Chicago’s housing red tape remains tangled 1 year since mayor’s pledge
It's been a year since Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson released his ‘Cut the Tape’ report to boost affordable housing and economic growth. Little of the red tape has been removed.
Mayor Brandon Johnson promised to “Cut the Tape” holding Chicago back from housing and economic growth, but a year later most of his proposals just rearrange regulations, some are close to useless and almost no real change has been achieved.
On April 5, 2024, Johnson unveiled 107 separate recommendations, headlined by “10 Big Bets” that he said would make it faster and cheaper to build housing and open businesses in Chicago. The administration pledged the solutions would help Chicagoans “build faster, build everywhere and build together.”
The city keeps track of these initiatives online, updating the public about what initiatives have been completed, are in progress or have yet to be started. Forty-eight to-dos of the original 107 have been labeled complete. Fifty-nine others remain unfinished.
Analysis suggests the initiative has so far rearranged, simplified or digitized far more red tape than it has removed. Of those line items that might actually help, too few have been completed.
Roughly half of the items marked as “completed” create new committees, roundtables, checklists or training. Any red tape they might eliminate seems to be inside city hall, not on the ground for those trying to create housing. Another quarter of completed tasks simply put forms online, accept digital signatures or launch software portals. That spares applicants a trip downtown, yet the underlying regulatory hurdles remain.
Some of these “complete” metrics might also be misleading. For example, recommendation No. 19, which discusses consolidating the design review process and moves Chicago toward objective criteria for approval and clear guidelines, could have a big impact. Only, the to-do Johnson wrote down wasn’t to implement this change, but merely to “consider” it. The city marked this as complete. They’ve successfully considered it, and no change has been made.
There are a couple promising reforms on the list that would benefit the city if brought to completion. For example, recommendation No. 24 would scrap costly Phase 1 and 2 environmental reviews on pre-cleared city lots – actually removing a layer of regulation from the process. Other promising reforms include: No. 76, converting vacant storefronts to housing without discretionary rejections, a change recently passed by the city council for certain ground floor spaces; No. 67, letting barber shops and nail salons open without a Zoning Board of Appeals hearing; and No. 82, repealing parking minimums across the city.
Loosening restrictions such as these has been proven in other cities to not just make development easier, but to improve the state of the economy. When Minneapolis relaxed parking minimums, there was a 17% drop in average rents. In San Francisco when the city allowed neighborhood-scale commercial businesses such as barbershops, nail salons and art studios to forgo a discretionary hearing, the wait time for new businesses was drastically reduced, saving thousands.
If Johnson wants to get serious above cutting red tape, these are the kinds of high-impact initiatives he should focus on completing.
And the “Cut the Tape” report overlooks some of the most effective reforms available to the city. Research shows Chicago’s red tape could be cut by implementing solutions such as:
- Automatically approving delayed permits. Thirty-, 60- or 90-day deadlines for each permit stage, with automatic approval if the city misses the clock.
- Mandating objective criteria across the board. Aldermanic prerogative has stopped many development projects for subjective reasons that keep permit rates low. This veto power held by each of the city’s 50 aldermen should be limited in light of the city’s housing crisis to ease development of light-touch density properties – four- to 10-unit buildings.
- Removing discretionary hurdles for additional dwelling units across the city. A pilot program unfairly restricts development of additional dwelling units to a few small pilot areas and creates unfair limitations to development on the South and West sides of Chicago.
- Allowing for more multi-family housing in single-family zones. With 40% of Chicago restricted to single-family housing, it is difficult to build cheaper and denser alternatives. Having to seek special approval to circumvent these restrictions adds time and complications to housing development.
If Chicago wants more homes, storefronts and jobs, the administration must trade symbolic process improvement for explicit rule removal. Until then, the city’s development process will remain, in spirit and in practice, just as tangled as ever.