Show your support for a version of the proposed ordinance that enables equal access to ADUs in all residential zoning districts and does not have the carve out explained below by emailing your alderperson and asking that they support ADU expansion into every residential zoning district without special use approval.
It’s possible that the Chicago City Council votes to approve an ADU expansion ordinance that would require about 38 percent of small-scale residential property owners, specifically in RS-1 and RS-2 zoning districts, to obtain a special use from the Zoning Board of Appeals to build an ADU. Special use approval is intended for limited and certain businesses and building types that can have an adverse impact and may require mitigations that are reviewed and approved by the ZBA.
ADUs have not been demonstrated to have adverse impacts and this potential future requirement would impose burdens on a scale above and beyond anything else the Chicago zoning code imposes. A special use is described in the city’s code as having “widely varying land use and operational characteristics [and] require case-by-case review in order to determine whether they will be compatible with surrounding uses and development patterns. Case-by-case review is intended to ensure consideration of the special use’s anticipated land use, site design and operational impacts.”
Yet an ADU is a residential use; its operational characteristics could not be incompatible with other residential uses. This requirement would be extremely unusual and especially burdensome. There is only one other special use approval that a residential property owner would have to seek, which is to allow housing on the ground floor in B1, B3, C1, and C2 zoning districts.
Applying for a special use for a small home presents a major obligation to the property owner, and requires them to perform the following:
Submitting a full building permit application with plans and obtaining a “certificate of zoning denial” before being able to start this process.
Paying a $1,000 application fee to the City of Chicago.
Hiring an expert witness to write a report and provide testimony at the ZBA hearing.
Preparing the finding of fact, a report which (a) describes how the ADU complies with all applicable standards of the Chicago Zoning Ordinance, (b) says that the ADU is in the interest of the public convenience and will not have a significant adverse impact on the general welfare of the neighborhood, (c) explains that the ADU is compatible with the character of the surrounding area in terms of site planning and building scale and project design, (d) states that the ADU is compatible with the character of the surrounding area in terms of operating characteristics, such as hours of operation, outdoor lighting, noise and traffic generation, and (e) outlines that the ADU is designed to promote pedestrian safety and comfort.
Complying with onerous legal notification requirements including determining property owners of record within 250 feet of the subject property, paying for and posting public notice signs and ensuring they remain posted until the public hearing, and mailing notice letters to surrounding property owners within the 250 feet notice radius.
Presenting the project to the Zoning Board of Appeals at an undeterminable time during an 8-12 hour meeting in the middle of a Friday, possibly facing one’s neighbors who are present objecting to the project.
Not to mention, this will gum up staff time and expertise.
Scale of impact
I analyzed the number of small-scale residential-only properties in Chicago that would and would not be subject to the special use approval requirement in RS-1 and RS-2 zoning districts if that version were to pass.
The map below shows where the proposed ADU expansion would set a different standard for homeowners in RS-1 and RS-2 zoning districts than for homeowners in all other zoning districts. It covers large parts of 40 percent of the city’s 77 community areas (read more about my thoughts on this in my letter to the Chicago Sun-Times editor).
The table below shows the results of my analysis: the owners of nearly 171,000 small-scale residential properties in RS-1/2 zoning districts would be required to undergo a costly and difficult process that would likely result in burdens so great that very few families would actually be able to take advantage of having an ADU.
About the analysis
“Small-scale residential” comprises Cook County property classifications that represent detached houses, townhouses and townhouses, two-to-six flats, courtyard buildings, and small multifamily buildings, up to 99,999 s.f. with or without commercial space up to 35 percent of the rentable square feet.
July 16, 2024. The text here roughly matches what I said to the Chicago City Council’s committee on zoning, landmarks, and building standards.
My name is Steven Vance, and I’m a member of Urban Environmentalists Illinois, a membership-based advocacy group that supports more housing – especially affordable housing, housing near transit, and fossil fuel-free – to help deal with housing shortages and rising housing prices.
There are two ordinances for the zoning committee’s consideration today that are the start of a new wave of land use policy to increase development where it’s needed, along Western Avenue. After the completion of the Western Avenue Corridor Study two years ago, Alderpersons Hadden, Martin, and Vasquez are taking the necessary next step by codifying some of the study’s recommendations into zoning map updates.
