CITY HALL — After weeks of delay and pushback from mayoral foes and allies alike, the City Council on Wednesday passed one of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s top policy priorities aimed at creating more affordable housing in Chicago.
The ‘Green Social Housing’ ordinance, which will create a city-run nonprofit designed to spur the development of environmentally friendly affordable housing units across the city, earned full council approval Wednesday with a 30-18 vote, delivering Johnson a policy victory as he nears the midpoint of his term.
“Building the safest, most affordable big city in America is what we have set out to do, and we’re finally beginning to experience that,” Johnson said after the ordinance passed. “The people of Chicago want to be able to afford to stay here, but they also want to make sure that we’re doing development in an equitable way, and that’s essentially what this operation has done.”
The ordinance passed the full council after earlier clearing a joint meeting of the City Council’s finance and housing committees in what was its fourth appearance in front of those committees in recent weeks. Its passage comes at a critical time for Chicago. President Donald Trump’s recent proposed federal budget would eliminate a combined $200 million in federal funding streams for the city, according to city officials.
The elimination of this funding is a direct threat to about 2,500 affordable housing units currently in the pipeline, Jung Yoon, director of policy for the Mayor’s Office, told City Council members Wednesday.
The potential threat lit a fire under some mayoral allies like Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), who made an impassioned case for the ordinance’s passage during Wednesday’s committee meeting.
“Once you get a spark of gentrification, if you get a flame and it starts to come … if we don’t do anything to help balance that out and help stabilize that and help regular people to be able to stay in this city and to be able to work … we going to lose this city,” Burnett said.
Despite support from Burnett, Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th), Ald. Michael Rodriguez (22nd), Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) and others, the issue still faced opposition from frequent mayoral opponents such as Ald. Anthony Beale (9th).
“People are saying … we need to hurry up and do something before the federal government comes in. The federal government didn’t create the mess we have right now,” Beale said.
Beale referred to the city’s looming $1 billion budget shortfall for 2026, saying it didn’t make sense to him to be creating new jobs or programs considering the city’s future fiscal challenges.
Johnson dismissed Beale’s argument, saying the city is focused on building affordable housing at a time when many residents are being priced out.
Concerns from some alderpeople resulted in the ordinance getting delayed at multiple turns. At the ordinance’s last committee hearing, alderpeople expressed concerns about the governance structure and ethics requirement of the nonprofit that would be created.
As a result, the city’s Department of Housing and Law Department on Wednesday made changes to the legislation aimed at additional oversight of the proposed nonprofit, known as the Residential Investment Corporation.
Some of the changes include requiring the Residential Investment Corporation to be recognized as a city contractor and subject to oversight by the Board of Ethics and the Office of Inspector General. The updates also mandate disclosure of conflicts of interest and establish structured ethics requirements for the corporation’s board and staff.
The ethics additions received support from Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg, who told alderpeople during a committee meeting Wednesday that she was “confident” in the new language and her office’s ability to investigate the nonprofit if necessary.
The changes were enough for Ald. Nicole Lee (11th) who last month voted to keep the ordinance in committee to further tailor it. On Wednesday, she told committee members she was happy with the tweaks made since last month’s meeting.
“I feel you heard us on the ethical issues. This has to be done in a proper way if we’re going to do it at all,” Lee said.
Funds to launch the green social housing program have already been approved by the City Council as part of a housing and economic bond deal passed last year. The agreement “established a revolving loan fund of $135 million to be used for low-cost construction period loans for green social housing,” according to a city press release last month.
The ordinance will allow developers to acquire construction financing for projects directly through the city-run nonprofit instead of private lenders, allowing them access to lower borrowing rates. The nonprofit would also be empowered to acquire existing buildings.
Each project will have at least 30 percent of its units earmarked as affordable, higher than rates in the city’s current Affordable Requirements Ordinance. On Wednesday, Yoon clarified to alderpeople that the mixed-income structure will apply for low, very low and moderate-income units. The affordability clause of the units will also never expire.
The nonprofit set up by the city would form “joint ventures” with private developers to back each project, and the city would retain a majority ownership stake. Developments could range from 75 units to more than 200, with rent payments going back to the city to fund future projects, according to a presentation given to alderpeople.
Ald. Pat Dowell (4th), a senior mayoral ally, opposed the housing measure Wednesday because she said it won’t help low-income neighborhoods like hers. She told the Sun-Times that in places like Fuller Park or Roseland, even the “affordable” rent might still be too high for people.
Dowell said she worries housing will only get built in richer areas, not the parts of the city that really need help.
On Wednesday, Johnson called the Green Social Housing just one of the tools in the city’s toolkit to address the city’s housing shortage.
“I’ll be the first to admit that the pace of government doesn’t move as fast as I would like for it to move, and transformational action is what the people of Chicago voted me to do … what I can tell you is that we are clearly moving the ball forward,” Johnson said.
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