Fix Chicago Housing

Near every L station

What can go up within a half mile of the L?

The shaded circles on the map are that half mile around each station: about a 10-minute walk.

Near Metra stations in the city

Same idea, for the 74 Metra stops inside Chicago

Near Metra stations in the suburbs

The shortage is regional. Zone the other 168 Metra stops too.

The goal counts the whole Chicago region, so suburban homes count. Same levels as in the city; assumption: each suburban station builds 30% as much as an average Chicago L station (bigger lots, less demand). Station count: Metra (Wikipedia).

One neighborhood at a time

Rezoned so far · 0% of the city's buildings

Commercial corridors

Apartments over shops on 38 main streets

Ashland, Western, Milwaukee, Halsted, Clark, Broadway, Cicero, 63rd, 79th and more. Applies to lots facing the street.

Downtown office conversions

Turn empty Loop offices into apartments

Downtown office vacancy is about 27% (Cushman & Wakefield, Q2 2026). About 4,000 conversion homes are already underway, so they're in the baseline. This adds more.

Policies

Real proposals and reform ideas, ranked by how many homes each adds with your current map. Flip them on and watch.

Chicago & Springfield proposals

Worked in other cities · not on the table here

Each card says what actually happened where it passed.

Already law (built into today's numbers)

No parking minimums near transit

Passed July 2025

Parking mandates ended in transit-served areas, about 74% of the city, starting September 2025.

Chicago Cityscape

Green Social Housing fund

Passed May 2025

A $135M revolving fund and a city-backed nonprofit developer for permanently affordable, mixed-income buildings.

City of Chicago

Your missions

Town hall ·

The ten things every community meeting hears, what the research actually says, and how another city got past it.

How to win the room

Which shortage are you solving?

Real estimates, all for the Chicago region; no official count exists for the city alone. Chicago permitted about 4,900 homes in 2025, yet the regional shortage still grew by about 8,800 homes in a year. Your goal: today's gap plus 15 years of that growth, on top of today's pace.

–new homes a 10-min walk from the L or Metra

–affordable homes (rent-restricted)

–existing homes torn down

Where the new homes land

Jobs and taxes

–jobs in the year they're built

–lasting local jobs

–local taxes & fees a year

NAHB's local impact of building 100 apartments: 161 jobs and $2.2M in local revenue the first year, then 44 jobs and $503K a year (2015 dollars).

Can they afford a 1-bedroom in 2041?

Share of pay going to a typical Chicago 1-bedroom. Under 30% counts as affordable. Today's rent is $1,745 (Apartment List, Oct 2026); rents rise 3.4% a year and wages 3.2% a year (BLS Employment Cost Index).

