An affordable housing project for the Church Street/Darrow Avenue neighborhood is on hold – at least until the next City Council meeting.

One council member said she wanted assurances that Housing Opportunity Development Corporation will adhere to greater supervision at the Claridge building, 319 Dempster St., on the other side of the city.

HODC, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing throughout the area, owns and operates the Claridge, which provides 48 units below market rate for low-income people in Evanston.

As council members were preparing to vote at the June 26 meeting on the final pieces of a mixed-use project with 33 affordable housing units at 1811-1815 Church St., First Ward Council Member Clare Kelly requested the hold.

“Let’s get this right,” she said to council members, urging the hold. “I mean, this has been such a problem for the Third Ward and the First Ward. This is our opportunity.”

HODC has teamed up with Mt. Pisgah Church on the project, which would have HODC build on the site now occupied by the church, while the church would rebuild with its own finances on the site immediately to the east.

The city is committing $4 million to HODC for this nearly $22 million project, for gap financing; the funding includes up to $1.5 in Evanston’s dwindling cache of federal American Recovery Plan Action (ARPA) money.

Kelly’s call for the hold came as council members were about to consider the final ordinances needed to round off the project – a plat of subdivision and approval of funding.

She said this would allow more time for HODC to respond to a proposal calling for greater security at HODC’s 319 Dempster building.

In February, Kelly and Council member Melissa Wynne, whose Third Ward is just across the street from the building, sent a joint email to Mayor Daniel Biss after the body of a 62-year-old man was found in an advanced state of decomposition in the building. The letter maintained that the incident reflected “an ongoing pattern of neglect and disregard for safety and well-being of the low-income and formerly homeless residents who are tenants at this HODC establishment.”

Kelly: ‘Moving in the right direction’

Kelly told council members she and Wynne held a meeting June 13 that included many neighbors of the property as well as Richard Koenig, HODC’s longtime executive director; William Sholten III, HODC’s board president; representatives from Connections for the Homeless; City Manager Luke Stowe and other city staff members.

“We did have a good exchange – the neighbors – we all talked about what we needed to happen explicitly and specifically to really be able to assure meaningful improvements,” she reported.

“So we are moving in the right direction – but the proposals were still a little bit vague,” she told council members.

Kelly said that “to break the patterns of drug dealing in and around the building, we really need to see around-the-clock supervision security for a couple of months and after that, limited supervision eight to 12 hours a day that can be revisited on an annual basis or maybe in six months.”

The immediate but temporary round-the-clock on-site supervision/security would break the pattern of perpetual drug dealing, she said. “Anything short of this provides no assurance that these activities will be interrupted and impacted,” she wrote.

The proposal calls for round-the-clock on-site supervision to be reduced to 12 hours a day after three months, she said. Supervision would then be provided indefinitely until there is mutual agreement with the ward representatives and the neighbors to further reduce or eliminate such on-site supervision, she said. 

For now, she sought a hold on council approval of the Church-Darrow Street project until the next council meeting, July 10.

Kelly said a few other items in the Church-Darrow project still concern her, but the Claridge supervision is the most important.

“I know that HODC has other properties that it has been successful [in] managing,” she said. “This [319 Dempster St. building] is not one of them. But we need to look at what needs to be done in this building in order to finally see some permanent improvements.”

She said the group had about six other requests, including that HODC meet regularly with the neighbors, “but the most important is supervision in that building.”

Burns: ‘Fundamental differences’

Responding, council member Bobby Burns, who has pushed for the Church-Darrow affordable housing project to move forward in his Fifth Ward, questioned how realistic Kelly’s proposal is. 

Drawing from an email from HODC’s Koenig sent after the meeting with Wynne and Kelly, he said, “Really there were no big material issues that Council Member Kelly had with what Richard [Koenig] said he wanted to do, other than issues that will not go resolved even if we wait another week or two – which is, there are fundamental differences between Richard and Council Member Kelly about how long security needs to be there.

“Right now, I believe it [the supervision] started at eight hours. It is now going to 12 hours,” he said. “I think it’s worth reminding this body that the city is actually chipping in half on this.”

Further, Burns said, “I continue to hear that one person that is responsible for at least 80% of the issues that happened at this building, and that he is to be evicted on – I want to say on July 10 – and there is a commitment from the city to reach out to the [Cook County] Sheriff’s Office on that day to make sure that the sheriff is sent out and this person is evicted.”

