Abundant Housing Illinois

Link to full article in Crain's Chicago Business

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) have arrived at a pivotal moment for the Bungalow Belt. As living costs rise, innovative strategies to reduce costs and boost incomes are crucial. Working people, who best understand these rising costs, disproportionally feel the strain of the housing shortage. In Chicago, almost half of renters spend over 30% of their income on rent and utilities, a historic high. This burden falls heaviest on working-class, immigrant, Black, and senior citizen communities—the core residents of the Bungalow Belt. Fortunately, ADUs offer an innovative solution to the city’s housing crisis, tailor-made for this area.

The Bungalow

The Bungalow Belt represents a growing Chicago, originally designed as a region of affordable homes for aspiring home-owning, working-class families. Designed as flexible, multi-generational spaces, bungalows provide a comfortable living environment and foster a sense of community. With spacious basements and attics, many bungalows already house extended families or serve as rental units. However, rising housing prices undermine this character, detaching bungalows from their role as affordable options for the middle class.

ADUs can effectively restore bungalows to their historical role by reviving their multi-generational and rental aspects. ADUs allow families to live together while maintaining privacy, aligning with the bungalows’ original purpose. This especially empowers the 63% of Hispanic multi-generational households where home buying is a family affair. Moreover, adding ADUs provides rental opportunities within properties, echoing early 20th-century practices when bungalows were affordable housing solutions for diverse populations—a crucial feature in a city grappling with affordability issues.

Addressing the Housing Shortage, Bungalow-Style

Permitting ADUs by right is as much a matter of justice as affordability. The Bungalow Belt, being more working-class, multiracial, immigrant, and senior than areas like the Loop or northeast side, stands to gain the most. ADUs fit perfectly in single-family wards like the Bungalow Belt, where many potential ADUs already exist within the architectural style of bungalows. On my block alone, I count about half the homes likely to include a future ADU. Concerns about design or adverse impacts are simply less relevant in these areas.

Chicago might have outlawed ADUs in 1957, but the bungalow ADUs of the 1910s and 20s did not simply disappear. People are already here. The traffic already exists. The level of parking wouldn't change. And the cost of housing wouldn't rise. Permitting ADUs citywide would re-legitimize these residential units, providing revenue for underserved communities. Not permitting ADUs puts the Bungalow Belt and its residents at an economic disadvantage and at risk of displacement if the city discovers unpermitted ADU violations, limiting the mobility bungalows were intended to offer.