HOUSING

Establish vision and leadership

• We need a northstar goal: at least 50,000 homes in four years. Last year, Chicago delivered only about 1,100 new affordable units under the current ARO, while facing an affordable housing shortage of roughly 120,000 units. We will create a mayoral Housing Strike Force with senior leaders from every city agency that touches housing, and hold them jointly accountable for building or preserving a minimum of 50,000 affordable, workforce, and starter homes, including family-size apartments and homes. The Strike Force will meet monthly and report directly on deliverables, notifying me directly of the barriers to success so we can eliminate them swiftly. 

• Streamline city housing agencies. We will combine all the city departments that currently oversee housing - Department of Housing, Department of Planning and Development, Review Commissions and Boards, into a one-stop-shop to improve coordination and outcomes.

• Permit housing in weeks, not years. Home builders can spend years navigating separate and conflicting requirements from the Department of Buildings, Department of Housing, Department of Planning and Development, CHA, and others.  We will expand the Direct Developer Services program, which currently allows private, city-approved firms to review blueprints, creating a fast lane for large towers and big commercial developers so it includes housing projects too. We’ll also establish one, coordinated application with an established deadline for permitting and a dedicated liaison for prioritized occupancy inspections.

• Let Chicago build like Chicago again. Four-flats, courtyard buildings, duplexes, triplexes, accessory dwelling units, and small apartment buildings are part of Chicago’s history. We will allow four-flats, family-friendly courtyard blocks, and ADUs by right citywide, permit housing in commercial districts, and expand higher density transit-oriented development. Today, only 11% of the city allows more than three units on a lot.

• Protect renters by enforcing the rules that matter. We will aggressively enforce protections against mold, pests, broken heat, dangerous conditions, discrimination, and neglected repairs. But we will not pretend that vague rent restrictions, relocation mandates, or added operating costs will make housing affordable when they actually just discourage maintenance, push out small housing providers to usher in corporate ownerships, and further reduce supply.

• Build modular housing at scale. Cook County’s $12 million modular pilot is currently producing 120 modular homes, including three-bedroom houses in Humboldt Park selling well below the neighborhood’s median price. We will partner with the County, the Land Bank, local manufacturers, and labor to place modular homes on publicly owned lots to reduce construction from years to weeks and make homeownership possible for more working families.

• Grow the workforce that will build Chicago. The construction industry faces a national shortage of roughly 650,000 workers. We will create pathways from Chicago Public Schools to community colleges, union apprenticeships, and good-paying careers, with a goal of training 10,000 electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, carpenters, and other skilled workers over four years.

• Put public land and empty buildings to work. Chicago owns thousands of vacant parcels and nearly two dozen former school buildings remain empty. We will fast-track suitable city land and underused public buildings for affordable housing, starter homes, senior housing, teacher housing, and mixed-use neighborhood redevelopment instead of allowing them to sit vacant.

• Pilot Neighborhood Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). The city could contribute unused public land that currently generates no tax revenue to a Neighborhood Investment Trust, which would lease the land for the development of new homes and businesses. The revenue generated by that development would be shared among participating neighborhood residents, investors, and the organization sponsoring the trust, giving residents a direct financial stake in new development and helping ensure that investment builds community wealth rather than pricing longtime residents out. In a neighborhood like Washington Park, where the Obama Presidential Center and other major investments are bringing new attention and concerns about displacement, this model could support thousands of new homes and dozens of new businesses, generate returns for residents and investors, and turn vacant land into a source of new tax revenue for the city.

• Reduce unnecessary costs on affordable housing. Chicago’s Department of Housing imposes a 95-page technical standards manual on subsidized developments, compared with a four-page checklist used in Wisconsin. We will align city agencies around one safety-focused standard, waive water and sewer connection fees for qualifying affordable projects, and eliminate duplicative requirements that increase unit size and cost without improving residents’ lives.

• Rewrite the current rules that make Chicago unusually expensive to build in. We will modernize Chicago’s building code to safely permit single-stair buildings, appropriately sized elevators, PVC and other widely used materials, and construction methods accepted in peer cities. We will also simplify the zoning code so an ordinary person can understand what can be built where, without hiring a lawyer.

• Bargain for residential prevailing-wage standards that support both workers and housing. Illinois applies commercial prevailing-wage rates even to small residential and affordable developments. We will pursue residential and affordable-housing standards in accordance to the federal Davis-Bacon carveout for projects with fewer than 12 units. This approach is already used by progressive states such as California and New York, while preserving strong wages for larger developments and creating far more union work through a citywide building boom.

• Bulk materials purchasing program. The city will create a central database where the prices large builders are able to secure on everything from concrete to lumber are listed, allowing smaller developers to use those prices to negotiate lower costs. Larger developers will also be encouraged to reserve slightly more materials than they need at the bulk purchase price and allow smaller developers to buy the extra materials they have reserved at cost. We’ll incentivize mid-sized and larger developers to participate in a bulk-materials purchasing discount program by offering zoning bonuses, such as additional height and density or more flexible setback requirements, in return.

Everything costs too much: childcare, healthcare, groceries, rent, property taxes. The single biggest thing I will do as Mayor to lower the cost of living is stabilize and then lower rents and property taxes by building more housing than Chicago has ever produced in a single administration.

I’m a renter. I recently moved and was lucky to find a mom-and-pop landlord I could rent from directly, an increasingly rare experience in Chicago. For years, I’ve fought in Congress to help Chicagoans through our housing crisis: homebuyers trapped in bidding wars because there aren’t enough homes for sale; renters hearing from listing agents that they’re one of 500 applications for an apartment; and homeless and housing-insecure Chicagoans who have been priced out of the basic necessity of quality housing.

But City Hall has not met me in that fight, and that’s unacceptable. As Mayor, I will make Chicago the easiest and cheapest place to build quality, attractive, safe housing that Chicagoans can actually afford. I’ll enact bold, sweeping reforms because every unnecessary delay, fee, restriction, and layer of bureaucracy makes housing more expensive and this crisis worse.

Austin, Texas, increased its housing supply by 10.5 percent between 2021 and 2024 and saw rents fall 4 percent, even as rents were rising across the country. Chicago can build its way toward affordability while growing our tax base to help address our city budget, public school, and transit crises at the same time. But we need a clear strategy and strong leadership.

Here’s my plan: build or preserve 50,000 homes over four years using three strategies: (1) reduce barriers to building; (2) lower the cost of construction; and (3) launch new ways to fund starter homes and affordable apartments.