West Walnut Razing

Two of the houses on West Walnut turned over to the city voluntarily have been razed. That makes three in the past year by my count. It is certainly a shame the landlords who own them did not want to put the money into their upkeep, instead letting them become blights and forcing their demolition, leaving space to infill along West Walnut.

On Campus Living

 Caught on the news today that there are approximately 3800 beds on campus and they are just over 80% occupied (I assume during the fall and spring semesters). The university also plans to raze the old Greek Row complex, which for the most part is boarded up, west of Campus Lake and replace it with, ta-dah, Saluki Village, which will be targeted at.....fraternities and sororities.  In effect, just replicating Greek Row under a new name with food service facilities. I rather expect to see the demolition take place but not too sure about the new facilities. The university pulled down the three story residence halls south of the Towers several years ago, with plans to replace them with new housing facilities, but nothing ever came of that.

Buyers Market for Houses in Carbondale

 According to this, Carbondale is currently a buyer's market for houses with houses typically selling for 4% below asking price, far different from hotter housing markets. Median house price is $48,000 with listing ranging from $5500 to 12 million, though I am not sure where the $12 million listing is located

Rental Propery Percentages

One of the big problems Carbondale is the high percentage of absentee landlords and rental properties. I have seen data indicating that 71% of housing in Carbondale is rental property and only about 28% is owner occupied. That means we have a whole lot of housing in the city that is lived in by people who do not own it and have no vested interest, aside from their security deposit, in maintaining it. Meanwhile, we have comparatively few owners of property in Carbondale who are responsible for maintaining a lot of the housing in the city.

Ownership in Carbondale

Was listening to WSIU this evening and caught a few interesting housing  facts:

1. Though the city has a program offering $5000 to anyone converting a rental unit to single family housing, approximately 1200 single family units converted to rental properties in the past few years.

2. Jackson County ranks among the top 15% in the country in ratio of property taxes to median income. We are high, primarily because of the amount of property  owned by SIUC,which is exempt from property taxes.

3. Roughly 75% of Carbondale property is rental, significantly higher than other college communities in the state of Illinois.

Meeting at 1st Methodist Church Saturday morning from 9:30 a.m. to noon to discuss Carbondale housing.

City Employee Residence

The Southern provided this handy graph showing where Carbondale city employees live. Just over half reside in Carbondale, while a little less than half live in Murphysboro, Carterville and DeSoto, all of which conveniently fall within the 9 mile limit for residences and all of which have cheaper housing, and more available for purchase, than does Carbondale.

In case you have forgotten, over 70% of the housing in Carbondale is rental property, meaning that many who want to own a home have to go outside the city limits in order to find one.

House Fire

Really a shame about this house.  I know the owner and he had just finished remodeling the interior quite extensively, with new bathroom fixtures and new flooring throughout, completing it over the past weekend.  Apparently the tenant was cooking lunch when grease caught fire on the stove and got out of control. 

Due to the house being a complete loss with fire damage throughout, current plans are to pull it down and sell the property as a lot for new construction.

Student Housing Oversupply

Oversupply of student housing is a problem not just in Carbondale but builders of student housing nationwide have significantly overbuilt, leaving about 51,000 rooms empty nationwide, vacancy rate of about 6.7%.  In addition, student landlords have cut rents about 5% over the past year to fill empty rooms.

Makes me glad the council decided not to issue the special use permit to allow ground floor apartments in the downtown area. By all means let them build if they want but given the over-optimist view of the student housing market most developers have, it seems short sighted to elimiate sales tax generating retail space in favor of non-tax generating residential space, especially when there is no overwhelming need for more student housing. 

Granted, analysts believe the student market will grow to absorb the oversupply of student housing over time and much of the new housing is the "modernization of product that was neglected for decades", but Carbondale has seen a lot of new units added on in the past few years and we still haven't seen enough growth in the student market to absorb them yet.

SIUC Housing Master Plan

Given the mild controversy surrounding the housing situation at SIUC, I thought a look at the housing master plan for the university would prove interesting.  If the the university follows the plan as proposed, the layout of university housing would change significantly.  According to the plan, all of the construction would be finished by Fall 2023.  Here are the main points of the plan that I see.

1.  Thompson Point remains pretty much as it stands now, with buildings renovated on an as needed basis but not replaced.

2.  Housing dedicated to graduate students, with 150 beds, built near the SIUC Law School

3.  Alumni  and retirement housing replacing the now closed Southern Hills buildings.

4. To encourage Greek organizations to move back to campus,  small group AKA Greek housing built on Stehr Field, just northwest of the Wham Educational Building.

5.  Demolition of Neely Hall and Brush Towers, replaced by a number of lower rise residential units circling a central green space.

Comments welcome.

Water Bill Update

Looks as if the city and Cornerstone have partially settled the water bill kerfluffle as Cornerstone has paid $25,000 of the $90,000 bill.  From comments in the article, it appears that Cornerstone charged tenants  $33 per month for water, anticipating an average bill per household of $30 to $40.  However, the average bill ran closer to $90 to $100 per month, reflecting  the larger number of families with young children living in the complex, as singles and students tend to use much less water.

