During the campaign for Village Board elections in April, 2011, inaccurate information about the legal actions initiated by the Task Force and its partners has been circulating.  The Task Force and its partners have been accused of shutting down negotiations over the permanent supportive housing apartment we are hoping to build. 

Why the Task Force would want to shut down negotiations is a mystery, since our goal is to build permanent supportive housing for people with mental illness, not to delay it.  Some people in the village who oppose the project, however, have every interest in delaying it, since if it is delayed long enough, it may go away.  In our view it is the actions of these people and some village authorities that prevented negotiations which might have led to the reasonable accommodations the village is required by law to make and might have allowed this project to go forward.  And ultimately it was this refusal to negotiate that forced us to file suit in federal court and initiate a complaint with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

On May 17, 2010 the Arlington Heights Village Board voted to deny the zoning changes our proposed project on Boeger Dr. needed in order to proceed.  Over the next few weeks Task Force members and our partners, Thresholds and the Daveri Development Group, discussed the May 17 meeting and discussed possible changes we could make to the project, changes we thought might be able to win Village approval.

On June 17, representatives from the Task Force and our partners met with Arlington Heights Mayor, Arlene Mulder to discuss ways the project might eventually be approved.  The Mayor thought it would be a good idea to invite the Village Trustees to visit other Thresholds and Daveri sites so they could see first hand the type of project were hoping to build and get some idea of what permanent supportive housing is and how it operates. 

At the meeting we also discussed several changes that might satisfy the public and get additional votes from the Village Board.  Some things, such as the size of the existing lot, could not be changed of course, but there were many other changes that might have satisfied at least some of the critics of the project.

The Task Force and our partners, however, were reluctant to commit to all of the changes without some idea of whether or not they would satisfy some of the Board members who had voted no.  We thought there was no sense making a change that wouldn’t change anyone’s mind but that we would be happy to make changes that would.  We did not want to find ourselves in the situation of making all sorts of changes to the project, only to have it rejected again. 

The Mayor agreed to talk one-on-one with the Trustees who had voted no and see which changes would gain Board approval for the project.  But we never heard back from the Mayor about the meetings.  We do not  know if she ever had the one-on-one conversations she had promised or if  the Trustees with whom she spoke would not be definite on what would gain their vote or possibly that some the Trustees indicated that nothing would change their vote.   In any event, we waited for, but did not receive an answer.

In the meantime, the Task Force did one thing which some Village Trustees had asked for; we held public community outreach meetings to discuss the project.   We held two public meetings at area churches, St. Edna’s in Arlington Heights and Kingswood United Methodist Church in Buffalo Grove.  Approximately 150 people attended the two meetings.  We also met with area civic groups such as the Kiwanis, Jaycees, Lions and the League of Women Voters.   We also sent numerous invitations to Village Trustees inviting them to meet with us and to go on site visits, but none agreed to do so. 

In our letters to the Mayor and Trustees we indicated that we were planning to reapply to the Village, but we were waiting for some indication from Village authorities on what changes we needed to make in order to get Village approval.  But because we never heard back from the Village about what changes were necessary, we never reapplied. 

As the summer wore on, some on the Task Force began to suspect that some Village officials were stalling in the hopes that we would go away.  We also began to wonder if the Village’s refusal to approve the project and its unwillingness to give us guidance on what it would take to get approval were violations of the fair housing laws.

So one Task Force Board member contacted the Fair Housing Legal Clinic (FHLC) at John Marshall Law School in Chicago to inquire into whether there might be fair housing issues.  The staff at the FHLC interviewed several people from the Task Force and our partners, and reviewed the transcripts of the Plan Commission meeting and the May 17 Village Board meeting. 

FHLC staff began to suspect that some of the Village’s actions in this matter were, indeed, violations of the law.  Later in the summer, FHLC contacted the Village on our behalf and suggested that Village authorities meet with the FHLC staff to discuss the matter, but the Village declined to meet. 

Then in the fall, FHLC sent letters to the Village informing it that FHLC was representing the Task Force, Daveri and Thresholds in this matter and requesting that the Village reconsider its decision of May 17 and again inviting them to meet to discuss the reasonable accommodations required by the fair housing laws.  Twice the Village declined to reconsider and again declined to meet to discuss the matter.

The fair housing laws are clear on this question.  Municipalities are required by the law to make reasonable accommodations to allow housing for people with disabilities to be created.  Since the Village repeatedly refused to tell us what changes we could make in order for our project to be approved, and refused to offer any reasonable accommodations on its own, and in fact repeatedly refused to meet to discuss the question, we were left with no alternative but to seek relief from the courts and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Accordingly, in November the FHLC filed suit on our behalf in US court, and somewhat later filed a complaint with HUD. 

At all times the Task Force and our partners stood ready, and still stand ready, to meet with Village officials to agree on a set of reasonable accommodations that will allow this much needed project to go forward. 

Arlington Heights is spending a great deal of money on attorneys’ fees defending themselves in this case, but there is little likelihood the Village will recover any of it.  And in fact, it is most likely that the Village will be liable for our legal costs as well as damages.  It would seem that while Village officials seem to think the Arlington Heights has money to burn, the money it has might be better spent looking for a resolution and making the reasonable accommodations required by law

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