Oak Park board approves separate emergency rehab program and expands small‑rental loan guidelines; single‑family changes approved with amendment

The Oak Park Village Board voted to adopt changes to three housing rehabilitation programs on motions to concur with recommendations from the Housing Programs Advisory Committee (HPAC). Staff framed the amendments as an effort to modernize programs last updated in 2012, increase clarity, and rebalance subsidy levels to reflect current construction costs and federal lead‑hazard rules.

Nut graf: Trustees approved a stand‑alone Emergency Residential Rehabilitation Loan program (Item I) and amendments to the small rental property rehabilitation program (Item J), and approved revisions to the residential (formerly ‘‘single family’’) rehabilitation program (Item H) with a friendly amendment removing an example reference to air conditioning from a ‘‘general improvements’’ category and clarifying that energy‑efficiency improvements can include air‑conditioning upgrades where HUD and CDBG rules permit.

Assistant Village Manager and Neighborhood Services Director Jonathan Birch presented the staff recommendations. Birch said the village's small rental and single‑family rehabilitation efforts had declined in use over the past decade — the single‑family program, he said, once targeted 10 projects per year but more recently produced two to three — and that…