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How the numbers work

A simple model, with every assumption on the table

What each zoning level allows: Level Stories Homes on a 25×125 lot Based on Chicago zoning
Homes per lot follow the minimum lot area per home in the Chicago Zoning Ordinance §17-2-0303. A 25×125 ft (3,125 sq ft) lot is the city standard (Chicago Public Library).
How the game decides what gets built: A rezoned lot can rebuild if it holds homes, or a small one- or two-story shop lot with a street address on a commercial corridor or within ¼ mile of the L (parks, museums, field houses and named landmarks are never touched), was built before 2000, is shorter than the new limit, sits on a lot under about 40,000 sq ft, and the new building adds at least one home. Within 15 years, 6% of those lots rebuild, times a neighborhood demand factor from 0.3× to 2.5× (its share of buildings built since 1990 vs. the city average, from the city's building data). Which lots rebuild is a fixed random draw, so the map and the count always match.
If nothing changes: Chicago keeps permitting about 4,900 homes a year (TRD Data, 2025), but the regional shortage keeps growing about 8,760 homes a year, Zillow's 2023→2024 change (Mann Report). Rents rise 3.4% a year, Chicago's 2025 asking-rent growth (CoStar via Matthews). Both trends are held flat for 15 years.
Rent effect: Each 1% added to Chicago's 1,282,248 homes (Census ACS 2024) lowers rents about 0.19% compared with where they'd otherwise be (Mense, 2025). Median gross rent $1,440 (Census ACS 2020–24); typical 1-bedroom $1,745 (Apartment List, Oct 2026).
Shortage estimates: 165,687 homes underproduced, Chicago metro, 2022 (Up for Growth, 2024). 115,282 home deficit, 2024 (Zillow via Mann Report). 224,445 affordable homes missing for extremely low-income renters (Housing Action Illinois & NLIHC via The Real Deal). 41% of Chicago is zoned single-family only (Metropolitan Planning Council, 2023).
Affordable requirement (ARO): Chicago requires 10–20% affordable homes in projects of 10+ units that need a zoning change, city land or city money (City of Chicago). The game applies the dial to new buildings of 10+ homes. Production effects follow Terner Center modeling for Los Angeles, where output fell about 30% going from an 11% to a 25% requirement (Phillips, 2024).
Office conversions: Downtown has 141.9M sq ft of office space and 27.2% vacancy (Cushman & Wakefield, Q2 2026). Chicago's 2026 conversions turn about 4M sq ft into 3,900+ homes (Sun-Times op-ed), about 1,026 sq ft per home. Nearly 27% of office stock could convert (CommercialCafe via WBEZ); developers disagree on whether that's too high or too low.
Jobs and taxes: Per 100 new apartments: 161 local jobs and $2.2M local revenue the first year, then 44 jobs and $503K a year (2015 dollars) (NAHB, 2015).
People and pay: Median wages are BLS May 2025 for the Chicago metro, via WageDex. Wages grow 3.2% a year (BLS Employment Cost Index, June 2026). The people are made up; their jobs and pay are real.
Game assumptions (not measured): These are judgment calls, labeled everywhere they're used:

6% of eligible lots rebuild in 15 years before the demand factor; lot size = 2× building footprint.

Short-term rental limits return 10% (precinct bans) or 50% (primary-residence rule) of entire-home listings.

Coach houses: pilot pace doubled when every ward allows them by right.

Half of city-owned vacant lots get a 2-flat; 10% of "other vacant" homes return under an empty-homes tax.

Project boosts: single stair +25%, prerogative reform +15%, faster permits +10% (and 20% sooner), no parking minimums +10%, small lots +20%.

Social housing at Montgomery County's target pace; office conversions as a share of downtown office space.

Shops only redevelop on commercial corridors or within ¼ mile of the L, and only on addressed lots with no landmark name (keeps parks and museums out).

Affordable homes count the affordable requirement on new buildings of 10+ homes, 30% of social-housing homes, and 20% of megaproject homes (the share Foundry Park, the 1901 Project and Bronzeville Lakefront commit to). Other levers are counted as market-rate.

Suburban Metra stations build 30% as much as an average Chicago L station at the same level; megaprojects: half of the remaining planned homes get built by 2041 once the city funds the infrastructure.

Policy ranks ("Big" 15,000+ homes, "Medium" 4,000+) are based on your current map, so they shift as you play.
Myths you've unlocked
Big projects in the pipeline: Chicago's giant master plans add up to about 31,000 planned homes that aren't built yet: The 78, Bronzeville Lakefront, the 1901 Project, Cabrini-Green, Foundry Park and the rest of North Union (purple dots on the map). That's roughly six years of the ~4,900 homes the city permits each year, but only about a tenth of the 2041 goal. Most are stuck on infrastructure or financing, not zoning, so "Get the megaprojects built" is a money decision, not a zoning one. Some planned housing has been lost to other uses: the Tribune printing site's 5,900 planned homes became the Bally's casino (Multi-Housing News), and a 13,575-home plan for the old U.S. Steel South Works site was cancelled; it's now a quantum computing park (Wikipedia).
Data: Building footprints, stories and unit counts: City of Chicago (circa 2015), garages and sheds removed. Street centerlines: City of Chicago. 77 community areas. 124 L stations inside the city from the CTA station list; 74 Metra stations from Cook County GIS.
Not modeled: Construction costs and interest rates (see the end of a simulation), school and transit capacity, and displacement beyond the homes directly replaced.