Chicago’s Efforts To Make Housing Affordable

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (0:12)
Hey Chicago, I'm Sasha-Ann Simons, and this is In the Loop.
At the end of this podcast, stick around for a rundown of the latest news here in the Chicago area. But first, let's talk about the American dream for a moment. Buying a home has long been part of that, but for many Chicagoans, that dream is feeling further away. Whether you're looking to buy your first home, move into a bigger place, or just stay in the neighborhood that you love, finding affordable housing in Chicago is getting tougher. Home prices are climbing, inventory is tight, and a major proposal aimed at making it easier to build new housing across the state, well, that's stalled in Springfield overnight. So where does that leave the city's housing market? And what can city leaders do to help more Chicagoans become homeowners? In this episode of the pod, we'll tap in with one of those leaders and discuss the challenges and potential solutions. At the table was Lissette Castañeda, Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Housing.
Now we have a state budget, it passed just this morning, but Governor Pritzker's build plan did not get a vote. Now, a reminder for listeners, the plan would, in short, override zoning rules in cities and towns statewide in an effort to make building more homes easier, more efficient, and cheaper. So I started by asking the Commissioner about her reaction to the build plan not getting a vote.

**Lissette Castañeda** (1:37)
Ultimately, we're glad that the conversations that we've been having at the city level are also happening at the state level. For now, we're going to concentrate on the things that we can do within the city of Chicago to ensure that working class families can both rent affordably and find affordable options for home ownership. Certainly, through the Department of Housing, we have a variety of programs.
We have the city lots of working families where folks are able to build affordable home ownership opportunities for people. The Department of Planning and Development has the Missing Middle program. There's lots of things that we are doing within the city of Chicago to ensure this.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (2:12)
Zoning authority, which would have fallen under this build plan, it was part of the reason why a lot of folks were up in arms about it. It's not something that's given up easily, right? In Chicago, you have alders who have a big say in what gets developed in their wards. This falls under what we know as aldermanic prerogative.
Could something like the build plan help Chicago to create more affordable options, though?

**Lissette Castañeda** (2:34)
I think that we've done a really great job of working with our aldermanic partners to ensure that we are building what fits in the community and what makes sense. You've seen many alders who have done up zoning and who really are concentrating on how to ensure we're also building affordably through the Affordable Requirements Ordinance and any other kind of zoning changes that they make. And we're really proud of that work.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (2:53)
So a question on everyone's minds, I think, is, how do we create more housing inventory? I know that you've been hard at work on this. You've already started to talk about some of that work. But walk us through the steps that the city has been taking in recent months to create more housing stock, because that's the root of the issue here.

**Lissette Castañeda** (3:09)
Yeah, absolutely. So just on April 1st, we announced the latest awardees of our qualified allocation plan. Those are 15 projects that are going to bring over 1,100 units of affordable housing across the city of Chicago. We are building on the north side, on the south side, and on the west side.
We also have a pipeline that includes over 4,000 units right now. During this administration, we have advanced more than 10,000 units of affordable housing. We have built, we have constructed, we have projects under review, we have projects under construction. Just on Wednesday, we cut the ribbon on 43 units of affordable housing at the intersection of South Chicago and the South Shore Community Areas Thrive Exchange. And that was a really wonderful investment of over $19.5 billion from the city.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (3:59)
Yeah. Part of that too, that announcement on April 1st was about ADUs, right? Accessory Dwelling Units or Granny Flats, as a lot of people know them. There was so much back and forth about the folks wanting to not have those in their backyard, literally.
And so now we've sort of landed at this place where it's been advanced, where we can have these ADUs. And so I wonder if you could sort of talk about the progression of that conversation.