Bill targets zoning laws that block homes for adults with disabilities

SPRINGFIELD — Organizations seeking to create community living arrangements for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities say local zoning laws in Illinois are “discriminatory” and are pushing for legislation to protect the federal rights of those residents.

Community integrated living arrangements, or CILAs, are state-regulated residential settings where adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities can live together in small group homes with on-site staff support. The homes offer an alternative for aging parents who can no longer care for adult children with disabilities, while providing residents with the opportunity to move out of their childhood homes in a way that is supportive of their needs.

“They’re able to be integrated into a community setting. They make friends and get to know people who don’t have disabilities,” said Mark McHugh, president and CEO of Envision Unlimited, a CILA provider. “In other words, they have as much…self-direction in their lives as you and I do, and that’s the whole point.”

House Bill 1843 would bar municipalities from using zoning mandates to block CILAs and would explicitly state that local zoning boards can’t circumvent the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act or other applicable state laws. It passed the House last spring and is currently awaiting assignment to a Senate committee.

Rep. Suzanne Ness, D-Crystal Lake, sponsored the bill after hearing from an agency that had funding and a house ready to open a CILA, but was blocked by local zoning, despite a long wait list.

In Illinois, local zoning requirements can limit where CILAs are established. Some areas are reserved for single-family homes, some restrict homes to four residents or fewer, and others impose distance requirements, meaning there cannot be more than one CILA within a certain distance, sometimes 800 feet. These rules, and their inconsistencies, can present challenges for companies seeking to establish CILAs.

Ness said the bill is about normalizing housing for people with disabilities. Zoning rules most often target the type of provider, rather than specifically focusing on who lives in the home. So if a group of adults wants to live in a home, she argued, the fact that it’s owned by a care agency rather than an individual shouldn’t make it any different in the eyes of a zoning board.

Local control concerns

The bill passed the house 77-35. House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, voted against the bill, she said, “because it would further erode local control,” according to a spokesperson.

Another voice of opposition comes from the Illinois Municipal League. While the IML declined to comment on HB1843 beyond their stated opposition to the bill, representatives have expressed concerns about state-level legislation encroaching on local authority.

The IML released a statement in response to Gov. JB Pritzker’s State of the State Address, in which he outlined a statewide zoning law as part of his BUILD plan. In their statement, Brad Cole, IML’s CEO, said, “Zoning and land use decisions are best made locally by the leaders elected in those communities.”

Read more: Pritzker to propose statewide zoning laws to spur homebuilding, limit local control

Creating procedural consistency

A proponent of the bill, Envision Unlimited, operates nearly 100 CILAs across Illinois, primarily in the Chicagoland area. As the organization has sought to expand statewide, local zoning rules and special use permits have slowed the process, leaving some people waiting over a year for a placement.

McHugh said municipalities routinely create barriers for CILAs that no other homeowner or renter would face.

“I guarantee you that none of us who have ever purchased a home or rented an apartment anywhere had to stand before a village board and get a special use permit,” he said. “That should not be required by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. That’s discriminatory in my view.”

McHugh described meetings with municipalities that requested information on staff and residents that Envision Unlimited could not legally provide.

“This is a highly regulated industry,” he said, “Rightly so. But the people who are experts at this are at the state level, and that regulation should apply equally to people across the state.”

Through the legislation, sponsors of the bill seek to create procedural consistency across the state for CILA providers.

“Really what this legislation does,it brings zoning standards across the state to federal levels,” Ness said.

Envision Unlimited and other CILA providers have brought legal action against municipalities who denied them from setting up CILAs in their communities, or who have required them to apply for special permits, on the basis that it violates federal law under the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“There needs to be the same opportunity,” said Dr. Shana Erenberg, co-founder and CEO of Libenu, another CILA provider. For Erenberg, that means treating residents like any other adult.

“They don’t want to live at home. They’re adults, tell me an adult that wants to live with their parents,” Erenberg said. “The idea is that they should be able to spend the rest of their lives in these homes. Just like anybody else.”

The bill was amended in the House to clarify that the state-level legislation applies specifically to adults with disabilities living together, rather than multiperson housing arrangements such as student housing. Sponsor Sen. Laura Ellman, D-Naperville, is confident it will pass the Senate.

“The benefits so outweigh the friction and the barriers that are being put up,” Ellman said.

Beyond Ellman, the Senate bill has eight co-sponsors so far, two of whom are Republicans: Deputy Republican Leader Sen. Sue Rezin and Caucus Whip Sen. Jil Tracy.

While she emphasized that local control is a priority, Tracy has a personal connection to this bill.

“I personally have a developmentally disabled brother, and he’s in Anna, Illinois, which is my hometown,” Tracy said. “But I live in Quincy, and I would love to have (him) closer to me.”

“So I signed on to the bill along with Sue Rezin to vet the issue and hopefully gain some steam,” Tracy said. “So that people and municipalities will not be afraid of having group homes within their village or city, because there is a need out there and we have to try to find a solution to this.”

Rebecka Pieder is a graduate student in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications, and is a fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.