Category: Illinois

Okay, 2026 should be the year Illinois lawmakers do something about the housing shortage

February 19, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Governor JB Pritzker announced his plan to address the state’s housing shortage in 2026. This is the third year in a row I’ve written about proposed legislation to unlock new housing in Illinois, and this should be the year – the governor and General Assembly leadership are fully aligned since they, together, introduced bills cover six major land use, zoning, and housing development reforms.

Pritzker’s budget address on Wednesday covered a wide range of housing issues in four minutes:

  • the size of the shortage (227,000 new homes are needed by 2030 to keep up with demand)
  • everything is too damned expensive! rent is too high!
  • not enough homes are being built
  • redlining played a role in housing being built less often in certain areas
  • regulations inhibit new homes and small homes from getting built
  • bureaucratic red tape
  • parking mandates require too much parking that are unused and expensive

Watch the full 4-minute housing speech, part of his hourlong budget address.

I propose some non-exhaustive reasons why the average Illinoisan might want to support these reforms:

  • There are 6% year-over-year rent increases which is making it hard for Illinois to be a competitive place to maintain its population and its services. Population loss results in higher costs for everyone because services and pensions are paid for by fewer people.
  • I want Illinois to lose as few Congressional seats as possible in 2030.
  • It encourages new development which spreads the tax burden onto more taxpayers and lowers it for any given taxpayer.

It’s a whole set of reforms to lower housing costs

To resolve these issues, Gov. Pritzker is working with legislative leaders in the Illinois House and Illinois Senate to adopt a package of bills:

Third Party Review (SB 4063, Ellman)

In cases where a municipality cannot review a building permit quickly enough an applicant could hire a third-party reviewer. The municipality would have to complete its initial plan review within 15 business days for a one or two-family house, and within 30 business days for “any multifamily, mixed-use, or commercial project”. Each subsequent review cycle would need to be completed within 10 business days.

Additionally, the bill would set inspection standards, specifically requiring a municipality to perform inspections within two business days of the request. Applicants could also use third-party inspector if the municipality does not meet the standard. Municipalities cannot charge additional fees if an applicant exercises this right, and qualified third-party reviewers and inspectors would not be permitted to charge more than the municipality’s fee.

Finally, the bill sets qualification, conflict of interest, and auditing standards, and the bill would also apply to home rule municipalities.

Legalizing Middle Housing (SB 4060, Hunter)

This is a big deal and is the key to unlock the solution to the housing shortage in Illinois. It would allow multifamily housing as of right on all lots that have a minimum area of 2,500 s.f. (To give some context the most common residential lot size in Chicago is 3,125 s.f. and in Oak Park the average residential lot ranges between 4,000 s.f. and 13,000 s.f. depending on the zoning district.)

The bill would permit between two and eight units of housing per lot in a residential zoning district, depending on the size of the lot. It would also permit new housing types that most municipalities ban:

  • Duplexes (a.k.a. two-flats)
  • Triplexes
  • Fourplexes
  • Cottage clusters
  • Townhouses
  • Stacked-flat plexes
  • Attached courtyard housing
  • Detached courtyard housing. This would allow a front house and an equal size rear house, which Chicago has vintage examples of and some architecture firms have proposed as part of the Missing Middle Infill Housing initiative, but the Chicago zoning code does not permit)
Future Firm, a design studio based in Chicago, created this concept that places two detached houses on a single property in Chicago. The current zoning code there does not permit more than one principal building per zoning lot, so if this were to get built the two houses would have to share some part of their structures.

What are some potential impacts?

In Chicago, there are 14,148 vacant lots that are zoned in a way that bans multi-family housing. If 5 percent of those were developed each year with a two-flat that would reduce the city’s housing shortage by 1,415 homes annually. (Chicago has seen an average of 4,357 new homes permitted from 2023-2025.) These zoning districts are pretty broadly distributed in Chicago, and overlap with all kinds of school attendance boundaries and near all kinds of amenities.

In Naperville, there are 35,449 (57 percent of the parcels in the city and 86 percent of parcels that allow residential uses) lots that ban multi-family housing. A minority of those would be improved to have two-family houses which would go a long way to increasing opportunity for Illinoisans (while also increase Naperville’s property tax revenues).

