Category: Chicago

Alderperson Burnett on the dais at City Council Chambers
Alderperson Burnett on the dais at City Council Chambers

ADUs passes the Chicago zoning committee, City Council comes next

July 15, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Alderpersons Quinn and Mitchell “deferred and published” the ADU ordinance today, which means it was not approved and must be taken up again at a future City Council meeting.

The Chicago City Council zoning committee voted to approve citywide accessory dwelling units (ADUs). I was sick this morning and late to the meeting so I couldn’t sign up for the public comment roster. My planned comment is at the end of this post.

The most substantial change from the last proposal (circa May 2024) is that ADUs will be allowed in residential buildings in all zoning districts subject to the following caps:

  • RS-1: one ADU permit per block (both sides of the street) per year
  • RS-2: two…
  • R3-3: three…
  • Other zoning districts: no cap

There is also an owner occupancy requirement, to be proved at the time of permit application, to build an ADU in the RS zoning districts. The version text that passed is not yet available online, but it will be posted under ordinance SO2024-0008918.

Read WTTW’s report on what alderpersons said about ADUs, including the despicable comments about migrants by one of them.

The full City Council will vote on this ordinance tomorrow; I think it will pass by one or two votes. The lists below shows how committee members voted, approving it 13 to 7 (with all zoning committee members present).

Yes on ADUs:

  • La Spata
  • Hall
  • Ramirez
  • Sigcho-Lopez
  • Fuentes
  • Burnett
  • Cruz
  • Conway
  • Quezada
  • Villegas
  • Knudsen
  • Clay
  • Lawson

No on ADUs:

  • Hopkins
  • Dowell
  • Harris
  • Beale
  • Moore
  • Mosley
  • Reilly

Public comment

Hi my name is Steven Vance. I live in the 34th Ward and I’m a volunteer member of Abundant Housing Illinois. Today is a test for the Committee on Zoning. Alderperson Lawson and Mayor Johnson have presented a new version of allowing accessory dwelling units, including coach houses and other types of ADUs, for your favorable vote.  The test is whether this body will recognize the mounting evidence of a housing crisis in Chicago and adopt ordinances that will more quickly chip away at the housing shortage.

The most glaring problem, measured by national researchers, is that Chicago’s rents are climbing faster than in any of the other top 50 metropolitan areas, and for sale inventory is so low that houses sell in days at prices tens of thousands of dollars over asking. “Sounds good” for the individual owners and sellers, respectively, but it’s bad for everyone else. 

The city’s housing department staff know what is known nationally: that ADUs are one of the most sensible and impactful ways to increase housing options and reduce rents. With the ADU ordinance before you today Chicago would join Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, and Austin, cities where ADUs have been legal since before the pilot began. 

To those alders who sometimes or often disagree with Mayor Johnson’s agenda, consider that allowing ADUs across Chicago was first proposed by Mayor Emanuel in his administration’s final five-year housing plan back in 2019, and that it was during Mayor Lightfoot’s administration that the council started the three-year pilot program. 

To those who worry that ADUs bring in more children to the neighborhood who might crowd schools, consider that across the city enrollment in public schools is declining and more families and children staying in the city would be a blessing. Mayor Johnson’s amendment considered this by capping the number of ADUs that can be built on each block. 

I’m given two minutes so I can’t address every concern, but this committee has had plenty of time to address the concern of Chicagoans: the Chicagoans whose rents are rising too fast for them to afford, and who are having to move every year in search of a cheaper place away from their friends, family, and jobs. The ADU pilot program has brought 100s of new homes online in the last four years without any subsidy from the city. More ADUs means more homes for families to care for someone else: a grandparent staying nearby to care for a newborn, an adult child starting a new family near their parents, and seniors who would age in place by downsizing into a smaller home on their own property or down the street. Vote yes and pass the test. 

A row of bungalow houses in Portage Park, some of which have basement ADUs (the legal status for each isn't known)
A row of bungalow houses in Portage Park, some of which have basement ADUs (the legal status for each isn't known)

Allowing ADUs across Chicago: it’s never been more real

July 12, 2025 / / 0 Comments

tl;dr: sign the petition so I can send the zoning committee the biggest marker of citywide support for citywide ADUs, and then call your alderperson on Monday to ask them how they plan to vote

Mayor Johnson indicated earlier this week that he is interested in legalizing ADUs citywide next week. Fran Spielman reported in the Chicago Sun-Times that he remains steadfast in ensuring that the option is available in all residential parts of the city. To that effect, he plans to submit a substitute ordinance at the next zoning committee meeting on Tuesday, July 15. 

ADUs were re-legalized in Chicago starting on May 1, 2021, in a pilot program available to property owners in five areas of the city. The pilot program turned four years old two months ago.

An ordinance introduced by Alderperson Lawson (44th Ward) over two years ago would dissolve the pilot areas and allow ADUs across the city and make other program fixes. However, the proposed ordinance requires that property owners in certain zoning districts obtain permission from the Zoning Board of Appeals before being able to apply for an ADU building permit.