The study recommended that higher-density mixed-use developments be allowed and encouraged along Western Avenue, to fill in the many vacant properties and allow the corridor to develop from one primarily serving people using cars to one serving people who use all kinds of transportation modes. And in the future, to provide the density that is supportive and takes advantage of a bus rapid transit network.
The zoning map changes mean that nearly all of Western Avenue from from Addison Street to Howard Street will have B3-3 zoning, allowing mixed use and residential buildings up to 4 and 5 stories tall, with 20-40 homes each, in a way that property owners and developers won’t need to get individual approval for each one. Developments still have to comply with the ARO.
When all alders task themselves with approving each and every proposed development, new housing is often delayed, raising the cost of development and denying people access new affordable and accessible housing. And, as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found, segregation is perpetuated.
The proactive Western Ave upzoning is a form of housing abundance, however, since it can speed up development of new housing in neighborhoods where it’s most in demand and where there’s existing transit infrastructure and amenities.
A secondary benefit of proactive upzoning is how it attracts new development in Chicago, because of the ease of development. New development is one of the city’s best strategies to deal with funding pensions, because new development means there are new and more taxpayers. New development eases property tax pressure on existing taxpayers.
Please pass the two Western Ave upzoning ordinances today. I also look forward to seeing and supporting proactive upzoning ordinances, including two that have been proposed in the 35th Ward, at your next meeting.
I’m co-hosting a fundraiser for John Bauters when he visits Chicago in two weeks on Monday, July 22. You can donate now or keep reading to learn why it’s important to support candidates like John.
John is formerly the mayor of Emeryville, California, and is running for Alameda County Supervisor in a runoff election on November 5, 2024. After finding out that he was coming to Chicago (for a work conference), I talked to some other Chicagoans and quickly put together an idea for a “meet and greet” event.
John Bauters and his dog, Reyna. Photo: Provided by JohnBrendan Kevenides and John Bauters. Photo: Eric Allix Rogers
I was really just excited that I could meet John because I wasn’t able to meet him when he was here in August 2022 and rode in the monthly Critical Mass bike ride. John is well known online as “America’s Bike Mayor” because of how he rides around Emeryville, a city of 13,000 people, posting photos and videos of new sustainable transportation infrastructure and housing in the city, sometimes with his dog, Reyna.
Because of the successes in reducing traffic crashes there and increasing the number of affordable homes and housing for the homeless that John has shepherded as a council member and as mayor, John is known around the United States as a progressive leader.
On Monday, July 22, I’ll be co-hosting a fundraiser for John in Chicago, alongside Nate Hutcheson, Ben Wolfenstein, Michelle Stenzel, Tim Shambrook, and Brendan Kevenides (an attorney with FK Law Illinois). We’ll start the bike ride in Lincoln Square, ride through the 40th and 47th Wards making a couple stops along the way to showcase good and bad urbanism, and end the ride on the lakefront for a community discussion followed by a happy hour.
We’re asking people to donate to John’s campaign (for Alameda County Supervisor, where he’s in a runoff) to get the details for the ride. We’re also looking for additional people to join the host committee (contact me if you’re interested). You can donate as little as $20 to join this ride and you’re adding your voice to a call for more active transportation leadership nationally.
So here’s the question I think a lot of people are wondering: why should Chicagoans donate to someone running for office in another state?
Michelle Stenzel, founder of Bike Walk Lincoln Park, said, “It’s important for city planners to have examples from the United States of successful balanced street designs. Former Emeryville Mayor John Bauters was an agent for making the roads less car-centric. I’m supporting John in running for a new position that will allow him to broaden his influence even further, which will benefit everyone who cares about livable streets.”
Brendan Kevenides, an attorney who represents many injured cyclists in Chicago, said, “FK Law is proud to support John Bauters because he’s the kind of bicycle advocate, the sort of pragmatic leader that cities and towns throughout the United States need more of. He puts in the work necessary to bring about change in transportation policy that saves lives and improves living.”
Molly Fleck, a bicycle and ADU advocate, said, “John’s work in Emeryville on affordable housing and people-oriented transportation serves as a model of what’s possible for cities that want to do things differently. I am donating because John’s leadership resonates far beyond Alameda County.”