Even knowing that, he said, what Council Member Kelly wants is to not only extend the 24-hour security another three months [but] extend it beyond that.

“So for a nonprofit that provides housing considerably under market rate, and doesn’t have a ton of money, to add another $300,000 or so to their budget to provide security – it just doesn’t make sense,” he said.

“What Richard has told me,” he said, “and I don’t know if he said this is in writing, that they would be more than happy to bring on security as needed, as they’re doing now –and I’ll even admit that should have been done sooner and the city is supporting them on this.

“To me that sounds reasonable,” he said.

As for the proposal Kelly put forward, he said, “even if you spend another two weeks, they’re not going to commit to it, nor do they necessarily feel it’s necessary, so that’s why I don’t think this is going to amount to much.”

Kelly responded that “this is about getting this right. And currently there is a trend, the neighbors will attest to it, to the drug-dealing issues – it’s been sort of a hub, this building, and we need to break the trend.”

HODC: COVID a factor

In a letter following the meeting, Koenig assured those who attended that HODC “is dedicated to improving the lives of our residents and being a good neighbor for all.”

“As HODC has grown during the past year we have been reviewing our property management practices and have realized that over the past three years during COVID, the inability to be physically present has taken a toll,” he wrote.

“While not an excuse, social distancing policies prevented everyone from being face-to-face which has had ongoing impacts. Even as our janitorial staff, as essential workers, were still cleaning and disinfecting our buildings, the lack of social interactions left people lonely and out of touch. Our property managers still signed leases and conducted inspections but longer, casual conversations were victim to quick, masked exchanges. The climate of fear due to an unknown virus has left people feeling less connected and functioning on their own. While there have certainly been periodic issues at 319 Dempster over the past twenty-two years, the last three years have been especially difficult.”

“Effective immediately we are rededicating ourselves to improving our property management practices at 319 Dempster and elsewhere,” he wrote, “and expanding the interpersonal connections that are so important to any service-based business.”

“For example,” he wrote, “we instituted a formal welcome system when tenants move-in that includes scheduling follow-up appointments after one-week, one-month and six months, in addition to the required annual re-certifications.

“We are increasing on-site programming such as activities, classes, wellness trainings and social gatherings to increase the sense of community. We do not believe that it is possible to lock down the building or prohibit tenants from acting freely, but temporary additional security may be needed when severe issues arise. We are also exploring additional options for having on-site staffing when feasible and permitted,” he said.

Action steps in place

In addition, he said HODC was “asked to commit in writing to a number of action steps and we agree to do the following:

— “Immediately increase the security presence on-site at 319 Dempster from 8 hours per day to 12 hours per day for the near term.

— ”Organize at least two tenant meetings per year starting this summer.

— “Conduct two neighbor meetings per year.

— “Continue to enhance our relationships with the Evanston Police and Fire departments and develop a process to monitor police and fire department activity at 319 Dempster with the goal of reducing calls.

— “Review the vetting process for selecting tenants.

— Enhance [HODC’s] current monthly meetings with Connections to develop a quick-response process when mutual client/tenant needs are identified.”

In a follow-up interview June 29, Koenig said HODC has agreed to partner with the city and to find solutions, “and we are going to follow through on that.”

“Having a safe building “is incredibly important,” he said, “and when we have a problem tenant like this we can’t publicly tell everybody every step of the process, so people think we’re not acting, but we’re taking every step we’re legally able to do.”

Kelly said Council Member Wynne may be open to negotiating whether the 24-hour security would be required for two months or three. Even so, “we need round-the-clock [security] initially to change this, to break this trend,” she said.

Under parliamentary rules, Kelly’s proposed hold was not subject to council vote.

Council Member Devon Reid (8th Ward) proposed members reject Kelly’s proposal, maintaining it was inappropriate for the council to conflate two issues, pitting the affordable housing against the situation on Dempster Street.

“Now if HODC was a property owner or property manager that had a terrible track record throughout our city and had a real history of negligence,” he said, “no way in heck should we give them $4 million to build anything else.

“But short of that, and absent that, I think it’s inappropriate to hold hostage this funding in this project for something that is completely unrelated.”

His motion to overturn the hold failed 5-2.

As a result, the two remaining ordinances HODC needs will be back on the council’s agenda at the July 10 meeting.