Chicago mayor challenges aldermanic privilege to fix housing
Chicago doesn’t have enough housing, in part because restrictive regulations and zoning drive up costs and headaches for developers. Mayor Brandon Johnson has recommended solid fixes, but the city must restrict aldermanic power.
Chicago’s housing crisis is driven by overregulation and restrictive zoning that drive up prices, an Illinois Policy Institute report found.
Mayor Brandon Johnson is confronting those issues by pushing back against city practices making it hard to build. His recent “Cut the Tape” report outlined plans to streamline permit and construction approval processes.
Plus, his recent challenge to aldermanic privilege seeks to advance the report’s goals.
Aldermanic privilege gives each local alderman control over projects in his ward. Despite going up for votes in front of the larger council, aldermanic privilege calls for all members of the planning committee, zoning committee and full city council to defer to –and vote with – the alderman whose ward the project is in.
This practice gives local aldermen unprecedented power over projects in their wards. Ald. Joe Moore, 49th Ward, once said he “often liken[s] the City of Chicago [to] a feudal system” in which “each alderman is the lord – I guess, lady, for female aldermen – of their individual fiefdom.”
Johnson recently challenged this practice by convincing the City Council to overrule a local alderman’s objections to a proposed development. A plan to develop two high-rise towers containing a combined 615 apartments at 1840 N. Marcey St. was opposed by local alderman Scott Waguespack but supported by city hall. Johnson and his administration fought for the project. On June 20, the proposal was approved 11-1 by the Chicago plan commission.
That development in Lincoln Park still faces two more votes, the first before the powerful zoning committee and the second before the full city council. Still, it is a notable victory for development in the city.
Aldermanic privilege is not legally binding and can be overcome by convincing aldermen to ignore it, but it is a powerful tradition. Johnson’s win was only the second time in recent years that aldermanic privilege has been overcome. In both cases, the developments were proposed by large, powerful and politically connected developers as well as championed by city hall. Smaller projects by Joe and Jane Average have no chance against the behemoth of city bureaucracy.
Aldermanic privilege severely restricts new housing in the city: the practice is routinely used to block, or at least downsize, new projects. Recent University of Illinois-Chicago research affirms aldermanic privilege restricts supply in the housing market. Chicago was even investigated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and found to have wrongly limited affordable housing development. It’s Econ 101: when it’s harder to produce anything, including housing, you get less of it.
Plus, aldermanic privilege is a fertile source of corruption. Once-powerful Ald. Ed Burke was sentenced June 24 to two years in federal prison for corruption stemming from his abuse of aldermanic privilege to shake down businesses.
City bureaucracy tries to keep denials quiet, with most projects killed before they ever get listed on the zoning committee agenda. Many of these are individual entrepreneurs and landowners such as Zach Waickman.
Waickman wanted to build a four-story building with 16 apartments, ground-floor commercial real estate and bike parking to replace two old, small buildings. His project was rejected because of aldermanic privilege.
To improve housing affordability in the city, new and denser housing must be permitted and built. With the current supply deficiency in the housing market, market forces will drive new construction – if city bureaucracy gets out of the way.
Johnson’s “Cut the Tape” plan eliminates burdensome regulations to accelerate development in the city. Streamlining can only be effective if new construction is approved rather than killed by local opposition.
For the sake of both residents struggling with high housing costs and would-be developers such as Waickman, Chicago needs to end aldermanic privilege.