Daniel Comeaux, a transportation planner, said, “John is an inspiring leader who is at the forefront of the national movement to build cities for people and not just cars. I’m donating because I am excited to see that work continue, as a model for communities nationwide.”
About John
John’s work has been trendsetting from the Bay Area. Under his leadership, Emeryville has been transformed as a community. Examples of sustainable urban policies they’ve led on:
One of the first cities to eliminate parking minimums and reduce maximums.
Removing on-street parking in favor of separated, protected bike lanes and dedicated transit-only lanes.
Developed “Sustainable Streetscapes” program that requires implementation of the bike/ped plan when streets are repaved.
Designated a “Pro-Housing City” by Governor Newsom for the abundance and affordability of housing the city is producing
John also championed Alameda County’s 400-mile Countywide Bikeways Plan and also initiated the County Transportation Commission’s Race & Equity Action Plan. (Note that Alameda County covers most of the East Bay communities, including Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville.) In 2022, the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club gave John their inaugural Visionary Award for his work to build safe, sustainable, and environmentally-forward communities through climate action and leadership.
Eric Rogers, a prolific photographer who bikes for transportation and fun and took one of the photos above, said, “Mayor Bauters has been an inspirational leader in encouraging cities to adopt people-centric mobility policies that make us all healthier and safer. We need to give him a bigger platform to bring these ideas to more people. Plus, he’s a friendly guy with deep roots in Chicago and the Midwest, and we have to support our own!”
John is an accessible politician and holds “mobile office hours” talking to constituents on walks and bike rides. He’ll spend some time speaking to us about safe streets advocacy after the ride but would also welcome a chance to talk about supporting broader causes, helping elect women and urbanists, and protecting vulnerable community members. Please chip in and come join us for a solidarity ride with an elected official who is modeling what we want to see here in Chicago.
I don’t have a doubt in my mind that transit in Chicagoland needs a better network manager. Based on my research and personal experience using their transit, the Verkehrsverbünde (VV) public transport associations in Germany provide the best model for network managers.
VV network managers integrate service in regions of Germany and comprise multiple municipalities and counties and myriad public and private operators. They facilitate a superior passenger experience than anything I’ve used in the United States.
Generally speaking, VVs draw the routes, select the operators for those routes, set and collect fares, distribute fare revenue to the operators, and design most graphics, branding, and wayfinding (online, on the street and at stations, and in transit vehicles). A key aspect is that the associations don’t run the services. Picture this: the existing Regional Transit Authority does all of the service planning work that the CTA, Metra, and Pace, do now; it operates Ventra; it decides the fares and how transfers between operators works; it brings in new operators as needed.
I propose my own recommendations for transit consolidation at the end.
What are the problems that strong network managers solve?
If you’re in the Chicago metropolitan area and you ride transit here or talk to people who do, tell me if these issues sound familiar (emphasis added):
“Like in Hamburg, passengers [in the Rhein-Ruhr conurbation] had to buy two or three different tickets when they transferred from one company’s services to another. This was frequently necessary even on short-distance trips…”
“timetables were not coordinated and waiting times for transfer passengers were long”
“there was growing consensus in the problem stream [a phrase specific to the paper] that transit needed to be reformed”
“Rather than rely on the individual transit agencies to come to reach consensus in the problem stream, advocates focused on affecting policy change in the state government [of North Rhine-Westphalia]”
“the cities, counties, and companies of the Rhein-Ruhr region did not at first put aside their own interests in pursuit of the greater good. Parochial thinking was a problem from the start—companies were initially skeptical of the unified tariff system, and it took time for them to realize that by working together they could achieve a system that was more than the sum of its parts” [1]
automobilization and “Falling transit ridership led to falling revenues for the transit companies” (referring to a period in the 1960s, not global pandemic-related)
Network managers in Germany have service characteristics and benefits generally unseen in the United States. The world’s first Verkehrsverbund was founded in Hamburg in 1965, nearly sixty years ago, and the benefits were proven within seven years.
