By: Diane Benjamin
The City of Bloomington is pushing multi-family housing. New single-family homes are too expensive to build, while multi-family projects qualify for tax credits. The city plans to create a program to reduce or eliminate construction fees, hoping to recoup these costs through future property taxes.
What’s the real reason governments emphasize a housing shortage? This clip from the slide presentation says everything: (see 32:36 on the video)
Money, Money, Money. The government wants commuter tax dollars and is willing to incentivize developers to build housing. The numbers come from the EDC’s Patrick Hoban.
Do you want to raise a family in high-rise apartments? Would you move to Bloomington to work if it meant living in a place like Lincoln Lofts?
At the 35:20 mark, Jenna Kearns acknowledges that some Lincoln Lofts residents are unhappy. She wasn’t specific, but she needs to provide details before voting on incentives for more housing projects.
Meanwhile, since Bloomington now collects internet sales tax, officials aren’t worried about dollars leaving the local economy through Amazon.
Quality of life evidently doesn’t matter anymore if it means losing tax dollars from commuters. The American dream was never to live packed into complexes.
Just hit PLAY to hear the housing presentation. Whoever was running the camera couldn’t figure out how to shift it to Billy Tyus who presented.
If there is a housing shortage it’s single family homes and not apartments. This is a rural area. People here want to live in single family homes (with large lots or acreage) and not packed in apartments. Does the council really think commuters will move to Bloomington Normal to live in multi family homes when they now live in a single family home. They are so out of touch.
Many subdivisions have been approved but few are being built. Why aren’t they building smaller houses instead of ones that sell for over $300,000? Not worth their time?
Do they count normal residents as commuters? Have they surveyed these commuters to find out why they are commuting? I own a Bloomington business that serves Peoria, Champaign, Springfield and other areas within about 2 hours. My employees are union that live anywhere in this area. I wonder if they counted my employees in their count. I assume many of the commuters like where they live. They likely have well established connections to the area with possibly spouses working in the other area as well. Perhaps they should pay a moving bonus to free up existing properties for these newcomers. 😉