Updates From Springfield & Next Steps

The Illinois legislature failed to act on several Strong Towns Chicago key initiatives yesterday. Notably:

• Housing & zoning reform: Legalizing ADUs statewide and fourplexes that met certain criteria was not passed.

• Transit reform & funding: Plans to reform the governance of the various transit agencies (CTA, Metra, Pace) was not agreed upon. There is also no finalized agreement to fund transit beyond when COVID-era funds run out.

Legislators must take urgent action to address these issues. Illinois is facing an affordability crisis, where rising rents and housing prices are pricing people out. And failure to pass transit reform could result in 40% service cuts to the CTA, which will increase our dependence on car-centric infrastructure and reduce Chicago’s standing as a world-class city.

While this is a disappointing setback, the fight is far from over. We encourage members to attend our monthly meetup, Wednesday at 6:30 to discuss where we go from here.

Also, we want to announce our ‘One Year of Strong Towns’ party on 6/18 in the Loop! It was about a year ago when we had our first meetup event with Chuck Marohn in the Loop. Since then, we’ve organized multiple neighborhood walks, given public comment at city hall, grown ~5x in terms of our email and slack members, published op-eds, and achieved other notable wins! We hope to see you then.

As always, be sure to join us on our email list, Slack, Instagram, and BlueSky if you’re not already! Become an official member today by donating $15.

-Aaron Feldman, Strong Towns Chicago Secretary