This is a publicly accessible scratchpad of what I’m thinking. As I already said, Chicago should have a rental registry, a database of dwelling units that are rented to tenants, for at least two reasons:
The city can know things about the rental units, including how much they cost, where they are, and if any are vacant and could be occupied if only people knew they were available and how to get in touch with the owner.
The city can know who the owners are and contact them to issue citations or advise them, or fill out for them, emergency rental assistance during pandemics and other times of necessity.
Who owns and rents each of these buildings, and are they providing a quality apartment to their tents?
Rationale for a rental registry
It could improve the quality of housing by forcing renovations when tenants are not making complaints due to the potential for retaliation or eviction.
Tenants should be able to know who owns the property they rent. Under the current data regime in Illinois, it’s unreasonable to expect a tenant to know how to look up this information. Of course, someone could use my Chicago Cityscape platform to look up property ownership and transfers.
Up For Growth, a national “more housing” research group, publishes an annual report about underproduction of housing in 193 regions, including Chicagoland. In their 2023 report they found that there’s an underproduction of 120,383 homes in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metropolitan statistical area.
This graphic shows how U4G derived that figure of missing homes.
Housing underproduction as a narrative formula:
((existing households + missing households) * 1.05 [1]) - (total housing units + second/vacation homes + uninhabitable units) = underproduction
[1] means a 5% target vacancy rate
The novel metric here is “missing households”, which are households that haven’t formed due to a lack of housing. The report’s definition of missing households is:
Missing Households. Households that may not have formed due to lack of availability and affordability, e.g. households with children over 18 years of age still living with their parents or individuals or couples living together as roommates at levels exceeding historical norms.
In the Chicago region, 120,383 homes represents 3.1 percent of the housing stock in 2021, meaning we need to grow the number of homes in Chicagoland by 3.1 percent to accommodate these emerging families, graduating students, roommates, and doubled-up tenants. The necessary expansion of housing is greater than 3.1 percent, however, to accommodate migration and homes no longer in the market due to various forms of vacancy.
We also need more housing to help prices flatten or go down, and reduce the number of households that are cost-burdened. Among the top 10 cities with the most housing underproduction, Chicago has the lowest share of households which are cost-burdened, at 46.0 percent.
Data tips
To find the report’s preferred definition of the target vacancy rate you need to be able to subtract second homes, vacation homes, and uninhabitable homes. The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey has data on vacancy reason in table B25004 (view the data for table B25004 in Chicago on Census Reporter, a third party website that’s easier to navigate than the Census Bureau’s data portal).
The ADU legalization bill that I discussed last month in a post about State Rep. Kam Buckner’s three statewide land use reforms has been assigned a committee and hearing date and time. This means individuals can submit witness slips in favor of allowing “accessory dwelling units” up and down the state.
The Cities & Villages Committee will meet on Tuesday, April 2, at 4 PM, which is also the deadline to submit a witness slip (instructions below).
In the witness slip form, fill out your name, address, and city.
In the “Firm/Business Or Agency” field, enter “self” or the name of an organization you’re representing.
In the “Title” field, enter “self” or your title in the organization you’re representing.
Enter your email and phone number.
In the “Representation” field, enter “self” or the name of the organization you’re representing.
In the “Position” section select the “Proponent” radio button.
In the “Testimony” section tick the “Record of Appearance Only” checkbox.
Tick the “I agree” checkbox
Finally, select the “Create Slip” button and you’re done!
Submitting a witness slip is an easy thing to do from home. If you’d like to elevate your advocacy for housing options in Illinois, email or call your state legislator, and join Urban Environmentalists of Illinois to learn about getting even more involved.
State Rep. Kam Buckner of Chicago has introduced another land use bill that Illinoisans should support. The bill provides that municipalities with a population of 100,000 or more should allow property owners to have more than one home on a lot. This forward-thinking legislation represents a significant step toward addressing the pressing housing challenges facing our communities and would foster more inclusive and sustainable urban development.
