BLOOMINGTON — An affordable housing program that would incentivize development in Bloomington’s core communities while slowing urban sprawl could be on the horizon.

The initiative, brought forth by Ward 1 Alderman Jamie Mathy, seeks to preserve and uplift certain neighborhoods that have seen disproportionate investment and which have fallen into disrepair.

“We all know that there is a housing shortage in the community, there’s a shortage of houses for purchase, and there’s a shortage of units for rental at the same time,” Mathy said Monday night during a city council meeting. "I wanted to think about this idea of how do we — instead of continuing to go ear or far southwest — how do we work on infill into areas of the city that are already built out."

He added, "One of the problems that we’ve been talking about for years is the continued expansion to the far East side continues to cost the city more and more money to deliver basic services we’re responsible for out to that side.”

Mathy based his idea on the city’s 2015 Bring it On Bloomington project, a comprehensive plan compiled by the McLean County Regional Planning Commission. Within that document, Mathy said there were several neighborhoods within the city identified as "regeneration" or "preservation" areas.

Regeneration referred to parts of the city that had fallen into disrepair and which would need significant work to revitalize, and preservation areas are those that were at-risk of becoming regeneration neighborhoods.

Facing increasing needs for affordable housing, Mathy asked the council Monday to charge city staff with drafting a potential program that would incentivize people to invest in homes located within regeneration or preservation neighborhoods.

"There’s a laundry list of things that we could do where we can offset some of the costs so people can buy some of these older homes that have fallen into disrepair, go into them with a partnership with the city and bank and fix these places up and make them safe and affordable housing again," Mathy said.

The city council in a 6-3 vote, the city council agreed to charge the city’s planning commission to prepare an analysis on Mathy’s initiative. A presentation would be given to the council on a later date discussing what such a program could look like for future discussion. 

Aldermen Sheila Montney, Ward 3, Donna Boelen, Ward 2, and Nick Becker, Ward 5, voted against the initiative.

Boelen and Becker said they would like to see more groundwork laid as well as more conversations with groups such as the West Bloomington Revitalization Project before asking city staff to work on the initiative.

Montney said she was not against the initiative, but believed the city should focus on its core services, especially after hearing from two public commenters who expressed frustrations with the city’s bulk waste programs.

“It’s been nine months since I joined the council and besides the flood, all of our conversations really have been dominated by new project work initiation and capital projects," said Montney. "What I haven’t seen is anyone really excited about improving basic services, simply closing our operational performance gaps and executing better.

“I believe we should resist initiating any more strategic work and allow staff to focus to close the gaps on our basic services.”

Contact Sierra Henry at 309-820-3234. Follow her on Twitter: @pg_sierrahenry.