A program called the "Neighborhood Initiative" is working its way through the Shorewood VIllage Board committee structure. If implemented, the program would offer assistance to duplex owners in the Village of Shorewood in upgrading their properties, or converting them to single family homes. Several options are being discussed, including incentives to convert to single family dwellings, attic space upgrades, and down payment assistance.
Below is an email from Trustee Dawn Anderson outlining the origins and intent of this program.
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From: Trustee Dawn Anderson
To: Steve Koczela
Date: Sep 21, 2007
I'm not sure when this was first brought up, but I first heard of it when I joined the board last June(06). As you probably recall it is an idea that grew out of a market study on residential properties by SB Friedman and Co - the village asked for it after the Visioning Plan. They presented the study in March of 06 with recommendations on how to approach revitilization of the village's duplex stock. They identified 3 areas of concern:
1- A shortage of family appropriate housing units
2- deferred maintenance of duplexes with absentee owners and
3- overcrowding of duplexes.
The goals of a "Neighborhood Initiative" would be to enhance housing options for young families and improve the exterior conditions of the existing "problem" duplexes. Overcrowding would be addressed through increased enforcment of code - we have yet to discuss this part of the initiative. For obvious reasons, we want the housing stock in the village to be attractive to young families and we want to protect the value of housing stock in areas that are more heavily concentrated with duplexes with absentee owners.
The CBR committee had discussed it briefly last year, with Ericka Lang tweaking some ideas as we spoke, but it did lay fallow for quite a bit of time - the shoreline ordinance and smoking ban ate up alot of the limited time we had to discuss it in committee before board meetings.... so we have just taken up discussion of it again recently.
We still are really in the preliminary stages of collecting more information and discussing the recommendations among ourselves - I can't give you cost estimates or a timeline at this point. As we move on, we'll be talking more about process and the nitty gritty of how the program might work. But at this time we are talking about incentives that will encourage upgrades/enhancements and more owner occupied duplexes.
Next week we are meeting to talk about code enforcement and how that would fit into the plan. When it might go to the full board for consideration is something I just can't say right now.
I hope this helps - have a nice weekend, dawn
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