The BUILD Plan

The Building Up Illinois Developments (BUILD) plan is Governor Pritzker's 2026 package of bills aimed at the 227,000 new homes Illinois needs by 2030. The BUILD plan would re-legalize the incremental, small-scale housing that built Chicago’s neighborhoods in the first place. Chicago is full of two-flats, corner stores with apartments above, and backyard cottages that are illegal to build today (see our What’s Banned on Your Block tool to see what Chicago bans on your street). BUILD lets homeowners add gentle density on their own lots, grows the city’s tax base, and creates the housing necessary to give working class Chicagoans a shot at living here. It's a pragmatic, bottom-up fix to Chicago’s housing crisis.

The BUILD plan would legalize multifamily housing by right on any residential lot over 2,500 square feet (most Chicago lots), permit duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, and courtyard housing statewide, legalize accessory dwelling units in all residential zones, cap parking mandates at 0.5 spaces per multifamily unit, allow single-stair buildings up to six stories, standardize impact fees, and force municipalities to meet permit review deadlines or let applicants hire qualified third-party reviewers.