Homburger and Vuchic conducted a study 7 years after the creation of the world’s first Verkehrsverbund in Hamburg, finding that travel times had been reduced by 25% to 50%, and people were more willing to make transfers. Except for a few instances, fares also decreased. The rationalization of the bus network resulted in operational savings of up to 20%, savings that—because of economies of scale—persist indefinitely. The ability of the Verkehrsverbund to spend public money more effectively is a great asset from a public finance perspective. Some rail stations saw passenger counts increase by 25% to 110% after the formation of the HVV, and the percentage of passengers carrying monthly passes increased from 42% to 54%, which reduced boarding delays. As a result, perceptions of public transit improved dramatically at this time. Therefore, Homburger and Vuchic concluded the Verkehrsverbund was a success and recommended it as a model for other metropolitan areas to follow.
If the proposed consolidation authority in Chicagoland can eke out those benefits…that is what I mean when I say the “juice is going to be worth the squeeze”.
How German network managers deliver those benefits
VVs are able to deliver these benefits by starting with these common governance characteristics:
they are an association or union of transit operators (public and private)
they decide the routes, schedules, and fare policies of existing and future services
they commission public or private operators to bid on and run routes for contracted durations (managing route concessions is not common to all VVs [2])
their shareholders comprise the transit operators, and municipalities, counties, and states, served by the routes
The paper highlights that the formation of a couple of the VVs there was a need for negotiations to “convinc[e] leaders in the largest transit agency in the region [i.e. the CTA] to form a network manager with the other agencies [Metra, Pace] under the premise that joining such an alliance would be more beneficial than staying out”. The City-State of Hamburg was the first to develop a VV, and Max Mross, the CEO of the city-owned transit operator, which provided 70 percent of the rides, “had the unique ability to spearhead such ideas, and he used his power to push through the formation of the HVV”.
An aspirational corollary I’m imagining is that if Dorval Carter wants a better legacy he could lead rather than resist the inevitable consolidation.
There are a few contrasting elements between the situation in Chicagoland (where CTA, Metra, and Pace operate) and the situations in Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia prior to the implementation of their VVs. For example, public transport companies were most likely to be owned by municipalities and routes terminated at city boundaries, the other side of which constituted a new fare for the passenger.
Another contrast is that the shareholders (municipalities and some operators) across the six German regions studied had consensus on the problem definition. I don’t think that has occurred in Chicagoland yet and may be the first, largest barrier to consolidation conversations. Mayor Brandon Johnson, after one year in office, has not acknowledged the issues of the CTA that he controls; the three transit agencies and one oversight agency have all agreed that more funding is necessary but have not conceded that organizational and service reforms are necessary to ensure that additional funding improves passenger services.
A proposed bill in Springfield would craft a new agency called the Metropolitan Mobility Authority. The bill’s adoption – and later implementation of the MMA – would probably go smoothly if there is a political coalition of Mayor Johnson, Governor Pritzker, and the county executives who select the current and future authority board members. Part of forming the coalition is identifying and agreeing to some of the problems of the current formation and service delivery of the transit operators today. In other words, offer something that the transit agencies want in exchange for their affirmative participation in a new network manager.
(The proposed bill implements CMAP’s PART Option 1 while the model I describe represents much of PART Option 2.)
Practical example: Bonn, Germany
I have visited Bonn, Germany, six times. Bonn is in the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Sieg (VRS) public transport association that includes Cologne and an area of nearly 2,000 square miles. VRS’s member operators provide about 200 million more trips annually in that area than in Chicagoland where it also has one-third of our population.
There are 10 operators in the VRS network, including Deutsche Bahn and SWB, a transit operator owned by the City of Bonn, plus a bike share system operated by Nextbike and included in some VRS passes.
To travel between Bonn and Cologne there are multiple options [3]. One could take the U-bahn light rail line, operated by the SWB (owned by the City of Bonn), but it would be faster to take regional train routes 5 or 26; each departs hourly 30 minutes apart. The two routes have shared stops only between Bonn and Cologne and go in other directions beyond the two cities.
Here’s where the two routes become interesting:
Route 5 is operated by National Express, a British company
Route 26 is operated by MittelrheinBahn (a brand of Trans Regio which is a subsidiary of Transdev formed by a merger with Veolia)
To the passenger, this distinction is not meaningful. Their VRS ticket – sold through the VRS and DB apps, or made available via an employer program – works identically well on either train. What happened, without being too specific, is that the VRS identified the need for these two routes and tendered their operation to qualified transportation companies. Those companies offered their bids to operate the route knowing that the fare price was fixed by the VRS and the amount of subsidy was also fixed by the VRS and its public entity shareholders. These companies are also aware that they are competing against DB’s high-speed and medium-speed train services as well as the slower, aforementioned light rail line (which costs the same).
