Governor Pritzker recently announced that he wants to spend $156 MILLION on a housing initiative called Building Up Illinois Developments (BUILD), aimed at addressing the state’s ‘housing shortage’ and improving ‘affordability’.
The trouble is, the proposal includes a package of legislative proposals that would streamline the approval process for affordable housing developments and so-called “missing middle” housing which would reduce local zoning authority by establishing statewide requirements for communities.
State-level zoning policies would preempt local control.
The governor thinks he knows better than you do what your neighborhoods should look like, and he has already secured most of the funding for BUILD in the state’s 2027 budget.