Gov. JB Pritzker has taken heat for fumbling legislation aimed at keeping the Bears in Illinois. But the two-term governor is also licking another wound — the failure to get his plan overhauling local residential zoning laws passed this spring.
Despite investing a significant amount of political capital, Pritzker was unable to overcome local government leaders’ opposition to the proposal that, they say, not only preempts local authority, but was also dropped on their laps at the last minute.
Dubbed the Building Up Illinois Developments, or BUILD plan, it would have allowed multi-unit housing, such as duplexes and triplexes, and “granny flats” on nearly all properties zoned for residential use. It also would have created statewide timelines for permit reviews and inspections.
Pritzker, who’s running for a historic third term and weighing a potential 2028 Democratic presidential bid, unveiled the plan in his February budget address.
His campaign team then launched a media tour promoting the package as an answer to Illinois’ affordable housing shortage, which the University of Illinois estimates amounts to about 142,000 units. The study predicts that the state would need to build 227,000 units over the next five years to keep pace with demand.
And the disparity is wider for Chicago, where non-profit Housing Action Illinois estimates 28 affordable homes exist per every 100 extremely low-income renters.
And while the Democratic governor has had little to no trouble getting the supermajority-blue legislature to rubber-stamp his initiatives, the BUILD package never made it onto either the House or Senate floor for a full vote.
According to Democratic lawmakers, the major sticking point was a provision creating a statewide zoning standard for “middle housing.”
“I recognized from my own local government background that the one size fits all approach doesn’t always work as we all think it will,” said Senate Majority Leader Cristina Castro, D-Elgin.
The governor remains optimistic. At a press conference following the spring session’s adjournment, Pritzker vowed to continue pushing his plan with the hope lawmakers will pass it during the fall veto session.
“The people of Illinois want action on housing, they want to make sure that we can make it easier for people to build more homes and make it easier for people to create housing on property they’ve already owned,” Pritzker said. “So, I’m going to continue to fight.”
Perhaps the single loudest voice of opposition came from the Illinois Municipal League whose president, Brad Cole, spent hours in Springfield testifying against the plan in various committee hearings.
Cole said the BUILD plan not only preempts local authority, but it also strips community engagement and public input in zoning decisions. He also said he and other IML members were wary the plan would only create more units that most people still couldn’t afford.
“Every mayor in Illinois wants their community to grow,” Cole said. “Our focus was on affordability, if this is about developers or about Realtors, well, that’s not the business we’re in.”
Pritzker’s political operation often teamed up with real estate agents to promote BUILD, hosting roundtables and filming social media videos with real estate agent influencers. His campaign’s Facebook and Instagram accounts posted BUILD content almost every week, the message being: more houses on the market means reduced costs.
After the spring session wrapped earlier this month, Pritzker said the housing affordability issue is political, and he will certainly continue campaigning on it.
“Do you want to elect somebody who’s actually for building housing or somebody who doesn’t have any plan?” Pritzker said.
Cole said the IML has had minimal contact with the governor’s office, only learning of the BUILD plan in a 15-minute phone call the night before the February budget address. And despite sending letters to the governor’s office to be included in negotiations, Cole said the only call he received from the Pritzker’s staff was at 2:45 PM on the final day of session.
“They said, ‘We need to talk about this,’” Cole said. “I said, ‘Look, we’re trying to go through a 3,000-page budget, there’s a lot going on. We’re in the last hours of the session.’”
The IML in April also presented to the governor’s office an alternative housing plan, which would have allowed municipalities to opt in to receive priority state grants for middle housing construction and technical assistance.
The governor, during an unrelated press conference during the final week of the session, brushed it off, saying “it didn’t go anywhere.”
“I know that [BUILD] has been characterized as a massive taking of power from local government, and it isn’t that,” Pritzker said.
But Castro said the IML and other local leaders’ concerns were enough to make her and her fellow Democrats uneasy about pushing the BUILD plan through. She served on the Illinois Housing Development Authority from 2013 until 2017 when she was sworn in to the General Assembly.
Castro said listening to local leaders’ concerns has been, and will continue to be, crucial.
“This allows the summer for the governor and the [bill] sponsors to engage a lot of those folks in conversation,” Castro said. “We’re not going to go out of business… we’re not going to solve this problem overnight.”