Tag: city council

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. 

Many of Chicago’s bungalows were built with basement ADUs

August 6, 2024 / / 1 Comment

It’s easy to check: is there a ground-level door on the side gangway, or at the rear?

  • Walk up and down the streets of Vittum Park and Archer Heights and you’ll see dozens of houses with gangway doors.
  • Over in Portage Park a bungalow in the 45th Ward has a door at the front corner, a couple of steps down.
Portage Park bungalow with a basement ADU entrance at the front corner

Back in 2018 I wrote about whether “lock off apartments” like these would be allowed by the Chicago zoning code. This was before I realized that so many bungalows have these; they’re so inconspicuous that they’re easy to miss.

Did you know that the city has 14 bungalow districts on the National Register of Historic Places? All but one would be severely affected by the proposed ADU expansion ordinance that would require homeowners to obtain a special use from the Zoning Board of Appeals in order to permit an existing ADU so someone can legally continue living in a separate household, or to permit the build out of a new ADU. That’s because most – if not all, but I didn’t check each one – of the land is zoned RS-1 and RS-2.

Google Street View images show six selected bungalows in Archer Heights that have side doors to basements. The status of each (whether they are separate households or shared with the household on the first floor) is unknown. Legally, however, most homeowners would not be able to rent out a basement unit because of zoning code restrictions here that the ADU ordinance could change. Thank you to Danny Villalobos for finding these; Danny is a fellow member of Urban Environmentalists Illinois, which has this petition gathering support for expanding the ADU ordinance citywide.

Only the homeowners in the Falconer Bungalow Historic District in Belmont Cragin would be exempt from that requirement in the proposed ADU expansion ordinance because none of the bungalows are zoned RS-1 or RS-2.

In a recent blog post I quantified how many small-scale residential properties would be affected by the RS-1/2 “carve out”. In this post I’m discussing those same kinds of properties but in the 13 bungalow historic districts that would be affected.

A list of 13 of the 14 historic bungalow districts in Chicago and the number of small-scale residential properties that are in RS-1 and RS-2 zoning districts that would have to obtain a special use from the Zoning Board of Appeals in order to have an ADU if the current version of the proposed ADU expansion ordinance would be adopted.

Prepared remarks: the ordinance to expand ADUs citywide has multiple benefits

June 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Alongside representatives from CMAP, Community Investment Corporation and Preservation Compact, ULI Chicago, and the Chicago Association of Realtors, I also spoke at a subject matter hearing on June 11, 2024, to the Chicago City Council’s zoning committee about the necessity to expand accessory dwelling units to be allowed citywide. Read more about the proposed ordinance.

Hello, my name is Steven Vance. I am an urban planner and consultant in Chicago. I am also a member of Urban Environmentalists Illinois. I have been studying, promoting, and collaborating around ADUs for six years. I was on ULI Chicago’s task force, have presented to various groups about building an ADU, and created a free directory on ChicagoCityscape.com that lists local architects and companies who can design and build ADUs. 

1st Ward Alderperson La Spata comments on the proposed ADU expansion ordinance during the subject matter hearing.

Given that background of some of my ADU work I feel that I understand a lot of how the adoption of ADUs in the last three years has fared and can point out future benefits that the city will gain if the proposed ordinance is adopted. I will highlight some of those future benefits.

Removing the maximum coach house size cap. The proposed ordinance would change the cap on how much floor area a coach house could have. Allowing larger coach houses on larger lots will allow more family-sized units with two or more bedrooms. Additionally, larger coach houses can make them more cost effective to build, because of the high fixed costs in building a coach house of any size. The proposed ordinance could facilitate more family-sized coach houses than are currently being built.

Allowing ground level coach houses through the administrative adjustment for parking. The proposed ordinance would allow property owners to build a coach house at grade, meaning it can be accessible. This would make it easier for families to decide to build a small house for an aging family member, who may very well be the current owner, as well as put a dent in the dearth of accessible housing. A second benefit of this change is that ground level construction is significantly cheaper than building atop a garage.

Allowing all-residential buildings in non-residential zones to participate. The proposed ordinance would allow thousands of residential-only buildings that are in B and C zoning districts to add an ADU. The Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University found that 25 percent of buildings with 5 or more units fit into this category but are currently ineligible. These are the building sizes that are most capable of adding two or more ADUs. If two or more ADUs are built, half must be rented affordably. Adopting this ordinance means those buildings would be able to add ADUs.

