Mon. September 21, 2026
CHICAGO, ILL. -
Every campaign season the candidates make their little pilgrimage up North. They hit what is popularly known as Boystown, smile for the photo op at Sidetrack, drop by Andersonville, and tell us they’ve got our backs on the culture-war front.
We do care about that. In times like these, with everything coming down from the White House and the orange-nosers, having a mayor who won’t sell us out on basic rights is the bare minimum.
Yet talk to actual queer folks across this city day in and day out, and the real conversation isn’t about the rainbow crosswalks. It’s about the rent.
Whether you’re catching tea over drinks, hanging with chosen family on a porch in Edgewater, or chatting up service workers after a shift, the panic is real. People are getting hit with wild lease renewals, watching another cute brick two-flat get flipped into luxury condos, or seeing their best friends pack a U-Haul because they got priced out.
For us, housing isn’t just about having a roof. It’s pure survival. You came to Chicago to be safe, to build a life, and to walk down your street without looking over your shoulder. But what good is sanctuary if you can’t afford the front door?
I actually like Brandon Johnson. I like that he genuinely roots for working-class people who’ve been overlooked for decades, and you have to respect someone willing to swing big. When he talks about housing, he isn’t just serving up empty platitudes. He has put real chips on the table.
First off, he pushed through that massive $1.25 billion Housing and Economic Development Bond to break our addiction to expiring TIF slush funds, pouring hundreds of millions straight into affordable rental developments and neighborhood homeownership.
His administration dropped over $300 million through the city’s Qualified Allocation Plan to build and preserve thousands of affordable and supportive units on the South and West sides.
He launched a groundbreaking Green Social Housing pilot backed by a revolving loan fund, pushed missing-middle infill housing onto vacant city-owned lots, and expanded accessory dwelling units by right so people can legally build coach houses and garden apartments across the city.
On top of that, his “Cut the Tape” initiative tackled over a hundred bureaucratic headaches down at City Hall, slashing wait times at the Zoning Board of Appeals, ditching mandatory parking minimums near the train stations, and letting vacant commercial spaces convert into apartments in weeks instead of nearly a year.
That is serious policy stuff. It’s the kind of heavy structural lifting people have begged City Hall to do for ages.
There's a big 'but'
But... still... blueprints, bond issuances, and zoning tweaks don’t keep your landlord from jacking up your rent two hundred bucks next month. A shovel in the ground today means keys in someone’s hand two or three years from now.
In the meantime, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s housing strategy centers on shifting away from developer-driven, tax-increment financing (TIF) models toward direct city borrowing, administrative streamlining, and targeted support for unhoused residents.
Here is a breakdown of the key initiatives, policies, and financial maneuvers his administration has used to address Chicago’s housing shortage.
The $1.25 billion housing and economic development bond
The centerpiece of Johnson’s physical development agenda is a five-year, $1.25 billion borrowing plan approved by City Council in spring 2024. Designed to replace expiring TIF districts, it allocates roughly $625 million directly to housing:
Affordable rental development:Upwards of $360 million to $390 million dedicated to subsidizing the construction and preservation of multi-family affordable housing units.
Homeownership programs: Around $210 million aimed at down-payment assistance, exterior home repairs for low-income legacy owners, and targeted wealth-building programs on the South and West sides.
Geographic flexibility: Unlike TIF revenue, which must be collected and spent within strictly defined district boundaries, bond proceeds can be deployed anywhere in the city, enabling investment in historically disinvested neighborhoods that lack productive commercial property tax bases.
"Cut the tape" administrative overhaul
Developers and nonprofit housing providers have long cited City Hall’s bureaucratic delays as a major driver of inflated housing costs. In response, Johnson signed Executive Order 2023-13, launching the "Cut the Tape" initiative.
Led by the city's first Chief Operating Officer, the task force issued dozens of regulatory reforms to accelerate housing construction:
Consolidated design reviews: Combining overlapping reviews by the Department of Housing (DOH) and the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) to trim months off pre-development timelines.
Expedited permitting: Expanding self-certification for architects and standardizing environmental reviews on city-owned lots.
Accelerated land sales:Streamlining the process for selling vacant city parcels to affordable housing builders for $1.
Shelter decompression and homelessness prevention
Johnson took office during a compounding shelter crisis fueled by existing homelessness and the arrival of tens of thousands of international migrants.
Shelter system unification: The administration moved to integrate the temporary migrant shelter infrastructure into the broader Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) non-congregate shelter network, ensuring that permanent beds and transitional funding could serve local unhoused Chicagoans alongside newcomers.
Rapid rehousing investments:The administration channeled hundreds of millions in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds into rental subsidies, case management, and permanent supportive housing acquisition to move individuals out of encampments and into apartments.
Legislative pushes and zoning adjustments
Johnson has backed structural changes to city ordinances to remove barriers to new supply:
Expanding missing-middle housing:Continuing support for the legalization and expansion of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), such as coach houses and basement flats, across all Chicago neighborhoods rather than restricted pilot zones.
Connected Communities ordinance implementation:Enforcing and expanding transit-oriented development (TOD) rules that eliminate parking minimums near train stations and bus corridors, reducing construction costs for multi-unit builders.
The Bring Chicago Home campaign:While voters ultimately defeated the March 2024 real estate transfer tax referendum at the ballot box, Johnson made restructuring property transfer taxes on sales over $1 million the central ideological pillar of his platform to secure a dedicated, permanent revenue stream for homelessness services.
Downtown office-to-residential conversions
Facing high commercial office vacancy in the Loop, Johnson's administration maintained and advanced several adaptive reuse proposals initiated under the "LaSalle Street Reimagined" framework. By greenlighting public subsidies for these projects, the administration committed to converting obsolete downtown office space into mixed-income residential buildings, requiring that at least 30% of new units meet affordability thresholds.
The challengers are getting ready to fight
The heavyweights are already circling the mayor decrying what he's accomplished isn't enough. And it's on us to press them on what their actual plans will be beyond the rainbow-in-the-sky promises at their Sidetrack visits.
Alexi Giannoulias is stepping up with a mountain of campaign cash, pitching himself as the guy who can actually run the shop, cut the drama, and get cranes in the sky. Susana Mendoza is running on her fiscal watchdog brand, basically telling voters that City Hall can’t fix housing if it keeps bleeding money. And then you’ve got Matt Brewer, who knows the city’s housing machine from his time on the Chicago Housing Authority board, plus the realities of running a business as co-owner of The Wiener’s Circle.
Standing here as an undecided voter, it’s tough. Every single one of them is going to wave the flag and tell us they love the community. But this time around, the real tea isn’t about who can throw the best rhetoric. It’s about who has an actual plan to keep Chicago livable before the rent pushes our community completely out of the city we helped build.
Sure, Chicago is a sanctuary for LGBTQ folks. But what does that mean if we can't afford to live in it.
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