To improve housing affordability, build more of it

Some thoughts on aldermanic privilege and zoning reform

Earlier this month, Block Club Chicago ran a story about a proposed 5-story apartment building development in Andersonville. The project would’ve required re-zoning from the single-family home that currently exists there to build 18 apartments, a combination of two- and three-bedrooms with four units set aside as affordable. The project is now not moving forward after Alderman Andre Vasquez denied his support for the rezoning request.

I don’t particularly care about these particular 18 units, but this episode presents a nice opportunity to discuss housing policy in Chicago, so let’s talk about it.

Zoning instances like this come up pretty frequently in Chicago. Somewhere, a developer buys a lot with a single-family home - there are a lot of them; over forty percent of all land in the city is zoned for single-family only - and tries to get approval to put up some kind of multifamily housing instead. The Zoning Committee waits to defer to the local alderman, who usually waits to see how the public feels about the project, and the public usually complains. Sometimes the building is too tall. Sometimes it’ll add too much traffic. Sometimes it doesn’t have enough parking. Sometimes it doesn’t fit the look of the neighborhood, or it would diminish the quality of the neighborhood, or it’s blocking someone’s view. Sometimes it’s not affordable enough, sometimes the apartments don’t have the right number of bedrooms, and sometimes they just think there’s something else better that could be built there (that “something else”, by the way, never does end up getting built after this project gets blocked).

This is all nonsense. It’s a waste of time, and it shouldn’t happen.

Let’s take the complaints for this project at face value for a moment. Per Block Club, Vasquez stated “the building’s height, lack of affordability, and design” as his main reasons for opposing, and that it’d need to be a floor shorter and be designed more like others in the neighborhood to get his approval.

For starters, the project included four affordable apartments. At present, the site holds one single-family home, which I gather is not an affordable unit. By my math, that’s an extra four units of affordable housing versus what currently exists in the neighborhood. Five stories does appear to be a bit taller than most other buildings on that street, but if I go down a block to 5306 N Ashland I see what looks like a pretty big four-story apartment complex. If I go down another block to 5200 N Ashland, I get to the Chicago Waldorf School. It’s located in the old Trumbull Elementary school building, which was built over 100 years ago and appears to be 4-5 stories tall itself. The design does look more modern that a lot in the area, though I’m seeing a wide range of architectural styles within a one block radius, and it doesn’t really strike me as appropriate for government officials to decide on aesthetic design choices instead of, you know, architects.

But wait, why should we take these complaints at face value? Because as it turns out, this isn’t the first time someone tried to build something on this lot, and it’s not the first time Vazquez shut it down:

Back in 2020, a developer planned to turn the site into a three-story, seven condo building, and based on the plans the brick facade seemed pretty consistent with a lot of other three-story buildings in the area. That time around, the problem was not enough affordability or green space. I’m not sure why it’s a huge loss to the city to be losing a private homeowner’s lawn - particularly when I count six actual parks within a fifteen minute walk, plus Winnemac Park and Lincoln Park only 20 minutes away walking. I’m also not sure how one can add more affordable housing without increasing density - like, you know, adding a couple more floors and expanding from seven units to eighteen. But that isn’t good enough to approve either! It’s almost as if the entire process is a facade to prevent new housing from being built at all.

Which leads me to an obvious question - why does this process exist at all?

Aldermanic privilege is holding us back

There are two dimensions on which this process is broken. First, there’s the idea that every time a development project like this pops up, we need to have a bunch of public meetings where neighbors can weight in. This is done ostensibly in the name of democracy - more input from the public is good! - but in practice it generally results in a small group of angry residents having their voices amplified over all others. Secondly, we have Chicago’s long standing tradition of aldermanic privilege - the idea that the local alderman has a veto over any projects in his or her ward, which further enables a group of angry locals from preventing development in their neighborhood. The reality is that construction that happens - or doesn’t happen - in one ward impacts what happens in all the others. When some neighborhoods - typically the wealthier ones - don’t build enough new construction, rents go up, and people move to other neighborhoods where rent is cheaper. That’s how you end up with gentrification and displacement in more working class neighborhoods. It’s also how you end up with a federal HUD investigation finding the city responsible for wrongly limiting affordable housing in a discriminatory manner.