While Lawson has argued that the votes have existed to pass his version, the mayor’s position is that that difference in treatment based on a property’s zoning district, which alderpersons can change, could continue the problem that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found in October 2023.

I think that the mayor’s forthcoming ordinance is likely, like Lawson’s ordinance, to allow ADUs in all zoning districts (including existing residential buildings improperly zoned into M districts), allow both a coach house and an interior ADU on the same property, and allow existing parking to be removed so ground-level accessible coach houses can be built. In addition, I think it’s possible that the mayor’s version could keep some of the pilot program’s owner occupancy and maximum ADUs per block standards to ensure political feasibility in City Council.

After nearly eight years of ADU advocacy – participating in a task force during a previous mayor’s administration, presenting on panels, sharing ADU data with journalists and the public, and garnering support for a geographic expansion of ADUs in the city and Illinois – my primary interest is honing in to ensure that an ordinance legalizing ADUs across the whole of Chicago passes.

Take action: I’d like for every reader to sign this petition, created by Abundant Housing Illinois, to show the zoning committee and City Council that there is widespread support for ADUs.

Contacting your alderperson directly on Monday would be a bonus.

Rendering of a single-family house but which has a "junior ADU" in the front half of the first floor

Greenline Homes is building brand new houses with junior ADUs

June 22, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Greenline Homes builds all-electric 1, 2, and 3 unit houses in Chicago’s South Side, and this year they’ve started building single-family houses with a “junior accessory dwelling unit” on the first floor. An accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, can mean a few things, but generally it means a smaller home within a house that has one or more dwelling units. In Chicago, this is most commonly done by adding an apartment in a basement space of a single-family house or a two-flat, and on the ground floor of an older courtyard building during a renovation that moves shared laundry from the ground floor to in-unit.

Over in Woodlawn, however, Greenline Homes has built what appears as a single-family house but has an apartment with one bedroom and one bathroom in the front half of the first floor. It occupies about one quarter of the houses’s overall floor area. In the rear half of the first floor is the primary unit’s kitchen, living and dining room, and a half bathroom. Upstairs, the space belongs all to the primary unit and has three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Many Greenline Homes have previously been built as two-flats with a lower level full-floor apartment and an upper level duplexed apartment for the owner. The intention is that buyers have an immediate rental income opportunity, or a place for multigenerational living. Think having an adult child living nearby (on-site!) as they transition from college graduation to full time job or having their first child.

Floor plan for the house at 6537 S Rhodes Ave (view the sale listing on Redfin).

The house is for sale, and there are several others like it, so if you’d like a tour contact Wayne Beals. Here are similar ones under construction that will deliver this year:

Further reading: junior ADUs can also be lockoff units, where the smaller unit is connected to the primary unit via stairs or a locked door, but maintains its only exit to the outside.

Chicago home builder: Parking mandates limit the number of dwelling units we can build

March 26, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Chloe G, a co-lead of Strong Towns Chicago, asked this question at the 2-to-4 flats panel that I moderated earlier this month:

“How do parking mandates affect your businesses?”

“It really just limits the amount of units we can do”, Nick Serra answered.

Learn about reform efforts in Chicago to drop costly parking mandates that raise the cost of housing.

Nick, a small local homebuilder, starts to describe how the city’s parking mandates limit how much housing he can build. Watch the full panel video.
photo of Steven Vance, moderator, on the left, and three panelists on the right. A projection screen is behind the panelists.
Myself (left) and the three panelists: Neelam, Nick, and Katherine. Photo: Meg White

Panel: Bringing back 2-to-4 flats

March 26, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Earlier in March I moderated a panel called “Bringing Back 2-to-4 Flats” at the Metropolitan Planning Council office, interviewing three panelists who are developers and designers for these venerable Chicago housing typology.

Two, three, and four-flats are super common in Chicago, representing about one fifth of the city’s dwelling units. These properties are the most likely to have lower rents and family-sized units, according to the Institute of Housing Studies. But Chicago’s zoning laws severely restrict where they can be built. Changing the zoning laws to allow 2- to 4-flats by right makes it easier to increase the city’s housing supply and grow the economy.

Watch the full panel and Q&A in the video below.

Meet the panelists

  • Neelam Dwivedi is a real estate agent and small local homebuilder. She co-founded Nath Construction in 2018. She has developed numerous 3 and 4 flats, particularly in the Near West Side and East Garfield Park.
  • Nick Serra is a small local homebuilder who founded Grace Street Renovation Lab in 2023 and has completed 15 rehab projects. He was previously a practicing attorney and disliked it so much he pivoted to real estate. 
  • Katherine Darnstadt founded Latent Design, an architecture and urbanism practice in 2010. I met Katherine in 2015 and I think the main thing I remember about her practice is the breadth of it. She’s said that the firm has worked on projects “at the bench, building, and block scale”.