Now that I’ve audited the Chicago building permits for the last four years I can more accurately visualize where new homes were permitted across Chicago’s fifty wards. I was not surprised to see that the 27th Ward carries the team known as City Council, but I was surprised by how big the gap was between the first and second place wards, and the gap between the fewest number of wards where 50 percent of new homes were permitted and the number of wards where the other half were permitted.
In the period 2022-2024…
- 24.0 percent of new homes were permitted in the 27th Ward
- 10.6 percent in the 34th Ward
- 8.1 percent in the 3rd Ward
- 6.9 percent in the 4th Ward
Those four wards comprise 49.5 percent of new homes permitted, while 46 wards permitted the remaining 50.5 percent. Some of this imbalance is due to how different alderpersons accept new development proposals, and the current zoning capacity of properties in each ward.
Incredibly, when rounding to the tenths place, 24 wards permitted so few new homes in that time period that they round down to 0 percent.
To further illustrate how some wards are where so few new homes are permitted, which may be due to factors beyond the alderperson’s control (local rents not meeting development and construction costs, and racism, to name a couple), consider that six wards permitted fewer than 10 homes each during that three-year period.
While Chicago does not have quotas or goals on how many new homes should be permitted or built either citywide or by ward, the city will maintain a housing shortage if most wards are not facilitating or allowing new housing to be built. The allowance of new housing is heavily influenced by each alderperson’s choices.
The city’s ability to grow and spread the property tax revenue burden fairly depends on new development occurring across the city. This is especially the case in areas where new housing can moderate rising demand housing costs, and transportation infrastructure and amenities are in good supply.
Other statistics
Table 1. New construction homes permitted, by year
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | Total |
| 7,574 | 4,498 | 4,360 | 16,432 |
Methodology
Using Chicago Department of Building permits that are imported to Chicago Cityscape’s Building Permits Browser, I review each new construction permit’s description to count the number of units authorized by that permit. Foundation phases of multi-phase permits and most revision permits are excluded. I do my best to catch projects that change scope between two permits, such as a permit originally issued for a two-flat but changed to a single-family house, or a larger multifamily building losing or gaining units in a subsequent permit.
New construction coach house units are also excluded because they are allowed only in five pilot areas in a subset of wards; view ADU statistics on Chicago Cityscape.
The statistics are also shown in Chicago Cityscape’s building permits analysis table, which is updated daily; look for columns with a heading that says the year and the word “audited”. Data for permits in other years are not yet reviewed and corrected.
This is an imperfect comparison of wards because there was a redrawing of ward boundaries and an election in 2023. This means that some alderpersons are new, and that all alderpersons oversaw new development approvals and the capacity of their zoning map in different areas before and after the remap.
On the flip side, the new ward map also means that the number of inhabitants in each ward was roughly equal at the time of the remap. This supports some level of data normalization (i.e. new homes permitted per capita), which can be done in future analysis.