Allowing coach house and conversion units on the same lot can also be cost effective for property owners. Either one would likely require a water service or electric service upgrade so it makes sense to make one upgrade to serve multiple new homes.

I believe that the biggest gains in the city’s ADU policy will come from allowing them citywide, in all residential and mixed-use zoning districts. Citywide expansion makes it simpler for the departments to administer, makes all buildings capable of adding an ADU eligible to add an ADU, makes it easier for homeowners to add an additional home to fit their changing household needs, and lets other property owners add to the city’s housing abundance thereby slowing down rent increases that the city is experiencing.

Note: The plan, as explained in Crain’s and the Chicago Tribune, is to vote on the ordinance at the June 25, 2024, zoning committee meeting, and if approved there the City Council would vote at their July meeting. (City Council does not meet in August.)

I wish I wrote a blog about food trucks sometimes: Chicago has made it really difficult for expansion

January 6, 2013 / / 0 Comments

The Flirty Cupcakes food truck. Photo by Andrew Huff. 

Most of my time (because it’s actually my job) is to blog about transportation. This blog is about cities, and cities are about food trucks, so I guess it’s fine. I neither own a food truck, nor patronize them, but I’m fascinated by the process of how city administrations are handling them, whether through some kind of indifference or making regulations that seem only to make running a food truck more difficult than it should be.

At a “mobile food summit” at the University of Chicago in the spring of 2012, I learned from the sponsor Institute for Justice that they were suing cities for passing unconstitutional laws that regulated business not for health and public safety, their duty, but to protect the economic well-being of other businesses. Based on that knowledge, Chicago did this with the food truck ordinance from July 2012.

The Chicago Tribune reports today, in summary form, the current status of this regulation (here’s the full article):

No city licenses for food trucks

The city hasn’t licensed a single food truck for onboard cooking since the practice was approved in July. Some food truck operators say they’re scared off by the extensive red tape they foresee in the application process. Of the 109 entrepreneurs who have applied for Mobile Food Preparer licenses, none has met the city’s requirements.

I looked this up to know more and I found short commentary on Reason magazine’s blog:

The City of the Big Shoulders is hungry. And 109 entreprising folks want to help feed it. Too bad they’re not allowed to.

For example, the Tribune interviewed proprietors, one of whom said, “While most of its provisions are similar to those in other major cities, [Gabriel] Wiesen said, Chicago’s code includes rules on ventilation and gas line equipment that “are meetable but extremely cumbersome and can raise the price of outfitting a truck by $10,000 to $20,000.”

The bit about the regulation possibly being unconstitutional is that the food trucks with this license (which allows them to cook on the truck) must have a GPS device recording their position during retail hours and cannot operate within 200 feet of a brick-and-mortar restaurant (except in designated mobile food truck loading zones, for a maximum of two hours). Restricting where and when a food preparation business can operate is the tricky part: the city doesn’t regulate this for brick-and-mortar restaurants (except for zoning, which is much more lax and is intended to keep incompatible land uses away from each other).

Apparently Chicago needs NATO/G8 conferences to solidify itself as a world class city

January 19, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Photos of people participating in Occupy Chicago, back in October 2011. Photo by Ryan Williams. 

It wasn’t a diverse economy, a tech startup community, several well-known universities downtown, the world’s best collection of architecture, or any of that other crap that we need for others to pay attention to us. Where am I coming from?

From the Beachwood Reporter’s Steve Rhodes:

“Almost everyone agrees that having these two summits in our city is a great opportunity to solidify our rightful place as a world city,” Ald. Joe Moreno wrote on Huffington Post explaining his votes in favor of the new ordinances.

I’m not sure which part of that declaration is worse: “Almost everyone,” “great opportunity,” or “solidify our rightful place as a world city.”

It’s okay to say no to ordinances. Not every ordinance needs to pass, even with “concessions” after some “great open-mindedness” from Mayor Emanuel. Then the City Council tried to hide from the public:

“They wouldn’t let Occupiers into the council chambers. First they claimed it was a capacity. So I went up to the mezzanine and photographed empty seats and came back down to the 2nd floor. When I showed them the evidence they were lying, the cops reconvened then announced that the mayor simply refused us inside.”

This city is good enough without these two conferences. Ones that no one asked for.

My commentary on these kinds of issues is supremely bad, and I’m very mad at this city council for its endless string of rubber stamping. I didn’t start paying attention until the parking meter lease deal.