What surprises me is that the owners of Cornerstone say they have known about the unpaid water bills since last year, have been in negotiations with the city over payment received a notice of disconnect 18 days ago, but made no attempt to raise the water rates charged to tenants to cover the cost, letting the unpaid bills build up.  Granted, Cornerstone, as it says in the article, focuses on low income housing, but it is still a for-profit entity and should have made tenants aware of the need to raise water rates long ago.

Housing Grant

Did you know if you live in the area surrounding West Chestnut and own the home you live in, you can apply for a grant from the city to help rehab your home?  Me either.  There's a decent amount of paperwork to fill out but you can get up to $40,000 to repair your home, as long as the value remains below $258,690 after all the work gets completed.

Armory Zoning

Stopped by City Hall with some questions about the recently enacted TIF districts and found an interesting quirk in the zoning for the old National Guard Armory at the corner of Oakland and Sycamore that recently sold    Most of the property is zoned single family residential, meaning only houses on a certain sized lot (8000 square feet, I think) unless the property either gets rezones or a special use exemption.

However, the parking lot for the building is zoned multi family, meaning a developer could build townhouses or apartments only on that part of the property without seeking a rezoning but  not on the rest of the grounds.  Weird little glitch in the zoning boundaries and the owner still could not develop it for business use without getting a rezoning request through the planning commission and city council.

Grant Meeting

The City of Carbondale has scheduled a public meeting to discuss the City’s proposal to submit a grant application for the HOME Single Family Owner-Occupied Rehabilitation (SFOOR) program in Carbondale.  The grant application will be submitted to the Illinois Housing Development Authority.  The SFOOR program provides financial assistance to lower-income owner-occupants who desire to have their homes rehabilitated.  The program is funded by the Illinois Housing Development Authority with HOME funds provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Persons desiring to comment or offer suggestions on the proposed grant applications are invited to attend a Public Meeting at 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 17, 2012, in Room 103 of the Carbondale Civic Center, 200 South Illinois Avenue, Carbondale.

Campus Habitat

Don't know if you've seen this letter in the DE yet but it paints a pretty negative picture about Campus Habitat, one of Carbondale's many absentee landlords.  Here are comments about the indivudual complexs on S. University, 820 West Freeman, and South Graham.

More Meetings

Hey, there're several meetings next week if you feel civic minded:

Carbondale HR Commission Non-Violent Carbondale Project (now there's a mouthful) meets March 3 at 5 p.m. in room 103 of the Civic Center.

The Housing and Neighborhood Action Group Wed. March 2 at 5 p.m. someplace in the Civic Center (my guess would be room 103).


The Liquor Advisory Board meets Monday Feb 28 at 5:30, with nothing apparently on the agenda.

Grant Let Go

Just received word that Building and Neighborhood Services Manger Tom Grant has been let go. If so, it's not good for either the rental inspection or the neighborhood inspection program as both would probably go on hiatus until another manager is hired. After all, I don't believe those unfilled retail inspection positions have been filled yet.

Update: The Southern has some more details. Cutting Grant's position saves the city about $65, 000 a year and loses some 15 years of experience that the city really could use with the boom in building on the south and west side of the city.

Carbondale Housing

Since I'm no longer writing columns (for the foreseeable future) for the Carbondale Times (no acrimony on either side, the editor was just concerned that readers might view this blog as connected to the Times), that leaves me with a couple of columns that I'd like to see the light of day, so here's part of the first on the amount of rental housing in C'dale:

An interesting by-product of the city’s ongoing review of its comprehensive plan is a report put together by Jane Adams, committee member and professor of anthropology at SIUC, on residential property ownership in Carbondale. Since a major focus of the plan revision is housing in Carbondale, she thought an overview of the quantity of rental property in town, as provided by the Jackson County Tax Assessor, would be useful. Dr. Adams put quite a bit of work into the analysis and I found a number of points interesting.

A figure I’ve heard bandied around for the past couple of years is that 70% of properties in Carbondale are renter occupied. There are about 4200 properties with unique addresses in Carbondale (OK, 4164 according to her count if you want to get specific). Of those, the owners of roughly 40% have a mailing address different than the parcel address, indicating the property is likely a rental. While not as bad as 70%, that still means that better than one out of every three properties in Carbondale is not owned by the person that lives there or runs a business out of it. Unfortunately, people who rent don’t have the vested interest in maintaining the property that an owner does. Sure, the renter puts a security deposit down and is generally responsible for wear and tear on the property, but, since most residential leases are on a year to year basis, if the renter doesn’t keep up the property (not a high priority for most college students) and the landlord doesn’t maintain it regularly, the renter moves on at the end of the contract, leaving behind a security deposit (often just a month’s rent) and a more run-down property. The older the property is, the less likely the landlord will willingly invest money to fix the damages, as the repairs serve only to maintain the property, not improve it enough to justify an increase in rent

Proposed Variance Change

The city is looking at making a modification in the way in which variances are handled for porch modifications. Right now, if you want to repair, extend or add a porch to your house and it extends past the setback from the street, you have to file an application with the city, send certified letters to your neighbors and appear before the zoning board/planning commission to request a variance.

