Tag: video

Choosing NITA board members: it needs the best people

February 2, 2026 / / 0 Comments

It’s super important to the success of the forthcoming Northern Illinois Transit Authority1 (NITA, pronounced “neat-uh”) that is has new board members who are forward-thinking, collaborative, and invested in high-quality transit service. Collaboration is almost an inherently necessary trait, as 17 of the 20 new board members will also serve on either the Pace, Metra, or Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) boards! A mind for the future is also obligatory because NITA will take over planning responsibilities from the three service boards and decide on service patterns and expansions with the region in mind, using new-to-the-region operations and capital funding.

The Blue Line to Forest Park desperately needs an overhaul to eliminate slow zones and create stations that are comfortable for riders. Connect 290 Blue is an interagency effort to consolidate planning for the Blue Line overhaul and the reconstruction of the Eisenhower Expressway.

There is going to be an estimated $1.2 billion in new funding for transit service and another $180 million annually for capital projects; I want the new funds to be invested well2 and I think that starts with a well-formed NITA board3.

The authority will materialize on September 1. Good board members should be nominated by their respective choosers and confirmed by the Illinois Senate well in advance.

Mayor Johnson will get to appoint five members to the NITA board, similar to how the mayor of Chicago appoints five members to the Regional Transportation Authority board. The RTA will dissolve on September 1. The same goes for Cook County President Preckwinkle, who will appoint five members to NITA, with “advice and consent” of the 17 commissioners.

New to the process will be Governor Pritzker, who will get to appoint five members to the NITA board. The Illinois governor did not get to appoint any of the RTA board members.

The last key attribute of a NITA board member is their personal investment in transit.

Drake Warren is running for a seat on the Cook County board and at the Abundant Housing Illinois happy hour last week he said that as a commissioner, to ensure that NITA provides the best connectivity for Cook County residents, he will support only the nominations of people who actually ride transit in the region.

This is what Drake said (which is in the video above):

Cook County is responsible for putting some of the upcoming NITA board members on the board, and I have some non-negotiables [in order] to have my support for appointment.

Somebody has to be a transit user and have relevant expertise, whether that’s legal, whether that’s technical, operational, or otherwise.

I’m not going to have a discussion around support unless they can meet those criteria because transit is one of the most important ways for how our city fulfills its function of connecting people.

I think whether one rides transit is a reasonable and preferred heuristic to gauge board member eligibility. So that’s another reason why I think AHIL’s endorsement of Drake Warren was the right call.

Ensure your voter registration is up to date and request a Vote By Mail ballot.

Footnotes

  1. I think that Austin Busch wrote the best summary of NITA (SB2111), for Streetsblog Chicago. ↩︎
  2. Speaking of good choices in spending: the transit TIF that is funding the local match for the CTA’s Red Purple Modernization Phase 1, which was completed in summer 2025, will likely have generated the necessary amount of monies in 2028. CTA does not yet have a plan for Phase 2 and should not automatically have access to transit TIF funding. City That Works argues that the transit TIF should be terminated at that time rather than continue to divert money from the different city and county governments. ↩︎
  3. Diverging Approach writes about some of what the new board’s mandate comprises. ↩︎

Ald. Fuentes: “Additional dwelling units historically in the city of Chicago have been naturally occurring affordable units for our families”

July 27, 2025 / / 0 Comments

26th Ward Alderperson Jessie Fuentes responded to 9th Ward Alderperson Anthony Beal at the July 15, 2025, meeting of the Chicago Committee on Zoning, Landmarks, and Building Standards, and added her own perspective on why ADUs are important for families. The text of her statement is below.

The committee voted to approve the citywide ADUs ordinance but it was deferred and published the following day during the City Council meeting.

First and foremost, you know I have to correct the record. Every body of research and data will tell you the immigrants pay taxes and the city of Chicago and any other city that they live in. In fact, we won’t even, we won’t be able to build our city without immigrants.

Now for the reason that we’re here. ’cause it’s not about migrants, immigrants not paying taxes, it’s about housing. And we had a housing shortage well before migrants arrived to the city of Chicago. And it is because there is so much red tape around development, around adding units and around bringing affordability to our communities.

That’s not some sort of, like, tall tale story. It’s a reality that many of our communities experience whether you are representing Wrigleyville, whether you’re representing Hermosa, whether you’re representing Humboldt Park or any other community across the city of Chicago.

The reality is, is that there’s a lot of red tape that small landlords in particular have to jump through just to be able to provide units for our community. Additional dwelling units historically in the city of Chicago have been naturally occurring affordable units for our families.

Often when people are creating basements, attics, or whether that’s a coach house in the back of their yard, they’re doing so for relatives, for friends so that they could keep them close. Or for a neighbor that may not be able to afford a market rate unit in our community.

Landlords shouldn’t have to go through so many different loopholes or to be in favor with their alderperson to be able to add a unit for a family to live in. And so I’m okay with letting go some of control because I didn’t come to be an elected official to keep control of every problem in my ward.

I came to be a representative of the people and people in my community, in the 26th Ward, are telling me every single day that they can’t afford to live in my community because of the increase in rent, the astronomical increases that we see in property taxes.

The type of rapid gentrification that we are seeing in communities like mine is a form of violence. When you displace people the way families in my community have been displaced, you have to be able to look at the toolbox to say, what tools am I gonna add here so that I can preserve families in my community?

For me that means making sure we tack on fees for the demolition and deconversions, that tenants have the right of first refusal and that homeowners and building owners have the opportunity to add additional dwelling units if that’s what’s gonna keep people in place.

And so today I’ll be voting yes on this ordinance. Thank you, chairman. Thank you.

The transcript above was automatically generated by Vimeo AI and edited by me.

ADUs in Chicago: it’s the 4-year anniversary of a 3-year pilot program

May 22, 2025 / / 0 Comments

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.

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

March 26, 2025 / / 0 Comments

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

“How do parking mandates affect your businesses?”

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

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

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

Panel: Bringing back 2-to-4 flats

March 26, 2025 / / 0 Comments

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

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

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

Meet the panelists

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