My prepared remarks spoken to the Chicago City Council’s Committee on Zoning, Landmarks, and Building Standards on May 21, 2025.
Hi, my name is Steven Vance, I’m a 34th ward resident and a member of Abundant Housing Illinois, a group whose members show up to advocate for approving new housing. I wanted to speak today to support the expansion of the city’s ADU pilot program into a permanent and citywide option.
This month is the four year anniversary of the beginning of a three-year ADU pilot program.
A year ago, in June, just after the three year anniversary, the department of housing fulfilled their obligation and presented their findings and recommendations. They recommended to expand it citywide.
Two years ago, a year before the department’s recommendations, newly elected Alderprerson Lawson introduced an ordinance that would do just that. To my recollection, the zoning committee has substantially discussed that ordinance only once.
During the last four years, nearly 400 ADU homes have been permitted by the Department of buildings, and hundreds of those homes have been built. Homeowners and other property owners have been able to build homes for their parents, friends, and as rental units to earn more household income. None of the ADUs are allowed to be used for Airbnb or other short term rentals.
Chicago was recently recognized as a national leader…in rent increases. Allowing more homes, including in the form of accessory dwelling units, is a way to suppress the rate at which rents rise. In some cases, including this year in Austin, Texas, Minneapolis, and Denver, so many new homes were built that rents started falling.
I urge the zoning committee to adopt an ordinance to allow ADUs citywide. Thank you.
Brian and his wife built a coach house in 2023, pursuant to the ADU pilot program, so their newborn child’s grandma could live close to home and help babysit.
Adam Ballard, the Associate State Director for AARP Illinois, the local chapter for AARP, interviewed Brian P. and I about accessory dwelling units. We discussed:
statewide legalization, after two bills – HB 1813 and HB 3552 – were introduced in Springfield
The conversation is 28 minutes long; if you haven’t dived into ADUs yet, this is a great video to help get you up to speed!
Bonus content: AARP is the largest organizational supporter of allowing accessory dwelling units in all communities because of how they expand the options for people to “age in place” (continue living in the same neighborhood when their housing needs change), earn additional income, or rent their big house to their adult children’s families. Explore AARP’s ADU resources.
Update 3/20/25, 6:04 PM: at a last-minute scheduled meeting of the Illinois House housing committee this afternoon, HB 1813 and HB 1814 were passed. The next steps are that they will likely be amended and in a few weeks will be voted on by the House.
Illinoisans who want housing abundance…it’s time to submit “witness slips” (they’re kind of like petitions and they’re seen by Illinois State Representatives and Senators. This whole process will take less than 5 minutes, including the time it takes to watch this video tutorial I made.
Fill out the witness slips! Because you pre-registered your contact information will already be filled in. If you’re representing yourself, enter “self” in the three fields (firm, title, and groups represented in this appearance). Then select the “create slip” button. (See annotated screenshot below.)
Repeat the process for all of the witness slips you want to support (or oppose).
You’re done!
Screenshot showing the witness slip form (which is prefilled because I have a My ILGA account); the checkboxes are annotated to show which ones to select.
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 (reference ordinance SO2024-0008918, and then sign this Urban Environmentalists Illinois petition). I spoke about this issue with Mike Stephen on Outside The Loop radio on July 27, 2024 (skip to 6 minutes).
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.
Update, February 5, 2025: Illinois State Rep. Ness (66th District, far west suburbs of Chicago) has proposed a bill that would ban roommate bans, HB1843.
Can you guess how many people the Chicago zoning code allows living together in a typical apartment or house when all of them are unrelated to each other?
2
4
3
5
6
7 or more
The answer is in the following paragraph.
A four-bedroom co-living apartmentLiving room at a four-bedroom co-living apartment
The Chicago zoning code allows an unlimited number of related people to live together along with three unrelated people. If you’ve got roommates and none of you are related, the zoning code says that there can be only four of you in a dwelling unit. (There are alternatives to this scenario which are not part of the discussion, comprising shelters and congregate housing and group living, which are separately defined and exclusive of a typical “roommate” scenario.)
If you want to have four roommates you may need a five-bedroom house, which you could easily find in Chicago and go ahead and rent, you’ll be fine. The city will not enforce the zoning code in this situation.