The reason this came up now is that some porches were damaged during the last ice storms and the repairs are getting delayed because of the length of time and cost if the repairs modify the porch in such a way that it extends beyond the pre-existing setback. From what I saw, the city seems willing to make the changes but the planning commission appears hesitant.

Planning Commission Meeting

Tonight's Planning Commission meeting took about half an hour. There was a huge sign up front detailing the steps in the hearing process but it didn't do much good as Commissoner Naveet Kang had to keep explaining what happen when to those waiting to testify.

The main item on the agenda was Donna Reese's request to get a special use exemption for the long closed Family Tree Gift Shop and Garden Supply on S. Illinois she's in the process of purchasing. She plans on starting up a business, maybe used furniture, she's not sure, in the smaller of the property's buildings and turning the old gift shop back into a rental home to help defray the start up costs of the business. Commissioner Barke abstained while the other four members voted to approve and send the request onto the next city council meeting.

Other stuff covered were the report from the housing study commmittee and a text amanedment regarding porch construction. The housing study committee report had several recommendations:

--make it easier to remove non-conforming mobile homes and trailers (i.e. really old ones)
--revisit the housing grant program to encourage building on empty parcels within the city (infills)
--encourage downzoning of areas of the city from high density residental (rentals) to lower density (single family homes)

Renew Carbondale

Courtesy of D. Gorton, here is the final proposal for the Renew Carbondale project that Mayor Cole will receive next week:


Existing housing in Carbondale is threatened by a number of factors including new developments that both expand housing units as well as provide an attractive alternative to the existing rental market. It is my understanding that students have filled up new units such as Saluki Pointe and they now have a waiting list. More of these apartments are on the way.

The new developments are also an issue for the local business community: most or all of the development’s business is done with vendors and suppliers from other parts of the country. Very little banking, accounting or other services are done locally. Appliances, lumber and other materials are often bought elsewhere. Other construction firms often replace local workers. The profits of the complexes move out of the local business community.

Much of the existing housing, apartments as well as rooming houses, have felt the effects - with reported occupancy rates plummeting. This is coupled with a downturn in enrollment at the university that is lessening demand. A significant amount of the existing rental housing is substandard leading to fears of widespread vacancies.

Vacant and abandoned housing will create eyesores in the community, be attractive to crime and lower nearby property values. Unfortunately, credit markets may not support private efforts to rehabilitate the abandoned or substandard properties.

While there is a widespread view among the rental agents and landlords that the threat to them is from the new housing, our data show that substandard housing poses more of a threat to the existing market. Over 43% of the single-family houses and fourplexes in Carbondale are rentals. Of that total, over 50% are held by absentee landlords. A majority of the landlords in this category hold fewer than 3 properties. Landlords are scattered in 43 states, the result of students, faculty and others buying houses and moving around the nation.

Substandard properties also compete by neglecting maintenance resulting in unfairly low price points for rentals as well as unfair tax responsibility. While our data have not found an exact property-by-property correlation between absentee ownership and substandard housing, anecdotal evidence points to this conclusion.

In spite of the condition of the housing, local businesses state that their employees cannot find appropriate shelter, for the right cost, in safe and comfortable homes.

Renew Carbondale

I propose a not for profit organization, Renew Carbondale, to buy and rehabilitate existing, substandard housing. The goal of the organization is to assure safe, comfortable homes that will be made available at attractive rates to families and other homebuyers in Carbondale. The houses will be bound by a codicil that prevents them becoming rentals.

A board made up of appointees from the Mayor and City Council as well as several members elected from the community at large guides the organization. Its board is to set the policy for the organization and adhere to a written charter in its work.

Funds for the organization might be obtained from a number of sources: the city, bonds, as well as the Federal government and HUD. There may be opportunities for private investment as well in the form of REITs. The amount of funds that are needed should be determined by the scope of the initial effort.

A formula on the back of an envelope says that the costs of rehabilitation might be close to the costs of acquisition of the original property. For instance, a $30,000 purchase would need at least $30,000 in rehab costs. Assuming the goal of rehabbing 200 houses over 5 years, the costs might be close to $4,000,000 per year. These estimates and goals are necessarily inexact and are subject to extensive revision, of course. The moneys received from the sale of rehabbed housing would be placed back into the fund.

A goal of Renew Carbondale is to support local business. To the degree that it is legally possible, all services as well as banking, supplies and labor should be drawn from the local area. Local real estate agents and brokers should market the houses.

Removing the substandard and abandoned properties from the rental market rewards the good landlords who maintain their property, places a reasonable floor under the rental market, enhances nearby property values and improves the general appearance of the town.

This era of perilous economic conditions may bring as many opportunities as it brings pitfalls. We should be prepared to take advantage of any opportunities that come our way. An institution like Renew Carbondale has the potential for helping revitalize our town.

D. Gorton
Carbondale
1/31/ 2009