In recent years, there has been a lot of talk around housing in our city. The stories are all too familiar: young people who cannot afford to live on their own without leaving their neighborhood. Growing families that need an additional bedroom and are forced to look to the suburbs. Seniors who have called Chicago home for decades, priced out because they can no longer afford to live here.
We have been having these conversations for years, yet these problems are only getting worse. As we begin to have conversations around the 2027 Chicago municipal elections, housing should be one of the defining issues you evaluate each candidate on. For too long, Chicago has treated building homes as a negotiation, rather than something our city desperately needs.
According to the Metropolitan Planning Council, between 2006 and 2024, just over 121,000 new homes were permitted (not built) across the city of Chicago. In a city of about 1.28 million housing units, that is fewer than 6,800 homes permitted per year. What’s most striking, though, is where these units were built. Sixty percent of the new homes were permitted in just five community areas of Chicago: the Near North Side, Near West Side, Loop, West Town and Near South Side. Furthermore, 45 of our 77 Chicago community areas received less than 500 new homes over the entire 18-year period.
This isn’t simply the result of where people want to live, but more so the result of our zoning rules. Forty-one percent of Chicago is zoned for single-family homes or two-flats, and only 11% is zoned for three-flats, four-flats and apartment buildings, the Metropolitan Planning Council also reports. In a city that is desperately in need of more homes, we have effectively outlawed multifamily housing by right across large portions of Chicago.
Nearly 60% of the homes permitted between 2006 and 2024 were in Planned Development, or PD, zones. While PDs play an important role for large projects, multifamily housing should not depend on additional layers of review. Housing should rely on clear and updated rules that allow appropriate housing projects to move forward quickly. In 2027, every candidate for the City Council should be prepared to identify which ordinary housing projects really require political negotiation and which projects are simply legal by right.
Every zoning change, hearing, parking requirement and density restriction adds time and taxpayer cost. Community input will always matter, and clear standards on safety and planning will ensure developments are not out of place. But there should not be a special political process every time someone wants to build an ordinary apartment building in a place where an apartment building makes sense.
While there are a lot of problems with how housing is built and permitted in our city, there are solutions. Firstly, we should start by making significantly more housing legal by right. Rather than waiting for property owners to request zoning changes one parcel at a time, Chicago should proactively identify areas where additional density makes sense, such as by CTA stations and existing transit. Then we zone for it. Chicago also needs to revisit rules surrounding minimum lot area, allowable density, parking minimums and building design. When regulations begin to overlap, permitting and building are jeopardized through financial and practical burdens.
To the current City Council’s credit, we have begun moving in a more promising direction. I was the primary sponsor of Chicago’s expansion of accessory dwelling units, allowing for additional homes to be built on existing properties. We have also eliminated many parking requirements by transit in our city. But there is more to be done. We need to continue this work through faster and more predictable permitting, cutting-the-red-tape reforms, modernization of the building code and other reforms that make smaller multifamily buildings easier to design on traditional Chicago lots.
None of this means we need to abandon safety standards or our commitment to affordability. Chicago will always need affordable and market-rate housing. We will always need rental and ownership opportunities. But our current objective should be to examine how our rules and regulations interact with one another, and ensure they lack discrepancies and serve a clear public purpose without unnecessarily making it harder for homes to be built.
When we are able to build more homes, it affects more than their price or availability. Over decades, Chicago has invested billions of dollars in a world-class public transit network, and we should make it easier for Chicagoans to live within walking distance of it. With more housing near transit comes less reliance on cars, more pedestrian-friendly development, cleaner air and strengthened commercial corridors. As we build different types of housing, we give Chicagoans more housing options as their lives change. The goal should not be to restrict which kind of home Chicagoans can have, but instead make sure there are enough choices for them to make that decision themselves.
Housing cannot be an isolated policy debate. Housing has everything to do with affordability, transportation, small neighborhood businesses, population growth and our city’s overall fiscal health. We should be a city where a young person can find their first apartment, a family has room to grow and lifelong residents can find a home that fits their needs without leaving the community they love. As Chicago considers what we expect from our city government following 2027, we should have clear answers about how we create enough homes to make that possible.
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This is not a promise we can keep if we continue to make it unnecessarily difficult to build the homes it requires. Chicago needs to make room for more people, and that means making room for more housing.
Editor’s note: This article has been edited to reflect the source of the housing data reported.
Ald. Bennett Lawson represents Chicago’s 44th Ward.
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