The shortage of affordable housing in Illinois for middle-class families, particularly in the Chicago area, has reached a critical point. New housing in places with access to jobs, opportunities and amenities has not kept up with demand.
Buckner’s bill acknowledges the need for innovative solutions to tackle this issue head-on. By lifting the ban on multifamily housing options in residential zones, the legislation promotes diversity in housing types, catering to the needs of our population.
I believe cities that don’t allow enough housing should not be able to push people to remote areas that have cheaper housing and less access to the things that make our cities great. This sprawl has devastating effects on our agricultural land and natural open space, ultimately increasing the tax burden on municipalities by extending and maintaining utilities to far-flung, lower-density areas.
In Houston, America’s fourth-largest city with a lot of sprawling development and limited alternatives to driving, 34.4% of households pay 45% or more of their income just for housing and transportation. In Chicago, on the other hand, only 27.5% of households pay 45% or more of their income on housing and transportation.
Multifamily housing— which could be as little as two homes on a lot — not only provides more affordable options but also promotes a more efficient use of space and resources. By fostering mixed-use development, it’s easier to create and sustain neighborhoods with vibrant retail in walking distance.
Map of the zoning districts in Naperville, not shown in the Chicago Sun-Times posting. Three categories are symbolized: multifamily housing allowed, multifamily disallowed in a residential zoning district, and all other zoning districts.
Our legislators should recognize the positive impact that allowing multifamily housing can have on affordability, community development and overall urban sustainability. It’s time to embrace progressive measures that will shape a more equitable and prosperous future in Illinois.
Illinois House Representative Kam Buckner (26th district) has introduced three bills that would adopt land use reforms across all or a lot of the state. This is a trend happening across the United States to address twin crises of low housing construction and limited affordable housing caused in large part by individual municipalities restricting new housing.
Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are apartments and small backyard houses that are built to provide on-site housing for family members, or generate additional income. They are usually allowed by amending zoning codes to add design parameters that treat them differently than apartments, detached, or attached houses and exempt them from typical density limitations inherent in nearly all zoning codes.
Buckner filed HB4213 in November 2023, which would disallow any unit of local government in Illinois from prohibiting ADUs, which most governments in Illinois do through various zoning rules (the main one being that a residentially-zoned parcel is only allowed to have a single building).
A bill like this has already been adopted in California, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire (at a minimum).
Letters to the editor
I submitted a letter to the editor in March and am waiting for the media outlet to select it for publication.
Coach houses are one type of small backyard house, common in Chicago. This one in Lakeview was built in 2023.
Lifting parking mandates
Buckner submitted HB4638 in January 2024 to get local governments out of the business of forcing a minimum number of car parking spaces at developments near transit, which are currently established without any rationale. You might say the amount of space cities require businesses and apartment buildings to provide is based on vibes.
Letters to the editor
My letter to the editor describing the benefits of not requiring so much parking everywhere, and specifically mentioned this bill, was published in The Daily Line in February.
Pete Snyder’s letter to the editor was published in the Chicago Sun-Times in March and asks Chicago to “finish the job” that the Connected Communities ordinance started and remove parking mandates citywide.
There are so many better things we can do for a community than dedicating land for car parking.
Allowing more than one home per lot
Most municipal zoning codes in Illinois have a zoning district called something like “R1” that allows one detached house on a lot, often setting a very large minimum lot size that must be assembled before construction can begin. Municipal leaders then apply R1 broadly within their municipalities’ boundaries, effectively banning condos, townhouses, row houses, and apartments – the most affordable kinds of homes to buy and rent.
Bucknerintroduced HB4795 in February 2024; it would apply to the state’s eight largest cities and require them to allow at least a “duplex” (two-unit house) on every parcel that allows a detached single-family house.
Naperville would be one of the covered municipalities; the city allows two-family dwellings in R2 zoning districts and slightly more homes per lot in the higher-number R zoning districts. Their B1 neighborhood shopping district also allows multi-family housing.
But the Naperville zoning map shows how prevalent R1 and its friends the “E” estate districts are: the vast majority of the city is zoned to allow only single detached houses.
