Letter to the editor: Financial readiness and climate action

MARCH 20, 2025, EVANSTON ROUNDTABLE, Letter to the Editor:

I view climate change as an existential threat. If we’re going to tackle climate change, we cannot live with fossil fuels forever. It is thus necessary that Evanston’s buildings eventually become carbon-neutral, including the 1964 building I rent in. We must update these buildings, whether it’s expensive or not, at some point in our lifetime. 

So, let’s take the Healthy Buildings Ordinance as an opportunity to prepare for these upgrades instead of kicking the can down the road. 

For vintage condo buildings specifically, the rulemaking process should ask condo associations and property managers to become financially prepared for necessary upgrades and changes. After a detailed conversation with a building treasurer in southeast Evanston, I learned Illinois does not currently require condo associations to regularly complete reserve studies, which leaves some associations blind to upcoming costs and vulnerable to untenable special assessments. Others may know future costs but be unsure how to budget now. Instead of compounding the problem, the HBO should be an impetus for Evanston to guide condo associations to financial solvency. 

I urge the 2030 milestone for these condo buildings to be a reserve study to understand the organization’s financial readiness. A reserve study also includes projections about future maintenance and suggests a prioritized schedule of projects and a reserve funding plan to pay for them. These studies also benefit financially responsible condo associations by highlighting their financial health relative to neighboring buildings, an important factor in property values, and discourages deferred maintenance. 

The Technical Committee should consider a building’s schedule and funding plan in its milestone expectations, but, critically, we need to have that information first. 

So, if a building expects to replace its roof in five years, then great! Now we know, so the Accountability Board can be aware to not expect, say, solar panels within that time frame. Instead of being punitive, this should primarily be a collaborative process between the city and buildings. 

I understand the prospect of the required changes is scary, even paralyzingly so. The HBO process should empower people and building managers with the knowledge and preparation to make changes doable rather than be a behemoth of requirements. 

The Healthy Buildings Ordinance creates a legal need to start looking at the inevitable and to start planning for it. I’m excited about that perspective shift, and I urge the implementation timeline for vintage buildings to begin with the true first step: an honest assessment of what needs to get done, how ready a condo board or property owner is to pay for it and how to make a feasible plan for success.

Being willing to productively face the facts, in my book, is a brave act of climate action.