I bring this up so that readers can imagine…transit abundance. If suddenly the current RTA or the future MMA opened up routes to additional operators it’s quite likely that no operators would bid on the routes because there are so few riders and little ability to make money. But if the subsidies for the current operators are also made available to new operators who could deliver sufficient service for a lower cost then it could create a market of operators who want to provide abundant transit services. Abundant transit services are a key change the region needs to grow transit ridership; I predict that with Metra adding a bunch of new runs on the BNSF line from Chicago to Aurora that Sunday ridership will increase drastically. Given more or better options, people will take trips they wouldn’t have otherwise taken.
Network managers closer to Chicago
Toronto. You may have heard of Chicago’s twin Great Lakes city to the north, which is even shaped like Chicago if it were rotated 75° clockwise. In the Greater Toronto & Hamilton Area (GTHA) Metrolinx is a municipal corporation (“Crown corporation”) of the Ontario province founded in 2006. Metrolinx operates the contactless card (Presto), the GO commuter rail service that is transitioning to a regional rail system, the Pearson airport express rail link, and several new rail lines and extensions. Metrolinx is also renovating and expansion Toronto Union Station and building bus rapid transit lines.
However, Metrolinx is not involved in local bus and streetcar route planning and service delivery operated by the Toronto Transit Commission. This is a major difference between Metrolinx and VVs as the German network managers are the first and last stop when it comes to deciding where routes exist and when they run.
Recommendations for consolidation in Chicago
If Chicagoland transit consolidation was to more closely align with the VV model, it would need to incorporate the South Shore Line (running between Chicago and South Bend, Indiana) and intercity coach buses (like DASH, which runs between Chicago and Valparaiso, Indiana) into service and schedule planning and fare payment and transfer integration. Example: The Rhein-Main VV is the transit association that covers Frankfurt in the state of Hesse, and spills over into the state of Rhineland-Palatinate where Mainz is.
The state legislators who support the bill should be prepared to use their power over the state’s transit authorities and the public purse to create an “influx of resources” to induce members’ entry (the operators and the counties that choose board members) to the consolidated organization. What does that mean? In Hamburg, prior to the establishment of the VV, Deutsche Bahn (DB), the federal railway operator that operates all long-distance trains and most suburban trains (now under contract to the VVs, see note [2]) demanded that the new VV pay for a new central trunk line, subsidize the suburban rail network, and give it veto power. There are plenty of potential and proposed transit expansion projects that the state legislature can choose from to fund to ensure broad support for the consolidation: regional rail that runs more trains all day between suburbs and Chicago; a new tunnel under the Loop that would create Metra lines through downtown so people don’t have to change trains as they commute between suburbs; increased bus service across the board (responding to operator unions being against the consolidation idea because they believe it will mean fewer jobs). From the article: “Both the [Hamburg] city-state and DB agreed on the problem, but disagreed on the terms of the policy package that would be the solution.” In Chicagoland, I think we need to continue working on identifying and agreeing to a consensus problem stream.
The four transit agencies (the three operators plus the Regional Transportation Authority) have also stressed that more funding is needed but the state legislature should “make large infrastructure investments conditional on establishing a network manager”.
Notes
This part continues: “It may have taken several years, but the stakeholders did eventually build enough mutual trust that they began reaching agreements that laid the groundwork for further cooperation.” I said in my WTTW interview that the benefits may not be seen for several years, implicitly referring to the hard work of integration. The Rhein-Ruhr VV started nine years later, and I hope that Chicagoland can consolidate faster. At the moment, CTA president Dorval Carter seems obstinate in the face of demands for reform and specifically is skeptical of consolidation. (The Hamburg VV formed in five years and the Hannover VV formed in one year.)
In this post I am using a simplified view of verkerhsverbünde. Universally across Germany they are fare and branding integrators but not all of them are engaged in route and service planning or contracting services to operators. That is taken care of by ÖPNV-Aufgabenträger (Wikipedia article in German). For example, Verkehrsverbund Mittelsachsen in Chemnitz has the dual role that I’ve been using in this post; refer to this article about how VMS has contracted operators for some of the regional rail routes. The Berlin-Brandenburg also has the dual role while the VRS in Cologne/Bonn, used in my “practical example”, does not do the service planning and contracting.
