportive housing.  That is, if we had six or seven such developments, providing 400 to 500 more housing units, we would only need to make 40 to 50 of them “supportive housing” units, a similar number of them rapid rehousing units, and that would leave 80% of the units available as a mix of market-rate (larger and more luxurious) and affordable (smaller and more basic but eligible for housing choice vouchers or social housing) so that the complexes would not become places of concentrated poverty.   I think you need to make this point because people may be aware of the disastrous social consequences of concentrating persons with low skills and low income into dense housing systems. 

            I think you might also mention research on the profitability and economic advantages to the public of dense housing, and also share some points about the fact that a certain percentage of the population is attracted to living in more densely populated areas (not everyone wants a single detached house). You would find information about this from various urban planning and architecture think-tanks, Youtube channels, and websites (check out Strong Towns). 

              Your letter goes into some detail about how serious health problems are a contributing factor to people becoming unhoused. To me, this suggests that you are making a point about the inevitable problem that some people will fall into addiction or become afflicted with a chronic disease, and society needs to prepare for this by creating a certain percentage of housing stock that is not available as a commodity to be purchased in a free market, but rather, provided as a human right so that all citizens can be secure in their shelter and basic standard of living. Estimates of what percentage of all housing should be provided as social housing or public housing vary from 5% to 35%, but some amount of housing units in Springfield ought to be available for persons who can't pay market rents, either temporarily or indefinitely, and changing an ordinance to allow construction of dense housing will make it easier to create such units.

You might also mention racial housing segregation, and perhaps point out the differences in incomes, poverty rates, and wealth accumulation by ethnicity/race in the United States (or even Springfield, if you can get that census information). Then you could site research that suggests a main contributing factor to persisting racial segregation in the Midwest is the continued existence of zoning ordinances that restrict multi-family housing in certain areas. Such policies preserve the asset values of persons who are already wealthier (European-Americans and Asian-Americans) and decrease the ability of persons who are poorer (Blacks and Hispanics) to gain access to better schools, better jobs, and home ownership. 

You might also mention environmental advantages of providing denser housing options.  

You might suggest a master plan for the future of Springfield to make it a more walkable and sustainable city, where 20% of all housing stock is concentrated in dense core areas, 30% is in denser areas of mixed detached housing and multi-family housing construction, 30 % is in medium-density neighborhoods of single, detached housing with scattered multi-family structures, and 20% is in low-density neighborhoods with larger yards and mostly single, detached housing with only a very few multi-family structures. Currently almost nothing in Springfield is concentrated dense core area housing, so stop issuing permits for more urban sprawl and build up the denser housing to create a more sustainable mix of housing and neighborhood types. 

            

            

Criminalize Homelessness

City by city, more ordinances are being voted into place regarding the control of homeless populations. Laws outlawing camping in a city allows law enforcement to encourage unhoused persons to go into emergency shelters and get help, or else stay overnight in a jail, or else pay a fine if they insist on sleeping outdoors within the city's limits. Such ordinances recently got pushed as if there was an emergency into votes within two-day period in a succession of Illinois towns, including Springfield. Here in Springfield, the community of unhoused persons could have been made into criminals within 48 hours if there was no restraint.

This ordinance gives police and city legal authorities the power to enforce removal orders and impose jail, fees, or penalties if people were not gone within the 24-hours of the removal order. This is not an effective way to solve or prevent homelessness. There are many organizations that provide support needed such as Heartland Housed, Helping Hands, Contact Ministries, Inner City Mission, and many different sheltering and food services. To meet homeless people with more negativity and fees, this would further the cycle of poverty and life on the street. With support, people can spend time with resources, eventually being able to work again and find themselves in housing.

Not only does this ordinance reverse progress made on the increasingly significant issue of homelessness, it also makes public services and places seem unavailable or inaccessible. This is because it allows police officers to remove homeless people from an area and jail/fine them if they have not gone. There is no restriction on how far the area can be of removal. This ordinance can remove a human’s right to public property and services. It can also influence homeless people to stay away from certain areas, and therefore prevent them from accessing essential resources such as housing, food, and job opportunities.

With all the control over this population within the community, there can become a general distrust of public service workers. This could include the people out there trying to help them. Many factors could now influence the homeless from avoiding the help to get out of this cycle. Without plan for alternative accommodation and placement, this ordinance would undo the progression done for homeless community. Criminalization does not solve the issue just as seen with the war on drug.

