How most of Chicago bans apartments
Zoning is meant to provide the city with the buildings it needs, but a one-size-fits-all approach has restricted Chicago's housing options
Chicago has a housing problem. Although Chicago remains more affordable than some other major US cities like New York or Los Angeles, it is still losing affordable housing, seeing a 5.2% decline from the 2012-2014 period to 2017-2019. At the same time, the city is still growing in population, if modestly, adding roughly 50,000 people from 2010 to 2020. One reason for this decline is that the kind of multi-family homes that Chicago has been known for are illegal to build in the vast majority of the city.
Zoning is a powerful tool in urban planning, allowing a city to dictate what kinds of activities land can be used for: residential, commercial, or industrial. This lets cities impose some amount of order on the urban jungle, helping to group stores together where they are convenient for residents to get to and keeping loud or dangerous industrial sites away from residential areas.
This even extends to restricting what kinds of housing can be allowed within residential neighborhoods, with single-family zoning being the most extreme case. Here, the only kind of housing usually allowed is stand-alone houses, while townhomes and all multi-family housing like multiplexes, condos, and apartments are banned (in Chicago, some duplexes may be permitted if they fulfill strict conditions). Today, single-family zoning has become so dominant that even in Chicago, one of the densest cities in the country, apartments and most other multi-family homes are allowed in just a quarter of the city1.
Single-family zoning has a complicated history. Zoning regulations in the United States originated in the early 1900s from progressive concerns about overcrowding, fire hazards, and air and light pollution, but single-family zoning specifically was first adopted as a way of excluding Black families from new developments in Berkeley, California. White real estate developers wanted to supplement restrictive covenants outright banning Black families from certain neighborhoods with regulations barring the kind of housing Black families could more likely afford, and specifically to prevent the construction of a Black-owned dance hall in a nearby neighborhood.
The practice expanded more rapidly after a 1926 Supreme Court case held it to be Constitutional, and became particularly prominent during the 1950s post-war boom. As more Americans wanted, and could afford, less crowded areas, bigger houses, bigger yards, and more trees, cities tried to encourage – or rather, require – the kind low-density, suburban community that was popular at the time. In many cases, though, it was used deliberately alongside redlining, mob violence, other racist policies to exclude Black families from predominantly White neighborhoods across the country. This combination of motivations together spurred the rise of single-family zoning, from existing in just one city in 1916 to dominating most cities in the country today.
Despite this, Chicago has plenty of apartments, across a much broader area than the dominance of this zoning would suggest. In fact, just under half of all multi-family homes in the city stand in single-family zones. This is largely because the city’s housing supply is leaning heavily on old, multi-family homes that would be illegal to build today under single-family zoning.
While single-family zoning restricts new housing, it often grandfathers in existing multi-family housing, so aging apartments and multiplexes can persist in single-family areas for decades. In Chicago, this is reflected in the average ages of that housing: in single-family zones, the median multi-family building was built in 1926 – precisely the same year that the Supreme Court ruled single-family zoning constitutional, and well before multi-family zoning was banned in those areas. By contrast, in multi-family zones, the median multi-family building was built in 1966, fully forty years younger, since their construction continued in these areas.
Partly as a result, Chicago’s iconic three- and four- flats are disappearing2. Despite being multi-family housing, almost all of these homes – 80% – are located in single-family zones. This helps explain why they are disappearing. When a century-old three-flat is taken down, it often legally cannot be replaced by another. Because of this, the neighborhoods with the most three- and four-flats in single-family zones, like Irving Park and Logan Square, are also the neighborhoods where those same flats are most likely to be replaced with stand-alone homes.
Replacing three- and four- flats with single family homes creates a problem. Areas dominated by multi-family housing can fit more people in the same area. Choosing to ban this kind of home, then, makes ensuring there is enough housing for everyone that wants to live in Chicago more difficult. Moreover, in specific areas of the city where people want to live, areas with access to transit, jobs, parks, or schools, more housing in the area can allow more people to benefit without taking anything away from those who already live there.