That’s almost too simplistic (and perhaps a bit optimistic) because the bill would permit more housing types than Chicago currently allows, like the detached courtyard housing – these new options would respond to the desire for lower-cost detached housing, increasing or maintaining the density on blocks where deconversions and teardowns are common.

The need for housing extends beyond Chicago and Oak Park. I ran this exercise here because it’s where I have the easiest access to high quality property and zoning data. Every town needs additional housing and additional housing types – for its existing residents and for future residents. Every town with transit service especially needs more housing, because more people should be allowed to take advantage of that service and that public investment.

Parking Reform (SB 4064, Cervantes)

A municipality would not be allowed to require more than 0.5 automobile parking spaces per multifamily dwelling unit or more than one automobile parking space per single-family home.

And parking mandates would be eliminated for several uses:

  • individual dwelling units that have an area smaller than 1,500 s.f.
  • affordable housing developments
  • assisted living developments
  • ground floor non-residential uses in mixed-use buildings
  • when converting a building from non-residential to residential use

The standards would also apply in home rule communities.

Single Stair Reform (SB 4061, Feigenholtz)

Residential buildings up to six stories, with a maximum of four dwelling units per floor, an automatic sprinkler system, and automatic door closers, would be permitted to have a single interior exit stairway (“single stair”). Small multifamily buildings with a single means of egress are as safe or safer than those with more than one.

A typical new apartment building in Illinois has a “double loaded corridor” layout, which has a high apartment per stair ratio. The smart stair option in the center, not currently permitted, has a much lower apartment per stair ratio. The graphic on the right shows that a single stair building can have more variation in unit layouts and sizes (number of bedrooms).

The benefits improve quality of life by making it easier to design multi-bedroom and family-size homes with additional windows for more natural light, and inset porches (allowing for cross-breezes!) because space isn’t needed for a corridor to connect every unit to a second stair way. Homes are closer to the exit in these buildings.

Further reading:

ADUs (bill number forthcoming)

Do I even have to say what this is about? The bill would permit accessory dwelling units in all zoning districts that permit residential uses. The state ADU bill, as written in HB5626, could possibly invalidate the labor requirements for coach houses in Chicago (emphasis added):

(1) Each municipality shall permit accessory dwelling units in all zoning districts that permit single-family dwellings without additional requirements for lot size, setbacks, aesthetic requirements, design review requirements, frontage, space limitations, or other controls beyond those required for single-family dwelling units without an accessory dwelling unit.

Impact Fee Modernization (SB 4062, Castro)

The state would create formulas that set maximum impact fees, relative to the impact (i.e. number of students, domestic water and sewer, etc.) and incorporate certain unique contexts, to establish certainty for home builders. Municipalities, include those with home rule authority, would have to adopt the formulas within 30 months after the bill’s effective date.

The House has this package in a single omnibus bill: HB 5626.

Volunteers and Rep. Buckner
AHIL volunteers at the Springfield Amtrak station

Abundant Housing Illinois volunteers were in Springfield yesterday to listen to Governor Pritzker’s budget speech and to push for bold housing solutions to reduce the housing shortage – evident by continually rising prices – that persists across the state.

The new bills that Governor Pritzker’s office announced today – collectively called BUILD – will have a big impact on permitting new starter homes and allowing multi-family housing all over the state, among other changes to speed up housing construction. These bills will have the biggest effect on reducing housing costs when passed collectively.

Join Abundant Housing Illinois for the next lobby day.

Read another observation in A City That Works.

Photo of the multi-story CoreSite CH2 data center at 1432 S. Clinton St., Chicago, IL 60607

New nuclear would help Illinois keep up with energy demand

March 27, 2025 / / 0 Comments

If you live in northern Illinois, your electricity supply is among the most reliable in the country, and you have nuclear power to thank for that. Unlike many other regions that struggle with grid stability, our northern Illinois benefits from a network of five nuclear power plants that provide a steady, dependable base load of electricity. If we want to maintain this advantage—and meet the growing demand for electricity—we need to build more nuclear power plants. (Illinois has a sixth nuclear power plant, but the Clinton generating station is in a different “subgrid”.)

ComEd commissioned a study in 2022 which showed that as more households transition to electric heating and driving (two changes among many others predicted and necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) our grid will need additional capacity. Heat pumps and electrified buildings are great for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, but a steady, always-on power source – one that doesn’t disappear at sunset, and one that doesn’t emit any carbon – is necessary and expected. That’s where nuclear power comes in, which has been working for Illinoisans for the last 65 years. 