Overall, passing an ordinance to criminalize homelessness would have far more negative effects than positive on the surrounding community. Homelessness should be met with support and a proactive approach.

You strongly oppose ordinances criminalizing camping in the city or sleeping outdoors, and you offer many reasons for your negative feelings about such ordinances. A key difference of opinion between those who humanely support such ordinances and those who oppose them seems rooted in the question of whether such ordinances will increase the use of services to help people move from a state of being unhoused to a state of having permanent housing.  Humane supporters of such ordinances claim that the laws will enable law enforcement to coerce unhoused people into services.  Supporters of  the ordinance hold a premise (or perhaps it is a belief based on some evidence?) is that several persons who sleep on streets in vacant lots, in doorways, and in tents within a city do so because they shun the alternatives (of going into emergency housing, and getting help there to transition toward moving into permanent housing). Are there actually beds and spots in emergency shelters where people could stay if they aren't allowed to sleep outdoors?  Are people who refuse to use the services offered by shelters doing so because they do not want the services that would help them get into permanent housing?  Do emergency shelters offer services that are likely to be successful in moving unhoused persons into permanent housing?  

Persons opposing the laws make the same observations that you make.  They seem to hold a premise (or an observation based on evidence) that coercively forcing people into services is unlikely to work, and may provoke more negative emotions and avoidance-of-help behaviors than already exist.  Persons also may doubt the humane intentions of persons advocating for the ordinances.  There may be a strong suspicion (that I also happen to hold) that rather than being motivated by hoping to get people into services, many who support such ordinances are actually motivated by a desire to "get rid" of unhoused persons, by chasing them out of the city or else locking them up.  

The counts of persons who are unhoused have been increasing.  After years of January census efforts to count single night occupancy of emergency shelters and persons sleeping outdoors or in sheltered indoor spots not intended for sleeping, the numbers most recently have started to increase significantly. The numbers had been fairly stable since the end of the Great Recession, but the inflation of housing and rental costs associated with the post-Covid inflationary housing shortage seems to be forcing more people into shelters or the streets. Efforts to help the homeless by expanding emergency shelter spots or accommodating camping may be misguided if they are not combined with a significant effort to create permanent housing destinations and help unhoused persons get into the permanent housing solutions. 

If permanent housing solutions are available for unhoused people, surely almost all of them will take advantage of the opportunity to get into a home of their own instead of living in tents or on sidewalks. I wish there were a law that cities and counties had to provide housing of a certain standard to unhoused persons, and criminal penalties would be imposed on elected officials who failed to do this, rather than criminal penalties being imposed on persons who can find nowhere to call a home where they can be safe from the elements. While the free market can dominate the housing market, some degree of housing ought to be provided outside capitalist pressures and profit-making motives.  

Ideally, I believe something like 10% to 30% of all housing ought to be provided on a non-profit or public basis.  I think this would be good in a few ways.  It would, first of all, make it possible to meet the standards of human rights, as all people have a right to a certain standard of living that includes housing.  Secondly, once a certain percentage of housing stock is organized in a non-profit or public way, the private market must keep rent and housing prices lower, as the widely available non-profit and public housing options will create a competitive pressure on those who rent or sell housing, forcing them to keep their prices lower (and their profits more reasonable).  Further, if cities and neighborhoods and non-profit housing corporations take up a significant portion of all housing development and provision, they can use this power to push cities toward designs and zoning principles that help break up racial segregation, help make cities more walkable or bike friendly, and promote energy efficient and financially sustainable housing.  

I recommend Hanna Rosin's June 6, 2024 article in The Atlantic “A Supreme Court Ruling on Homelessness That's both Crucial and Useless”.  [could be blocked by a paywall, as you can get three articles a month without a subscription]

Also, the article by Thomas Birmingham from August 27, 2024 in The Appeal. “Cities Rush to Criminalize Homelessness after Supreme Court Ruling”

Also, the article by Deianira Nevárez Martínez from The Conversation (October 2, 2024) “Cities are clearing encampments, but this won't solve homelessness - here's a better way forward”.

See Lisel Petis’s article “Breaking the Cycle: Effectively Addressing Homelessness and Safety” from R Street (October 24, 2024). 

You might also like the article from Nonprofit Law Prof Blog by Darrell K. Jones (Florida A&M University College of Law) “A Bi-Coastal Crisis of Credibility Amongst Homelessness Nonprofits” (October 22, 2024).