A shortcoming with VVs is when there are two in adjacent regions, like the Cologne/Bonn part of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Rurhgebeit part of the same state (Duisburg, Essen, and Dortmund). Each has a separate VV – VRS in Cologne/Bonn and VRR in the Rurhgebeit – and there are many people who regularly travel between the two and the ticketing for passes is more complicated. I don’t think this is a potential problem in Chicagoland as long as some Indiana services are included in the future network manager because there is not a similarly large and adjacent region with an overlapping service area.
Mayor Johnson and staff in the Mayor’s Office announced today at the Chicago Cultural Center the finality of administrative and legislative strategies – called “Cut The Tape” – developed for the development process executive, EO2023-21.
Mayor Brandon JohnsonL-R: Bonita Harrison, Phil Beckham, Juan Saldana
What I think makes the “best” are the strategies that I believe will increase housing abundance (a phrase that made it into the vision statement) and reduce development costs. To explain why I picked it, I added a “Why?” statement to each.
A good portion of the 107 strategies are solutions to issues that I’m not familiar with [1], and for now I will be skipping those until I learn more about them.
The best publicly-visible strategies
4. Design a process for expedited review of affordable housing development projects. [Why? Affordable housing already has high costs, some of which are extended carrying costs due to the lengthy review and approval process.]
7. Convene a working group to explore consolidating the Community Development Commission (CDC) and Chicago Plan Commission (CPC) into a single body or to have joint meetings to streamline processes. [Why? Certain project types have to be approved by both commissions, which have different schedules, different application and documentation standards. Approving a project in fewer meetings saves time and effort from staff and applicant.]
9. Propose that the City only present City-owned land sales to the Chicago Development Commission (CDC) if the land has acquisition, remediation, or vertical construction that is subsidized with TIF dollars. [Why? ChiBlockBuilder and similar sales should be able to be done with fewer necessary approvals. City Council would still have to approve these sales.]
17. Reduce the number of internal design review meetings from 3 to 1 and assess how to best engage DPD’s Committee on Design going forward. [Why? Fewer meetings is better – I’m not sure what else to say.]
20. Finalize pre-approved designs to create faster options to build more affordable housing. [Why? Come Home Chicago was a pretty good idea from the Lightfoot administration and it needs a conclusion, in the form of a catalog of pre-approved designs that home builders can license to get permits faster. If the post-TIF Bond gets adopted by City Council then the pre-approved plans will coincide with a missing middle initiative called “pad ready” in the Bond that will prepare city-owned lots for construction of houses in the plan catalog. Learn about how the pre-approved plan program in South Bend, Indiana, is going.]
28. Expand the pilot program for cash advance payment options. [Why? A lot of grant programs are only paid as a reimbursement which makes it harder and sometimes more expensive for small businesses to execute on the reason they’re receiving the grant; this program would offer cash ahead of time with appropriate guardrails to protect potential taxpayer loss.]
59. Expand the City’s Encumbrance Ordinance to enable the clearing of City fines and fees from City-owned vacant lots; to include any debt owed to city, including but not limited to: water or sewer assessment; money owed to the City pursuant to a court order or an order from the Department of Administrative Hearings (DOAH); or demolition liens. [Why? The city has liens on properties it owns, due to acquisition since those liens, for unpaid water and sewer bills, which it expects the acquirer of city-owned land to pay rather than the entity that generated the debt. In many cases, it’s faster and cheaper for the new owner to pay the old debt that belongs to someone else.]
67. Eliminate Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) approval of a special use permit to open a hair salon, barber shop, body art shop, or nail salon. [Why? This one makes it into my top three. I don’t think there’s a valid argument for these types of businesses to have to obtain a “special use” from the ZBA. It’s regressive, it wastes everyone’s time, and the ZBA approves every single one of them.]
68. Explore Universal Affordability Preferences that would allow buildings to add more housing by-right without triggering a planned development, but only if the additional units are affordable. [Why? Affordable housing – really, any new housing – should not be subject to community approval, and this would help overcome aldermanic privilege/prerogative while also generating more housing.]