Frustratingly, in other contexts Vasquez seems to agree this localized control isn’t appropriate. From The Daily Line, here’s his take on how Chicago should approach bike infrastructure:

“When you want to build a city infrastructure, it should not be an alder’s take on whether you want it or not,” Vazquez said. “I don’t believe that Michigan Avenue was established as a street because people asked every neighbor in the community ‘Do you want to have a street going through your neighborhood?’ … So similarly, when we think about bike infrastructure, it should be that same approach.”

Seems fair! Now if only we could apply that same approach to housing infrastructure as well.

I feel a little like I’m picking on Alderman Vasquez in particular here, but I don’t mean to be - I actually like him on any number of issues that isn’t housing, and he’s far from alone on being bad on upzoning. Here’s Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa pushing for a downzoning plan to make development harder along Milwaukee Avenue in Logan Square. Here’s Alderwoman Maria Hadden blocking a zoning change for a taller building in Rogers Park, which would’ve allowed the developer to add affordable housing to the project. Notably, a lot of these aldermen blocking projects are the same ones pushing for Bring Chicago Home, or removing the state’s ban on rent control, or any other number of measures which purport to make housing more affordable. They’ll try just about anything to make housing more affordable - except building more of it.

What a better zoning regime would look like

I’ve talked before about the importance of fostering growth for Chicago. A city that isn’t growing is dying. One of Chicago’s major advantages over other big cities like San Francisco or New York is our affordable cost of living, and we need to protect that advantage to ensure Chicago continues to be an attractive place to be. Are these particular 18 apartments in Lincoln Square going to be the difference maker? Maybe not - but projects add up. A look at new apartment supply in the past year across all major American cities puts Chicago in twenty-fifth place. That’s not exactly stellar for the third largest city in the country, and we need to do better. We need to build more housing in Chicago, and get rid of the obstacles that are preventing us from doing so.

The first step here here is simple - we have a functioning zoning committee in City Council.¹ We should use it. Stop allowing local vetoes to dictate proposed zoning changes, and make decisions at the city level instead.

A second step is to follow examples from other cities that have managed to build more. We can start by legalizing two- and three-flats on all residential lots in Chicago, as groups such as Urban Environmentalists - and the Chicago Tribune editorial board! - have advocated for. Again, over forty percent of Chicago is presently zoned for single-family only (map via Cityscapes):

That includes large swathes of the north and west sides in neighborhoods such as Ravenswood, Roscoe Village, Logan Square, and Humboldt Park - all of which are over fifty percent single-family only. Legalizing two- and three-flats across the city would go a long way to expand housing supply (and affordability) in these neighborhoods. It would do also so without meaningfully changing the neighborhood environments - we’re not talking about brand new high rises; we’re talking about re-legalizing some quintessentially Chicago forms of housing.

Elsewhere in the Midwest, Minneapolis passed a series of zoning reforms beginning in 2009 which made building multifamily construction easier, including eliminating parking minimums² and permitting 2- and 3-flats on all residential lots. The results speak for themselves (via Pew):

Other comparisons of Minneapolis to other cities show similar outcomes, with rents in Minneapolis remaining largely flat following these reforms while similar cities (Columbus, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Indianapolis) all saw increases. I found this comparison between Minneapolis and St. Paul, showing larger rent decreases in Minneapolis, to be particularly interesting, given their close proximity. There’s no reason we shouldn’t follow their lead and embrace a similar reform to make Chicago more affordable, too.

The Bottom Line

Housing affordability is important, and the best way to improve housing affordability is to increase the supply of housing.

• Legalizing two- and three-flats on all residential lots in Chicago is an easy way to take a big step in that direction.

• Furthermore, we need to reduce the power of local residents to block development, and stop allowing aldermen to veto zoning reforms in their wards.

1. Well, okay, we’re supposed to anyways.

2. That is, mandating that a certain number of parking spots per apartment (in Chicago, zoning laws generally require one spot per apartment). The idea is that removing these requirements allows developers to reduce the square footage of an apartment complex’s parking lot and increase the total square footage of the housing units themselves (either via more or larger apartments).