{"id":6083,"date":"2024-09-26T18:55:59","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T18:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/?p=6083"},"modified":"2024-09-30T21:04:25","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T21:04:25","slug":"can-cutting-red-tape-improve-chicagos-affordable-housing-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/?p=6083","title":{"rendered":"Can Cutting Red Tape Improve Chicago\u2019s Affordable Housing Crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Buckley<\/em><\/p>\n

Associate Editor<\/em><\/p>\n

Loyola University Chicago School of Law, JD 2026<\/em><\/p>\n

On April 5th<\/sup>, 2024, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson published the Cut the Tape Report<\/a> as part of his administration\u2019s focus on confronting Chicago\u2019s affordable housing shortage. The report marks the completion of the first step in the process put in place by<\/a> Mayor Johnson\u2019s Executive Order 2023-21. The order aimed<\/a> to identify inefficiencies and redundancies in the city\u2019s administrative processes to shorten Chicago’s residential and commercial development timelines. The report resulted from collaboration<\/a> between fourteen city departments, numerous external stakeholders, and six peer cities, identifying over 100 recommendations for improvements to the development process.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Chicago\u2019s affordable housing shortage<\/strong><\/p>\n

The United States is currently facing a worsening affordable housing crisis<\/a>. The crisis is partially a result of long-running neglect and indifference<\/a> to federal welfare programs initially designed to combat poverty and the impacts of racial injustice. Decisions made by the Nixon and Reagan administrations to impose a moratorium<\/a> on the construction of new public housing and drastically cut<\/a> the rental assistance programs run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are a few examples of federal policies that have led to the housing shortage the country finds itself in today.<\/p>\n

Chicago is not immune from this crisis and faces a growing affordable housing gap<\/a> of over 120,000 units. The increasing<\/a> income inequality in Chicago further exacerbates this problem as more units are needed every year while only a few new units are built. Mayor Johnson\u2019s administration has made increasing affordable units a priority, and even then, only 571 affordable units<\/a> have been completed since Mayor Johnson took office in May of 2023. Although promising, the current number of new units is only a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed to begin to turn the crisis around.<\/p>\n

Proposed recommendations and future impacts<\/strong><\/p>\n

As stated, the report is a culmination of aims by various city stakeholders to identify and cut unnecessary red tape<\/a> and specifically supports Mayor Johnson\u2019s housing strategic priority to \u201cBuild Faster.\u201d<\/a> These stakeholders worked together to identify over one hundred recommended actions the city could take to achieve these goals, giving Mayor Johnson a platform from which to begin delivering on his housing promises.<\/p>\n

The report highlights<\/a> \u201c10 Big Bets\u201d as its primary recommendations to streamline development. These priorities include<\/a> \u201ctransformational\u201d zoning changes that would eliminate minimum parking requirements and streamline special use permits, reducing the number of design review meetings, creating a \u201cDirector of Process Improvement\u201d role in the Mayor\u2019s office to aid in collaboration between city departments, and eliminating Phase 1 and 2 environmental reviews as requirements to sell environmentally cleared city-owned land parcels. These are just a few examples of the signature recommendations proposed by the report<\/a>, all of which seek to reduce the hurdles and costs developers face when trying to get these projects off the ground.<\/p>\n

The recommendations proposed by the report can make affordable housing cheaper and easier to build in Chicago. For instance, eliminating the city\u2019s minimum parking requirements is an action already taken<\/a> by other U.S. cities that could make building both affordable and middle-income housing in Chicago cheaper and faster. Parking requirements are expensive<\/a> for developers and slow down building timelines due to the layers of required review. Chicago should follow the recommendation of the report to eliminate these parking minimums for new developments, which may also encourage residents to take public transportation rather than add to the congestion already on city streets.<\/p>\n

If implemented, these recommendations would help to decrease costs and timelines associated with building affordable housing. However, cutting red tape alone will not mend Chicago\u2019s large, growing affordable housing gap. To truly begin to reverse this trend, Chicago will need to see a major investment of resources and energy across a variety of city departments and stakeholders. The Johnson administration\u2019s eagerness to confront this challenge was shown through a recently passed<\/a> $1.25 billion plan that aims to reimagine the city\u2019s tax-increment financing (TIF) program to better serve low-income city areas. This, along with other proposals by the administration, can work in conjunction with the report to begin to confront Chicago\u2019s affordable housing gap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On April 5th, 2024, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson published the Cut the Tape Report as part of his administration\u2019s focus on confronting Chicago\u2019s affordable housing shortage. The report marks the completion of the first step in the process put in place by Mayor Johnson\u2019s Executive Order 2023-21. The order aimed to identify inefficiencies and redundancies in the city\u2019s administrative processes to shorten Chicago’s residential and commercial development timelines. The report resulted from collaboration between fourteen city departments, numerous external stakeholders, and six peer cities, identifying over 100 recommendations for improvements to the development process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":158,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[2223,2185,382,383,1063],"class_list":["post-6083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-regulation","tag-affordable-housing","tag-affordable-housing-development-chicago","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-affordable-housing","tag-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6083"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6090,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6083\/revisions\/6090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}