New CHA leadership provides an opportunity to speed housing construction
Chicago, IL (August 4, 2025)—A new report from Impact for Equity has calculated that the current pace of reconstruction for public housing demolished under the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation a quarter century ago could take another 40 years—unless the CHA, city, and state act. The report provides nine recommendations for how leaders can speed up the construction and acquisition of affordable housing at a time when more than 300,000 Chicagoans—nearly half of all tenants in the city—are housing cost-burdened, defined as those who spend 30% or more of their monthly income on housing.
Launched 25 years ago, the Plan for Transformation involved the demolition of thousands of public housing apartments, with plans to replace about half of those units by building new units and rehabbing some existing units in mixed-income developments. To this day, more than 100 acres of land and buildings remain vacant, while the Chicago Housing Authority has 19,000 fewer public housing units than it did prior to the Plan for Transformation’s implementation.
Building the Future: Restoring Communities and Renewing Chicago’s Commitment to Public Housing lays out an ambitious agenda for the Chicago Housing Authority, City of Chicago, and State of Illinois to work together to complete redevelopment of the land and buildings from the Plan for Transformation within ten years. The report urges CHA and city leadership to adopt two goals:
- Commit to a plan to redevelop remaining vacant CHA land and buildings from the Plan for Transformation within 10 years; and
- Use all 19,000 available but unused federal public housing rental subsidies the CHA is eligible for as quickly as possible.
“We believe that the CHA and city can reach these goals by A) prioritizing CHA proposals in affordable housing funding awards from the City of Chicago and State of Illinois; B) adding CHA housing to as many new affordable developments that receive affordable housing funding awards from the city and state as possible; and C) fully exempting mixed-income public housing from property taxes, as other states do,” said Daniel Kay Hertz, Director of Housing at Impact for Equity.
Impact for Equity further recommends linking CHA rental subsidies with other affordable developments, including Green Social Housing; pursuing acquisitions or requests for proposals to partner on developments that don’t require affordable housing funding awards from the city or state; and creating a philanthropic/funder collaborative to support capacity building and implementation.
“These measures are essential to combat the growing housing crisis in the City of Chicago,” Hertz said. “Chicagoans who are most in need often struggle even to pay the rent on many types of affordable housing, leaving CHA housing as their only available option.”
Impact for Equity encourages Chicago leaders to act with urgency to address this crisis.
To read the full report, click here.
To read the report summary, click here.