A group of nuclear engineers and advocates tours the Byron Generating Station in Byron, Illinois (2023, Michael McLean).

The study, written by Energy and Environmental Economics, says, “as a result of electrification for buildings, industry, and transportation, statewide electricity demand grows by 89% and 127% in the Moderate Electrification and High Electrification scenarios, respectively.”

Currently, Illinois law bans new nuclear power plants of the types that already exist here. In a silly way, Illinois law allows nuclear power plants of a type that don’t actually exist. Thankfully, HB 3604 is a bill in the Illinois House that was passed by committee last week that would repeal the ban on existing nuclear power plant types, allowing new ones – including their updated versions – to be built. 

SB 1527 is the equivalent in the Illinois Senate and while it didn’t get approved by a committee, its deadline was extended to April 4. Bill sponsor Illinois State Senator Sue Rezin coauthored this op-ed in Crain’s, writing, “In recent years, experts have warned that Illinois is on track to shift from a net exporter to a net importer of energy, making us dependent on neighboring states for our power demands. Meanwhile, states like Georgia, Tennessee, and Wyoming are advancing nuclear projects while Illinois remains stuck in the past.

PJM is the grid price manager for northern Illinois, including Chicago, and the PJM region reaches from here to Jersey Shore. This means that demand for electricity anywhere in the PJM region affects Chicago, and generation capacity and reliability in northern Illinois can affect prices in Newark. 

Several times a year PJM holds an electricity pricing auction in which distributors – like ComEd – and other high-need consumers – like data center operators – indicate, by bidding, how much electricity they believe they’ll require over the next time period. Generation companies – like Exelon – use this pricing auction to determine which plants they’ll keep running to supply electricity at those prices (different plants and energy sources have different operating costs). 

Nuclear power has an unmatched ability to generate massive amounts of electricity without greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a good complement to other carbon-free generation like wind and solar, ensuring that even on a still or cloudy day, their intermittency doesn’t affect keeping lights, heating, and the wifi, on.

Did you know that Illinois is the state with the third-highest amount of carbon-free electricity?

In fact, PJM rates nuclear power’s Effective Load Carrying Capability (ELCC) at 95 percent, the highest of all generation and storage types, even higher than batteries (which may not be charged when they’re needed, or could be depleted in the cold). Another way to understand ELCC is that the number is a prediction that a generation source will not have a “loss of load” event in any given hour. PJM expects that nuclear power plants will operate 8,322 hours each year and sun-tracking solar panel farms to provide electricity 1,226 hours each year.

Illinois, and whichever power markets it’s part of now (PJM) or in the future, needs more nuclear energy. Next year, rate payers – electricity consumers, you and me – can expect to pay higher rates per kWh because other buyers are coming into the market and willing to pay higher rates for the most reliable sources. Specifically, data center operators want access to nuclear power. One piece of good news is that the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan will be restarting within a few years, and that source will bolster the supply in the MISO1 region, next door.

Last month, WSPY interviewed State Representative Harry Benton, a cosponsor of HB3604, reporting, “Benton says nuclear energy could help provide power to data centers across the state without a significant impact to other users on the power grid.”

Alan Medsker is a nuclear energy advocate I met the last time I went to Springfield to lobby (with a lowercase “L”) for housing abundance. He testified at the House committee this month to raise awareness about rising prices due to rising demand:

PJM and MISO face a crisis of surging load growth and a simultaneous retirement of many reliable sources of power. This confluence of events will soon cause large rate hikes on ratepayers across the state. Together, the General Assembly and Governor’s office have worked hard to attract new businesses to our state, especially data centers.

Data centers bring with them large 24/7 energy demands. For this reason, tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are considering all nuclear reactor design options to meet their energy requirements, and they are going to make sure they can get the power they need, when planning to build. Several of them are already partnering with nuclear reactor developers. If we restrict their options, they will almost certainly look elsewhere – there are plenty of other states that welcome nuclear energy developers, and some are even providing incentives.

