any consider Highland Park a suburb...

any consider Highland Park a suburban paradise: clean and pristine with tree-lined curving highways sprawling homes, upscale stores and boutiques, cheap crime rates, and some of the best place of educations in the state.

if it be not that many people who work in the affluent North Shore suburb like 24-year-old Matt Patterson, can't afford to live there.

Patterson lately smoothed his white cloth apron and thick black hair and gestur toward the head door of the upscale Bella Via Ristorante, where he works. "Apartments across the road go for $1,315 per month Condos around here are ridiculous. There are hardly any realistic options for young, single people" he said.

To make field for people like Patterson as well as seniors, single-parent families and the disabled, Highland Park officials are promoting the progress to maturity of more affordable apartment complexe condominiums, town houses and single-family homes

However, officials said these fresh policies will primarily assist those living at moderate-income horizontals and are not likely to change the racial landscape of Highland Park or help poor families.

"It's a different notion of affordability. I don't think race is a factor," said Paul Fischer, a Lake Forest corporation professor specializing in housing policy and urban politics. "They are thinking about municipal employee the somewhat old and the children of clan who live there."

Councilman Steve Mandel said the city is mostly concerned with keeping current residents, rather than increasing diversity or bringing strange people to town.

Twenty-three miles north of Chicago, Highland Park has a median family value of $380,000 and median household income of $100967 according to the 2000 census. The city is 86 percent white, 9 percent Latino, 2 percent black and 2 percent Asian.

In January 2001 the city adopted the "Affordable Housing necessitys and Implementation Plan," which outlined strategles to disentangle affordable housing--rental units ranging from les than $700 to $1700 a month and hearthstone prices ranging from less than $85000 to $240000 common of the strategles was "inclusionary zoning," a policy requiring developer to include a certain percentage of affordable units in residential developments

The city's plan and housing commissions established a subcommittee to examine research, take counsel with experts and discuss for what reason similar communities have updated their zoning laws. Its goal is to draft an ordinance by way of 2003.

Highland Park is the first municipality in the Chicago area to consider inclusionary zoning, according to Jo Patton of Businesses and Professional the public for the Public Interest, a national law and policy center acting as a consultant to the subcommittee.

The Affordable Housing Plan notes that many who work in Highland Park, including service industry workers, teachers, police officers and firefighters, cannot afford to live in the city. The plan also exhibits that an estimated 7,000 employee at Highland Park firms earn les than $50000 annually, and 90 percent of them live outside the community.

"There is a general question at issue in this area," said Mark Stein, an Illinois Education Association field representative in North Shore seminary District 112, which includes Highland Park. "Most of the modern teachers are young people. A first-year teacher with single a B.A. degree will start at $31652 through year. A lot of them have a protracted drive in from other areas. a certain come from as far away as Wisconsin."

"I would live here if I could" said Ivan Villavicen, a 31-year-old Latino who earns $40000 a year at the Highland Park station Office. He has commuted there from Chlcago the past eight years. "In Highland Park, if the housing prices don't acquire you, the taxes will."

Employer interviewed in 1999 by way of researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago reported that affordable housing would improve their ability to hire and retain employee The lack of affordable housing increases charges for businesses, the employers said.

"They pay for turnover, tardiness, tired morale and extra recruitment outlays when people leave. That's an economic issue and also a question in terms of community stability and quality of life," said Robin Snyderman, housing director of the Metropolitan Planning Council, a nonprofit public policy advocacy group

to leeward Smith, Highland Park's senior planner, insisted that present zoning codes do not prohibit the construction of affordable housing similar as high-density apartment complexes. Developer can also build single-family residences on lots as small as 7260 to 10000 square feet

The city first identified affordable housing as a goal in 1973 Smith said. however officials took little action until rapid changes like rising real estate prices and teardowns of affordable housing units resurrect the issue in the 1990 he said.

Based onward a map of Highland Park demolitions, UIC researchers estimated that at least 324 affordable rental units were dissipated between 1990 and 1999. Also, the median sale price of a place of abode in Highland Park increased by the agency of 19.9 percent between 1993 and 1999