Robert Katz did everything he could to put up an apartment building in Jefferson Park. An architect and developer who owns Northbrook-based Rktects, Katz was planning to build on the site of a former bank at Elston and Central Avenues — a site that had sat vacant since 2014. But neighbors complained that the development would clog traffic and block their view. Katz tried to appease them: He met with community organizations. He went through review after review. He lowered the height of the building to three and a half stories and reduced the numbers of units — first from 52 to 45, then to 40.

But it wasn’t enough to placate those who showed up to a March community meeting. “That’s where the project fell apart,” Katz says. “They made up their mind before we came there. The only people who showed up were negative, so it wasn’t a fair representation.” When the neighbors turned on the project, so did their alderperson, the 45th Ward’s Jim Gardiner, who declined to rezone the parcel — and thus nixed the development.

Katz is hardly alone: Plenty of developers have seen their attempts to construct apartment buildings in Chicago stymied by red tape or neighborhood opposition. That’s despite a demonstrable need for housing here. A study released in August by the Urban Institute found that the number of households in Chicago increased 14 percent from 2010 to 2022, while the housing stock rose by just 6 percent. And while the housing shortage is national in scope, it’s more pronounced here. “In almost all places, construction is falling at least a little bit behind new households, but in Chicago it’s a big difference,” says Jorge González-Hermoso, one of the study’s authors.

That shortage hits low-income families the hardest, since it means fewer apartments available for rent. According to Yardi Matrix, a real estate data firm, Chicago built just 45,400 apartment units from 2019 to 2023, compared with 128,400 for top producer Dallas. And while Chicago is projected to construct fewer than 27,000 units of multifamily housing through 2029, Austin — a city with less than half of Chicago’s population — is expected to add 100,000 units by then.

So why is it so hard to build multifamily housing here? There isn’t a single culprit, but a big one is the city’s zoning laws. As of 2023, 41 percent of Chicago’s land was zoned for single-family residential, according to the Metropolitan Planning Council, a nonprofit policy group. A change to allow more units requires rezoning approval, a multistep process that includes a review by the Department of Planning and Development, a public meeting, and zoning committee approval before a full City Council vote. Then there’s aldermanic prerogative, the unwritten but prevalent practice of granting alderpersons final say over decisions in theirs wards, including zoning changes.

Getting that approval is rarely easy. The opposition to denser housing in Chicago is loudest at the community meetings where alderpersons gather feedback from their constituents and decide whether to greenlight a development. “To get the alderman, you have to get the neighborhood group, and that’s where the trouble comes in,” says one local architect. “It’s fraught with risk, even to have this conversation.” Christina Harris, senior director at the Metropolitan Planning Council, points to research from Boston University and the Urban Institute showing that residents who attend those meetings tend to be older, higher-income earners who oppose dense developments.

Affordable housing advocates have gone so far as to describe aldermanic prerogative as a “tool of the new Jim Crow.” A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development investigation gave that criticism more weight: The nearly five-year civil rights probe found that Chicago had turned alderpersons into mini-mayors of each ward. “As a result, new affordable housing is rarely, if ever, constructed in the majority-white wards that have the least affordable housing,” Lon Meltesen, regional director of HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, wrote in a letter to the mayor’s office obtained by the Sun-Times.

The use of aldermanic prerogative isn’t limited to those wards. In October, 49th Ward Alderperson Maria Hadden rejected the construction of a 52-unit apartment building, including 11 affordable units, in Rogers Park. It would have replaced an empty lot at 7728 North Sheridan Road. The decision drew flak from the YIMBY (Yes in My Back Yard) crowd — a movement that advocates for more housing — which criticized Hadden’s denial as a prime example of aldermanic prerogative gone wrong.

Hadden counters that the development felt like a copy-and-paste proposal, unlike a 20-unit apartment building at 7015 North Sheridan that incorporated more constituent feedback. She adds that the developer of the rejected property is returning with a new proposal. “Many of us have community processes. They’re not geared towards exercising aldermanic prerogative,” Hadden says. “They’re geared towards making sure our communities have a voice. And that’s what our job is.” The bottom line, though, is that 52 residences aren’t getting built.

At City Hall and in Springfield, there’s a growing movement to loosen zoning laws. Last April, Mayor Brandon Johnson released his “Cut the Tape” report, offering more than 100 recommendations to boost development — including “transformational zoning changes.” Among them: eliminating costly minimum parking requirements for multifamily projects and streamlining approval processes. In Springfield, state Representative Kam Buckner, whose district stretches from the downtown lakefront to South Chicago, proposed a bill last February that would prohibit single-family-only residential zoning in Chicago and seven other Illinois cities. Early iterations of the bill required that property zoned for residential use allow for “middle housing.” The bill didn’t define “middle housing,” but the measure could spur more units by increasing the number of two- and three-flats, as well as other multifamily housing.

Buckner plans to reintroduce the legislation in early 2025. He’s careful to note that the measure would not get rid of municipal planning and zoning units or strip them of their power. “What it is saying is that we’re really starting off with a baseline where you can’t tell someone that they can only build single-family,” Buckner says. And that would be a small, meaningful step toward Chicago getting out of its own way.