Nuclear power plants’ high electricity generation capacity supports a reliable grid of delivery to the home and some price stability that prevents the kind of energy price spikes seen in areas that rely too much on oil and natural gas. In the 2024 “capacity obligation” auction for energy delivery in 2025-2026, PJM announced “capacity prices for the 2025/26 delivery year soared to $269.92/MW-day, up from $28.92/MW-day in the last auction”. Nuclear power accounted for only 21 percent of energy capacity provided by generators in that auction while gas accounted for 48 percent.

“The spike in capacity prices was driven by power plant retirements, increased load, and new market rules that aim to better reflect risks from extreme weather — coupled with new resource accreditation metrics that are designed to reflect how much capacity a resource delivers during system stresses.”, Utility Dive reported. The nine times increase may not be fully reflected on consumers’ bills. 

The alternative of having more power from non-nuclear sources is a future where electricity providers struggle to meet demand and return to using more fossil fuels. The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts coal-burning will still occur in 2050!

That’s not a future we should accept. Solar and wind are being installed faster these days, providing more of the energy mix, but they and the requisite new transmission and storage infrastructure are decades away – at least – from potentially taking over the responsibilities that nuclear and gas have been taking care of since the 1960s.

Illinois has the workforce, expertise, and supply chain to expand nuclear power and accommodate rising demand and temper rising prices. We should take advantage of it by re-legalizing nuclear power plants in the state.

  1. MISO is the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, another regional grid price manager like PJM. ↩︎

Letter to the editor: Legalize housing abundance across Illinois

March 3, 2024 / / 0 Comments

My letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times was published on February 26, 2024.

State Rep. Kam Buckner of Chicago has introduced another land use bill that Illinoisans should support. The bill provides that municipalities with a population of 100,000 or more should allow property owners to have more than one home on a lot. This forward-thinking legislation represents a significant step toward addressing the pressing housing challenges facing our communities and would foster more inclusive and sustainable urban development.

The shortage of affordable housing in Illinois for middle-class families, particularly in the Chicago area, has reached a critical point. New housing in places with access to jobs, opportunities and amenities has not kept up with demand.

Buckner’s bill acknowledges the need for innovative solutions to tackle this issue head-on. By lifting the ban on multifamily housing options in residential zones, the legislation promotes diversity in housing types, catering to the needs of our population.

I believe cities that don’t allow enough housing should not be able to push people to remote areas that have cheaper housing and less access to the things that make our cities great. This sprawl has devastating effects on our agricultural land and natural open space, ultimately increasing the tax burden on municipalities by extending and maintaining utilities to far-flung, lower-density areas.

More often than not, residents of sprawling development have higher transportation costs, according to research by the Center for Neighborhood Technology.

In Houston, America’s fourth-largest city with a lot of sprawling development and limited alternatives to driving, 34.4% of households pay 45% or more of their income just for housing and transportation. In Chicago, on the other hand, only 27.5% of households pay 45% or more of their income on housing and transportation.

Multifamily housing— which could be as little as two homes on a lot — not only provides more affordable options but also promotes a more efficient use of space and resources. By fostering mixed-use development, it’s easier to create and sustain neighborhoods with vibrant retail in walking distance.

map of the zoning districts in Naperville, symbolized in three categories (multifamily housing allowed, multifamily disallowed in a residential zoning district, and all other zoning districts)
Map of the zoning districts in Naperville, not shown in the Chicago Sun-Times posting. Three categories are symbolized: multifamily housing allowed, multifamily disallowed in a residential zoning district, and all other zoning districts.

Our legislators should recognize the positive impact that allowing multifamily housing can have on affordability, community development and overall urban sustainability. It’s time to embrace progressive measures that will shape a more equitable and prosperous future in Illinois.

Steven Vance, urban planner, South Loop

Illinois might join the country’s league of states adopting land use reforms

February 23, 2024 / / 2 Comments

Update on April 5, 2025: none of these bills were passed, but there is greater momentum in the current General Assembly for new bills. Read about them on my newer blog post.

Illinois House Representative Kam Buckner (26th district) has introduced three bills that would adopt land use reforms across all or a lot of the state. This is a trend happening across the United States to address twin crises of low housing construction and limited affordable housing caused in large part by individual municipalities restricting new housing.

I’ve summarized the three proposed bills below. If you would like to help get these adopted, join Abundant Housing Illinois.

