SPRINGFIELD — Illinois will not broadly allow multiunit housing on single-family residential lots, at least for now, after a package of housing ideas championed by Gov. JB Pritzker failed to pass during the General Assembly’s spring session.
Faced with concerns about usurping local control of zoning issues related to housing, the governor’s office and its allies this weekend punted on the plans, which were among the governor’s most ambitious policy proposals this year, after they couldn’t round up the necessary support among lawmakers.
“I’m going to continue to fight for it, because we need more housing in the state,” Pritzker said at a post-session news conference in his ceremonial Capitol office Monday. He noted that some of his biggest legislative goals have taken longer than a year to come to fruition, including his school cellphone ban, which the General Assembly passed over the weekend.
Still, deferring negotiations over increasing so-called middle housing across the state to a later date is a mark against the governor’s record in Springfield this election-year spring session — one that will likely be remembered most vividly for the legislature’s inability to pass a Bears stadium deal.
Despite the housing package being presented in a year when Democrats have sought to prove they’re the party of affordability ahead of the November midterm elections, Pritzker indicated he didn’t see its failure as a political liability. The plan showed voters his priorities, he suggested, even if they couldn’t be enacted.
“Are you kidding me? I think — the question is, do you want to elect somebody who’s actually for building more housing, or somebody who doesn’t have any plan at all?” Pritzker said when asked about the politics of the housing issue.
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The governor is up for reelection to a third term this fall, in a race against former state lawmaker Darren Bailey, the long-shot Republican candidate. On social media Sunday, Bailey railed against Pritzker’s so-called BUILD Illinois plan as a “full-scale assault on Illinois suburbs.”
While most of Pritzker’s legislative housing package failed to make it out of the General Assembly, lawmakers did pass the governor’s proposal for about $250 million in capital funding related to housing, which will go to a mix of local infrastructure, middle and affordable housing financing and down payment assistance programs, some of it through programs previously on the books.
Throughout the session, Pritzker’s proposals faced scrutiny from cities and towns whose leaders were deeply concerned about the idea of four- or six-flat buildings going up on quiet cul-de-sacs or accessory dwelling units in backyards statewide, as well as the broader prospect of giving up any local control on zoning.
“The fact that none of them, none of the governor’s proposals, are going to pass this session, I think just indicates how much work has to be done,” Illinois Municipal League CEO Brad Cole said Sunday afternoon. “This is a complicated issue, and local officials have to be included in it.”
In addition to broadly allowing multiunit housing on residential lots, Pritzker also initially proposed cutting back on minimum parking requirements, staircase requirements and permit timelines.
So-called “yes in my backyard” activists fought for the bills to build more middle-income, multiunit homes and, in turn, bring down soaring housing prices statewide.
“Obviously, we’re frustrated and disappointed, but this isn’t the end of the road,” Ben Wolfenstein, director of state policy at the organization YIMBY Illinois, said Sunday, as it became clear none of Pritzker’s housing bills would be called in either chamber.
Moving forward, Wolfenstein said he’s looking to draw a clearer picture for lawmakers of what midsize housing could look like in their communities — two-flats, townhomes, and other structures that could resemble single-family homes, he said.
Asked whether it was possible for differences between the governor’s office and municipalities to be reconciled as discussions on the issue are expected to continue this summer, Cole didn’t respond directly but said he hadn’t received a phone call from the governor’s office on the proposals until the final day of session.
“So there are some differences,” he said.
The latest version of the middle housing bill included language to protect some buildings in designated anti-gentrification zones, seemingly aimed at the Northwest Side Preservation Ordinance area in Chicago.
Progressives in that part of the city have expressed concerns that broadly allowing more multiunit buildings could end up actually replacing more affordable existing options. Gary Jimenez, a housing organizer with the Northwest Side group Palenque LSNA, said on Saturday that his group was grateful for that provision but that there was “still some work to be done.”
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Illinois faces a shortage of about 142,000 housing units and would need to build 227,000 units over five years to keep pace with demand, according to a joint study published last year by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
At the same time, rent increases in Chicago are outpacing national trends.