Abundant Housing Illinois

Illinois voters overwhelmingly support the zoning and building code reforms that Abundant Housing Illinois (AHIL) endorses to improve housing affordability in Illinois, even if it means less power for local governments or changing neighborhoods

According to a YouGov poll commissioned by YIMBY Illinois released in March, 84 percent of respondents think the cost of housing is a “major problem” and 82 percent agreed that the state legislature should move to address the high cost of housing in our state, which is exactly what the BUILD plan proposes to do.

Governor Pritzker and leaders in the Illinois General Assembly have proposed six bills to allow more housing construction by changing the local regulations that block new homes and increase their development costs. Based on results from cities and states that passed similar bills, BUILD will have the biggest effect on reducing housing costs when passed collectively.

Illinois voters favor state action

Voters disagree that their local leaders have good measures to keep housing affordable; only 15 percent rated them as “very good” or “good”, while 40 percent rated them as “poor” or “very poor”. To address the high cost of homes, Illinoisans support building more homes over maintaining local government control; 65 percent stated that they favor building more homes compared to “prioritizing preserving local government control”.

And, there is broad support for allowing more homes across community types:

• The belief that the high cost of housing is a “major problem” was shared nearly equally across rural (49 percent), suburban (46 percent), and urban (49 percent) respondents.
• Preempting local government control in favor of more homes has a lot of support; 56 percent of rural voters, 64 percent of suburban voters, and 70 percent of urban voters stated that housing affordability should take precedence over local control.

Even in the face of neighborhood change, voters support building more homes. When asked whether they support “build more homes” or “protect neighborhood from change” 61 percent stated that building more homes was more important than maintaining neighborhood character. This support was held across rural (59 percent), suburban (58 percent), and urban (67 percent) voters.

These survey results paint an exciting picture: Illinois voters are broadly in favor of the state reforming laws to allow more homes and they favor those new homes in their own existing neighborhoods.

Image caption: Survey results for the question about prioritizing allowing more homes to bring down costs or prioritizing local government control.