From McHenry County Board member John Collins (D-Crystal Lake):
Response to “Low Income Housing at Luxury Prices”
Mr. Wilson’s letter comparing Taylor Place’s $500,000-per-unit cost to McHenry home sale prices makes for an attention-grabbing headline, but it rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of how affordable housing is built and financed and what those costs actually represent.
First, the $500,000 figure is not what taxpayers paid.
The letter implies the entire $25 million came from public taxes, but that’s not accurate.
Taylor Place received $800,000 from McHenry County as part of its commitment to spend 50% of it’s American Rescue Plan funding on programs the benefited the community at large.
Rep. Foster’s office secured a $1.25 million federal grant, and the City of McHenry waived $158,932 in impact fees.
The remainder of the project’s financing came from private equity investors through tax credits, not taxpayer appropriations.
The total direct public outlay is a fraction of the $25 million total.
Second, the author compares apples to oranges when stacking the per-unit development cost against home sale prices.
Home sale prices reflect what a buyer pays for an existing structure on existing land.
A development cost includes land acquisition, environmental remediation of what was a former industrial site, demolition, new construction, infrastructure improvements, legal and financing fees, reserves for long-term maintenance, and compliance with multiple layers of government regulation.
The site at 4105 W. Crystal Lake Ave. required repurposing the historic Old Feed Mill into a community center, leasing office, fitness center, and business center; that kind of adaptive reuse of a 150-year-old industrial structure carries costs a simple home sale price does not.
Third, $500,000 per unit is competitive by Illinois standards.
Affordable housing construction costs in Illinois jumped from roughly $400,000 per unit to nearly $750,000 per unit between 2019 and 2024, and that’s before factoring in Chicago’s elevated labor market. Taylor Place came in well below those benchmarks for a project that includes a historic building rehabilitation.
The letter’s core premise, that taxpayers are funding luxury housing, also mischaracterizes who lives there.
Rents average around $1,000 a month, compared to market-rate one-bedroom apartments in the McHenry area that run upward of $1,350 a month.
Tenants include library employees, healthcare workers, seniors on fixed incomes, and others who work in McHenry County but could no longer afford to live there.
County Board Chairman Buehler noted that a two-bedroom market-rate apartment in the area can run $2,600 a month, unaffordable for young families, recent graduates, or seniors.
Finally, there is the economic argument the letter ignores entirely.
Developers and local officials noted that 50 units near downtown, in an area with empty storefronts, could serve as a catalyst for economic development and provide ridership for the McHenry Metra station.
Communities that cannot house their essential workers face labor shortages that cost businesses and taxpayers in other ways.
The concern about government spending is legitimate and worth ongoing scrutiny.
But the $500,000 headline, stripped of context, misrepresents the project’s public cost, ignores what drives affordable housing development expenses industrywide, and overlooks the real human need Taylor Place addresses.
A more accurate critique would focus on whether the financing structure for affordable housing nationally, which relies on complex tax credit mechanisms rather than direct funding, is the most efficient model.
That is a fair debate. Declaring that McHenry taxpayers are being bankrupted by this project is not.