Opposition to change can be fierce though. Many worry that allowing different kinds of development into areas dominated by stand-alone homes will change the character of the neighborhood away from their preferred, low-density style, and even that this will result in lower property values if others feel similarly and are less willing to purchases homes in areas with any other kind of housing. Conversely, others are concerned that allowing more kinds of housing raised rents to reflect the increased value of the land for developers, forcing people out. Finally, some simply want to ensure that there are sufficient services and infrastructure – parking, schools, sewers – to provide for additional residents.
On the other hand, supporters can be harder to find. If allowing more housing in one neighborhood lowers rents in others, or provides options for new residents to move in, the people benefiting can be dispersed across the city, and may not even realize at the time that a potential development would affect them. By contrast, the concerns are very particular to the specific neighborhood in question, so even if the benefits outweigh the costs, residents concerned with the latter are much more likely to show up to local meetings on the subject.
Even in the face of this opposition, many cities and states have passed major reforms. Seattle, and the entire state of California, are allowing more units to be built on lots that used to allow just one, stand-alone house. Oregon is requiring larger towns to allow at least multiplexes in all residential areas. Closer to home, Minneapolis adopted a city plan a few years ago ending single-family zoning across the entire city alongside other reforms.
Organizers in Minneapolis credit their success in large part to the engagement process surrounding the development of the city plan, going far beyond the usual neighborhood meetings, which can risk being poorly attended and unrepresentative. Organizers worked not just with neighborhood organizations traditionally involved in development decisions, but with tenant advocates, labor unions, civil rights groups, environmental groups, biking organizations, and more. They held engagement and educational events at parades, festivals, block parties, and almost every other public event in the city. They enlisted poets, artists, and graphic designers to communicate the principles and proposals of the plan in non-traditional ways, held walking tour discussions in most neighborhoods, and provided tools to help interested community members hold their own meetings. Throughout all, they prioritized collecting residents’ input and feedback on what they wanted to see in the plan over asserting their approach from the top down.
This engagement helped organizers assuage some of the common concerns discussed before. They were able to argue that neighborhood character can be improved by allowing in more neighbors from different backgrounds; that diverse land uses can actually improve property values; and that no one who liked their house would ever have it bulldozed against their wishes. At the same time, collecting input helped planners address concerns with the plan itself. They focused on “subtle density,” like duplexes and triplexes, that would allow more housing without changing the look of the neighborhood too much. They added requirements for new development to include affordable units, and increased funding for affordable housing, to address concerns about displacement, and prioritized development near public transportation to minimize increased traffic.
Enacting reform citywide, rather than focusing on individual neighborhoods, also proved an advantage. Although it made the effort a bigger undertaking – engaging every neighborhood in a city over two years is no mean feat – it helped reduce the animosity in the process by preventing any neighborhood from being singled out and removing the option for opponents to try to shift rule changes to the next neighborhood over instead of theirs. It also helped build support, because when reform applies to every neighborhood, benefits that would normally be too small to notice in any one neighborhood add up to being large in every neighborhood. They were able to promise more options and lower rents not just to those people moving to a specific neighborhood, but to everyone in the city.
Chicago is not Minneapolis. In many ways it is better off - it continues to build more housing than it adds in residents and has already eliminated parking minimums. At the same time, the city faces its own challenges, with severely segregated North, South, and West sides and a unique city council system. That said, many of the elements needed to start a similar process are present. New, progressive alders are highly focused on ensuring equity in development, such as Jeanette Taylor placing a Community Benefits Agreement over new development at the center of her campaign. Planning organizations like the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning have recognized the need for zoning to change. Mayor Lightfoot has announced a new billion-dollar investment in affordable housing, and called for a new citywide plan, which Chicago has not updated since the 1960s. If it does, it could do worse than take a few lessons from Minneapolis.
“Planned development” zoning can allow all kinds of special projects, so was included in the area potentially allowing multi-family housing, but many of these developments – Museum Campus, for example – are fully dedicated to non-residential purposes. This leaves roughly a quarter of the city where multi-family housing is allowed in practice.
Small walk-up apartments with three or four units, one per floor