This is the first of a three-part series examining housing affordability and access in Will County.

Antoinette Walker, 54, of Lockport said her rent is going up Jan. 1 – again.

Walker said her monthly rent was $1,050 when she first moved into her apartment in 2018. The rent is now $1,350, and it soon will be $1,450 “because of property taxes,” Walker said.

Property owners are responsible for property taxes, but as taxes go up, owners often will use that as a reason to raise rents to offset their higher costs.

The rent increase will be challenging to pay, said Walker, who returned to work in November after double knee surgery from a work injury. She is now working two jobs – one in home health and the other in security – “and I’m still struggling,” she said.

Walker’s daughter and two grandchildren also live with her. She can’t find a less expensive option “and still be safe,” Walker said. Safety is a huge issue for her since her teen son died by gun violence in 2011.

“My mother and my oldest children helped with the bills, and I still fell behind,” Walker said. “If it wasn’t for them and God, I’d have been homeless.”

Will County has a housing crisis

Affordable housing is an issue across the country, and Will County is no exception.

From Jan. 1 through Aug. 31, 2,845 people in Will County contacted the 211 Helpline seeking rent assistance or shelters, according to United Way of Will County. That’s almost one-third of the 9,049 people who called the nonprofit helpline.

But housing in Will County is not just unaffordable, it’s unavailable, said Doug Pryor, president and CEO of the Will County Center for Economic Development.

The vacancy rate for multifamily housing is 4.6% – or one vacant apartment every 25 months – and the current occupancy rate is 95.4%, Pryor said.

In the 1960s, the average home cost about four times the median household income; today, it’s seven times, he said.

The average monthly rent in Will County is $1,670 – and $2,170 for apartments built since 2015, Pryor said in a report earlier this year.

“Your kids can’t afford your house, and that’s a problem,” Pryor said during a presentation on Will County housing trends to the Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry in January.

And the median price for a house in Will County has increased from $255,000 in December 2020 to $345,000, with interest rates rising, too, Pryor said.

However, Will County housing prices are not “wildly dissimilar” from other places in the U.S., he said.

“It’s very much a national problem,” Pryor said.

Martha Sojka, community development administrator of the Will County Land Use Department, said “affordable housing” depends on the definition of affordable.

“Really, all of us need affordable housing, regardless of income,” Sojka said. “You could live in Frankfort. You could live in Plainfield. You could live in Braidwood. As a person living in any of these communities, you should want affordable housing.”

Lack of diverse housing

For more than 40 years, Will County has been one of the top producers of single-family homes in Illinois, Pryor said.

That’s part of the problem.

“We haven’t been No. 1 every year,” Pryor said. “But if you saw the last five years – probably the last 10 to 20 even – we’ve been the largest single-family homebuilder in Illinois."

In the 1990s through mid-2000s, Will County was building 8,000 single-family homes a year, many in Joliet and Plainfield, Pryor said in a recent interview with Shaw Local.

“We’re still leading the state, but we’re leading the state with more like 1,500 a year,” he said. “And the difference is stark.”

Now, south Naperville into Bolingbrook and Joliet into the Lincoln-Way area – New Lenox and Frankfort – continue to see good growth.

Densely urbanized areas don’t add many new homes simply for lack of space, Pryor said.

“If you have available lots, you build on them,” he said. “But it takes time to develop new little lots. All that said, we have been significantly behind our peers in terms of developing more diverse housing stock.”

Lake and DuPage counties have “many, many, many more multifamily opens than we have,” Pryor said.

“As you look at an economy, whether its industries or – in this case – the housing market, diversification is extremely important," he said.

Lockport has done a good job adding multifamily homes near Interstate 355, an area with more room for housing growth, he said.

At the Dec. 1 Plainfield Village Board meeting, trustees unanimously approved site plans for The Nook, a 288-unit apartment complex planned for 8.8 acres west of Wood Farm Road and north of Lockport Street, behind the U.S. post office in Plainfield.

And The View apartments at the Rock Run Collection in Joliet are now leasing.

Nevertheless, Will County only built 6,000 apartment units since 2000 while adding 66,000 single-family homes, Pryor said in January.

Forty years ago, Will County had more single-room-occupancy homes, studios, one-bedroom apartments and overall smaller units, “but those are few and far between [now],” Sojka said.

In the 1980s, many rental units were converted into condominiums, changing the rental structure into an ownership structure, Sojka said.

Today’s housing standard is a single-family home with three-plus bedrooms, “which just adds to the supply issue,” Sojka said.

“The ‘standard’ doesn’t meet everyone’s needs,” Sojka said.

For people like Walker and her family, finding housing that meets her needs seems out of reach – but she praised the Illinois Court-Based Rental Assistance Program for helping her pay rent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Walker said she feels more people could be helped if more people donated to programs that helped people with their housing needs.

“I think what really helps people in the community faced with these types of situations is major corporations and businesses that donate a certain amount toward these types of programs,” Walker said.

This article is part of a national initiative exploring how geography, policy, and local conditions influence access to opportunity. Find more stories ateconomicopportunitylab.com/.