List continues below
69. Revisit zoning code elements that functionally require all shelters and transitional housing developments to seek approval from ZBA, regardless of building size, form, or underlying zoning designation. [Why? Shelters are necessary, should not be subject to local community approval, and the current system is ridiculous in that a shelter can fail to be approved because a ZBA member seat is unappointed or a member and an alternate didn’t show up to a meeting.]
70. Amend the Chicago Zoning Ordinance to allow applicants for Type 1 zoning changes to incorporate requests for variations and administrative adjustments into Type 1 zoning change applications – eliminating the duplicate review processes. [Why? It lowers the cost of doing business in the city, and lowers the cost and speeds up the acquisition of certain approvals that the zoning code mandates. EXAMPLE: developer proposes a building that needs a 5′ reduction in the required rear setback; rather than see two different boards or committees and prepare two different sets of documentation and analysis, the developer bundles the setback variation request into the “Type 1” zoning change request. IN FACT, this strategy is complete and it’s been in use since February’s zoning committee meeting.]
76 and 77. Allow commercial-to-residential conversions of ground floors while exempting those conversions from additional residential parking requirements. + Allow ground floor residential uses on commercial corridors with excessive vacancy. [Why? Housing abundance, and this would enable more accessible homes, a priority of AARP, Access Living, and others.]
79. Pass ordinance to allow for up to four issues to be heard as administrative adjustments before a ZBA hearing is required. [Why? The documentation burden and the required “findings of fact”analysis for appearing in front of ZBA is unnecessary for the kinds of changes that really should be approved as administrative adjustments.]
80 and 81. Create an interdepartmental working group to streamline special uses and variations by shifting most applications to administrative review processes, while retaining the ZBA’s more in-depth evaluation for applications that warrant an increased level of public scrutiny. + Allow multiple administrative adjustments to not be reviewed as variations, allowing certain parking reductions by right, and investigating whether other variations needed for housing projects may be addressed via administrative adjustment. [Why? Basically the same reason as 79.]
82. Eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements on new developments citywide. [Why? Parking requirements increase development costs, are carbon-intensive, facilitate higher levels of car ownership in urban areas, and “free” spaces causes more traffic.]
83. Remove zoning barriers to City’s Non-Congregate Shelter acquisition program, allowing existing buildings to be repurposed as shelters or transitional residences. [Why? Zoning shouldn’t be used to inhibit new housing, especially for the most vulnerable Chicagoans – see also 69.]
103. Support third-party organizations to develop technical assistance and capacity building programs for emerging and MWBE developers. [Why? Chicago benefits if more people are capable of developing property – see CEMDI for an example of a capacity-building program.]
There are a ton of additional strategies that are largely internal processes but with clear benefits to city staff and the applicants that represent what’s sometimes meant as “streamlining” a process. For example:
46. Explore technology platforms that will allow departments to better organize and track closing documents, beyond the current exchange of documents via email
52. Explore the feasibility of using electronic signatures on contracts.
Honorable mentions
56, which I would like to know more about: “Align Chicago Construction Codes with current national model codes and standards, including modernizing the Mechanical Code in 2024 and Building Code in 2025.” What is in the current versions of the International Building Codes that have been adopted since Chicago’s IBC 2018 that would reduce housing costs, or make it easier to build housing? According to a contributor, items in the ICC’s mechanical and plumbing codes should make construction more affordable, and updating to the latest IBC allows for more mass timber.
78. Explore options to post DPD’s special use recommendations online at ZBA website seven days before hearing date. [Why? Transparency.]
86. Explore options for ZBA to post applications, plans, findings of fact, and staff recommendations to its website. [Why? Transparency.]
Missing
Other land use and zoning reforms that are on the level of “eliminating parking mandates citywide”:
Allowing accessory dwelling units (basement units and coach houses) citywide.
Allowing two and three-flats in all residential zoning districts.
[1]. For example, I am not familiar with what this strategy is referring to, or the impact it could have, but I trust – based on the overall quality, expansiveness, the expertise of the focus groups who were consulted, and personal familiarity with most strategies – that it’s important: “47. Consolidate DPD Capital Grant funding requirements, structures, and sources of three programs into two grant tracks: Medium and Large”.