Allowing accessory dwelling units

Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are apartments and small backyard houses that are built to provide on-site housing for family members, or generate additional income. They are usually allowed by amending zoning codes to add design parameters that treat them differently than apartments, detached, or attached houses and exempt them from typical density limitations inherent in nearly all zoning codes.

Buckner filed HB4213 in November 2023, which would disallow any unit of local government in Illinois from prohibiting ADUs, which most governments in Illinois do through various zoning rules (the main one being that a residentially-zoned parcel is only allowed to have a single building).

A bill like this has already been adopted in California, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire (at a minimum).

Letters to the editor

I submitted a letter to the editor in March and am waiting for the media outlet to select it for publication.

Coach houses are one type of small backyard house, common in Chicago. This one in Lakeview was built in 2023.

Lifting parking mandates

Buckner submitted HB4638 in January 2024 to get local governments out of the business of forcing a minimum number of car parking spaces at developments near transit, which are currently established without any rationale. You might say the amount of space cities require businesses and apartment buildings to provide is based on vibes.

Letters to the editor

  • My letter to the editor describing the benefits of not requiring so much parking everywhere, and specifically mentioned this bill, was published in The Daily Line in February.
  • Pete Snyder’s letter to the editor was published in the Chicago Sun-Times in March and asks Chicago to “finish the job” that the Connected Communities ordinance started and remove parking mandates citywide.
There are so many better things we can do for a community than dedicating land for car parking.

Allowing more than one home per lot

Most municipal zoning codes in Illinois have a zoning district called something like “R1” that allows one detached house on a lot, often setting a very large minimum lot size that must be assembled before construction can begin. Municipal leaders then apply R1 broadly within their municipalities’ boundaries, effectively banning condos, townhouses, row houses, and apartments – the most affordable kinds of homes to buy and rent.

Buckner introduced HB4795 in February 2024; it would apply to the state’s eight largest cities and require them to allow at least a “duplex” (two-unit house) on every parcel that allows a detached single-family house.

Naperville would be one of the covered municipalities; the city allows two-family dwellings in R2 zoning districts and slightly more homes per lot in the higher-number R zoning districts. Their B1 neighborhood shopping district also allows multi-family housing.

But the Naperville zoning map shows how prevalent R1 and its friends the “E” estate districts are: the vast majority of the city is zoned to allow only single detached houses.

Letters to the editor

My letter to the editor in support of this bill was published in the Chicago Sun-Times on February 26, 2024.

Letter to the editor: Illinois cities shouldn’t have the ability to impose parking mandates

February 9, 2024 / / 1 Comment

My letter to the editor was published as guest commentary in The Daily Line

State Rep. Kam Buckner’s bill to stop cities from mandating specific numbers of off-street car parking at homes and businesses in transit-served areas should be celebrated. These mandates increase the cost of housing, take up land that could be used for just about anything else (like, more housing), and, because of how they facilitate more driving and require building more curb cuts than is truly necessary, make it harder to walk, bike, or ride the bus to run errands.

A massive parking garage at the new Malcolm X College on the Near West Side of Chicago.

I rent my home and I like the idea that there are only enough car parking spaces in the building for people who really need to have a car close by and are willing to pay for it. This means that the cost of providing parking for everyone in the building is not added onto my rent. 

Currently, every municipality in Illinois with a zoning code has a different idea of how many car parking spaces are required at bars, restaurants, townhouses, bowling alleys, and cemeteries. City planners don’t have the training or expertise to project the demand for parking. In other words, they don’t know more than home builders and businesses do about how many parking spaces each project needs.

In the place of mandates, cities should let home builders and businesses choose how much parking they believe they need to serve their tenants, employees, and customers.

By prioritizing car ownership and usage, parking mandates perpetuate reliance on fossil fuels and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, removing such requirements can incentivize the use of public transportation, cycling, and walking, consequently reducing traffic congestion and air pollution in our cities.

Without parking mandates near transit service, cities will be freer to allocate land in ways that support sustainable transportation, including making room for more housing to be located near transit and in walking distance to essential shops and services.

I look forward to debating the specifics of Buckner’s bill and getting it passed this year. 

-Steven Vance, Chicago, urban planner

[P.S. Buckner has another bill, HB4795, to prevent Illinois’s eight largest cities from having residential zoning districts that disallow multiple units.]