The amount of affordable housing in St. Charles fell slightly in the past year, according to data from the city and state.

Staff has been doing the analysis since 2009 to track St. Charles’ housing affordability status, city planner Ellen Johnson said. Based on the calculations outlined in the report, a total of 21.8% of St. Charles’ housing stock is considered affordable, Johnson said.

As she said in a report to aldermen, 25.3% of owner-occupied units are affordable and 14% of rental units are affordable. Overall affordability has fallen slightly from last year’s analysis, which found 23.4% of the housing stock to be affordable.

To be considered affordable, housing costs cannot exceed 30% of gross annual household income. Staff has determined that 3,085 of the city’s 14,143 housing units are affordable.

“Owner-occupied affordability remained almost constant from last year,” Johnson said. “Rental affordability decreased from 18% to 14% due to rising rents at a handful of apartment complexes and new construction of market-rate apartment units.”

According to city staff, the maximum affordable monthly payment for an owner-occupied home is $1,820, which is based on a median household income of $91,000 for a four-person household.

“The affordable home price of $230,303 is up from $225,339 in 2019,” according to the report. “This increase is due to a 2% rise in area median income.”

The state’s Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act requires communities to have a housing stock comprised of at least 10 percent affordable units, Johnson said. A community is exempt from the act if it has more than 10 percent affordable units and nonexempt if they are below 10 percent.

Nonexempt communities must submit an affordable housing plan to the Illinois Housing Development Authority and are subject to appeals from affordable housing developers who feel they have been treated unfairly by the municipality, Johnson said.

Fox Run Apartments, located at 145 Walnut Drive, lost 160 affordable one-bedroom apartments because of higher rental rates, she said.

“The loss in affordable rental units from this and other complexes was partially off-set by 75 new affordable units constructed at Anthony Place, the senior affordable development within Prairie Center,” Johnson said. “An additional 48 non-affordable units were added to the rental stock with completion of another market-rate apartment building at Prairie Center.”