The city’s planning and buildings departments will, however, enforce the zoning code at the time of a Planned Development or building permit application if the proposal is for an apartment building (likely marketed as a co-living situation) with five-bedrooms apartments. I’m aware of two such proposals happening in Chicago; one of the proposed projects is under construction but was modified prior to approval to have only four-bedroom apartments.
How the zoning code regulates occupancy limits in housing
The Chicago zoning code has two definitions (or “defined terms”) that have to be read together to understand how the limitation works.
17-17-0248 Dwelling Unit. One or more rooms arranged, designed or used as independent living quarters for a single household [a defined term, see below]. Buildings with more than one kitchen or more than one set of cooking facilities are deemed to contain multiple dwelling units unless the additional cooking facilities are clearly accessory and not intended to serve additional households.
17-17-0270 Household. One or more persons related by blood, marriage, legal adoption or guardianship, plus not more than 3 additional persons, all of whom live together as a single housekeeping unit; or one or more handicapped persons, as defined in the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988, plus not more than 3 additional persons, all of whom live together as a single housekeeping unit.
None of the terms in the household term are themselves defined terms in the zoning code, so a “single housekeeping unit” would take the definition from the “latest edition of Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary”, or as interpreted by the zoning administrator.
Most apartments, and especially apartments marketed and used as “co-living” are considered dwelling units. Thus, each apartment can comprise one household and one household can comprise a single housekeeping unit and a single housekeeping unit can comprise an unlimited number of related people and up to three unrelated people.
However, there is an exception that an unlimited number of unrelated “handicapped persons” can live with up to three unrelated people.
Putting occupancy limits in zoning codes instills moral values that are outdated, maintain segregation, and fail to respond to changing norms, family development patterns (think “chosen family” households), and having the choice to decide who one wants to live with. In fact, it may be “virtually impossible to satisfactorily define family, or develop an alternative to the term, in a manner that satisfies the competing goals of maintaining privacy, allowing freedom of association, and protecting community ‘character’ (itself a loaded term)” (Sara Bronin, “Zoning by a Thousand Cuts”)
In Nolan Gray’s terms, zoning standards like this are based on “elite norms and heuristics”. (A heuristic is a problem-solving technique used when devising an optimal solution or assessment is impractical.)
Occupancy limits, if there are any, should be based on demonstrated facts that show benefits or pitfalls of numerically limiting who and how many people can live together. A building code that’s based on ensuring occupants’ safety is likely where that can be achieved and regulated; I’ll discuss what the Chicago Building Code has to say about occupancy limits in the next section.
Colorado Governor Polis recently signed a law that strips municipalities of the power to set occupancy limits that aren’t based on reliable information about the safety of the number of people in an apartment.
An excerpt from Colorado House Bill 24-1007; it reads, “(3) a local government shall not limit the number of people who may live together in a single dwelling based on familial relationship. Local governments retain the authority to implement residential occupancy limits based only on: (a) demonstrated health and safety standards, such as international building code standards, fire code regulations, or Colorado department of public health and environment wastewater and water quality standards;”
Chicago building code sets a kind of occupancy limit
If Chicago – or Illinois – were to adopt a law similar to Colorado’s the existing Chicago Building Code would regulate the design of an apartment. It does not set a maximum, though.
Jamin Nollsch, a senior architect at UrbanWorks who analyzed the code on my behalf, said “For the purposes of discussion, the Chicago Building Code says that at least eight people could occupy a 1,000 sf apartment. The code commentary makes it clear that the 125 s.f. per occupant load factor for apartments is a design mechanism for the egress system, and not an absolute maximum.
“There are many code sections that set limits on the occupant load of an apartment, whether it is the 7 s.f. per occupant limit, or 10 occupants for spaces with 1 exit, or the width of the egress doors. The occupant load factor, however, is intended to be a design factor and not a maximum. With approval from the building official, the maximum number of occupants can be as high as the egress design allows.”
In other words, if an apartment can be designed with a sufficient number or size or type of exiting paths, there is not really a limit to the number of people who the building code indicates could safely occupy the apartment.
Do you think the Chicago zoning ordinance should be amended to defer to the building code in setting occupancy limits?
