are rising faster than they have in years.

According to Illinois Realtors, the median sales price jumped to $425,000 in July.

That is 13% higher than last year.

Fewer homes are hitting the market and the ones that do are going fast.

Similar patterns are popping up all around the state as new construction in Illinois struggles to keep up with demand.

Joining us now, our Chloe Groom, a board member for Strong town.

Chicago.

Geoff Baker, the CEO of Illinois Realtors.

And David Doig president and CEO of Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives.

Thanks to all of you for joining us.

I'm David.

Start us off.

Please.

What is the slow pace of housing construction mean for Illinois residents?

Yes, I think it means of a few things.

One is we're not growing.

And so whether that's growing, our economy are growing or population.

>> By not creating enough housing to meet demand.

That's forcing prices up.

So in my mind, a lot of this is very much kind of supply issue.

And if we're not building, then you're of course, you're going to see home right?

Values.

Go up.

You're going to see rents.

Go up.

So we've got to get on a pace to really build you look at other states around the they're they're passing us up.

And and that just marginally.

But by like big numbers.

And so we've got to be intentional.

We've got to be much more specific and directed around building homes at a scale pace that starts to meet the demand.

>> Jeff, what are the barriers?

You see the building new homes.

>> combination of factors, some of which are out of the control Illinois and some of the communities.

But there are things here in our own state that do contribute to the lack of construction.

>> A lot of that is at the local level.

A lot of local regulations, building zoning codes which are >> decades old and haven't been review to refresh and all that time and over time, those have contributed to builders.

Looking elsewhere to build where it's easier and more economical, especially when looking at building certain type policies of homes, missing middle homes, and that's are not just the high income home.

So a lot of the local regulations that you hear about single-family zoning large, lots and then permit review processes that take an extended period of time.

All of that can add up and increase the cost of new homes can forest builders to say that this just isn't worth inIllinois and just so that we're all on the same page when you say missing middle homes year were referring to, you know, homes were middle income families, right?

Like not not necessarily low-income affordable housing.

>> But affordable for people in the middle of Brad Guzan brt, your teachers, firemen, policemen, people with good paying jobs.

>> Chloe, what kinds of housing could Chicago be better at building?

I think the most ironic thing is Chicago could be better building 3 fights for fights which are considered classic Chicago architectural icons.

>> But right now, they're not allowed to be built in more than 60% of the city's residential land.

>> What would be the benefits of mixed housing stock?

Yeah, well, it does kind of you said, it gives regular working people, teachers, childcare workers, service workers, the opportunity to live in their neighborhoods where they work, where >> Where they serve.

>> David, what are some of the unique challenges with trying to build specifically in the city of Chicago?

Yeah, I mean, I think I think there are a number of kind of hurdles.

One is, you know, we have a pretty restricted building code here.

mean, the fact that we still have to use copper for supply.

You know, we've got I think we've issues as sat around zoning.

I think there are issues around labor cost more to build in Chicago.

There's bureaucracy.

And so there's, you know, the time to get a building permit.

There's there's issues around some of the public infrastructure and how do we how do access that?

So it it's a lot of things.

There's no one thing particular that like we can point to and say if we just fix this, that would take care of it.

It's all these things have to work together.

There's got to be an intentionality and a commitment on the part of a public leadership to move this forward.

I think think the mayor has done a good job in terms of this cut the tape initiative.

But we gotta go further like we've got to cut down these these permitting times and and we we need leadership that focuses like a lot more on building and growing.

You know, I think if you look at places like Austin, Texas or Dallas or Denver, the Knicks, I mean, the city are adding 14, 15,000 units a year last year in the city of Chicago.

The building department issued 4200 residential permits for the whole city.

You know, this cities like a 3rd the size of Chicago that are now that that are building twice month and 3 times as many units.

And so how do we how do we start to break down those barriers and allow builders to be able to build that pace and scale so we can start to meet this issue up to me.

And I mean that that's the issue.

And we're never going to solve the affordability problem until we really start to build a quicker pace and a greater scale.

Jeff, give us a sense of the demand, right?

How much building needs to be done?

Much building right the ease.

The crunch.

>> Yeah.

There's a lot of different numbers out there.

But I think the one that we all heard, you know, I think Governor Pritzker was >> using a I think the current shortage is somewhere around 150,000 units be upwards of 250,000 here in a couple years.

But if you look at as they was just saying, the pace of construction, our shortage would require us to triple the amount of new home construction every single year for the next 5 years.

That's just to meet today's demand.

Not 5 ago.

And yes.

>> I'm Chloe.

How much room does Chicago have to grow?

>> Like I said earlier, more than 60% of the city right now doesn't allow anything other than a single-family home starts.

One home for one family.

And a few imagined.

What if we allowed for flats again across all of Chicago, like we did historically, that alone would give so many people so many opportunities and choices.

So undeterred of I I'm really excited about the governor's build plan.

One of the bills.

That's part of that package would.

Re legalize.

Really these classic.

Homes of different sizes and shapes and that would give families across the state of Illinois March >> just one thing on So the city of Chicago has 48,000 vacant.

Lots.

48,000 if you if you built to place for 3 flats, that's like 75,000 new units of housing on already zoned.

You know, lots that would add to our population.

We've got to we've got to start to rebuild our population base.

If you if you go through the West Side or south side, you look at neighborhoods that historically had, you know, 70,000 people where there's now 30,000 people.

>> If you want to begin lot, yeah.

If you want quality retail, you want quality schools, USC prime go down.

>> Yeah, we populated.

Got you've got to put more eyes on the street and and we have the opportunity.

those not like New York or LA which fully built out cities?

I mean, they have no vacant land.

We have lots and lots of vacant land.

But again, it takes it takes leadership and it takes intentionality to build on that.

Whether it's for flat or 2, 3, base existing stores we have the capacity we have the capacity, Jeff Water.

And we heard about the build plan, Jeff Water, Illinois realtors working to change how housing is built.

>> Yeah.

After after the bill didn't come out of the General Assembly, we just this past just a summer launched a housing supply accelerator program.

The idea is to go in the mayor's office is going the city councils all over the state and say we all acknowledge this spring that there was a housing problem.

A lot of local official said that they wanted to try to tackle the problem.

So we created a road map for them.

We created and entire blueprint that can walk them through the entire process to study their own code study all their own processes, figure out where inadvertently created some burdens and then help them develop the solutions that can start to alleviate those burden.

So that accelerate plans out there.

Now I've got an entire team.

Of advocacy professionals that are working with mayors all over the state to start to try to chip away at this.

Well, before we come back to session next year.

>> And we did reach out to Illinois Municipal League and received this statement from their CEO Brad Cole, quote, municipal officials across Illinois remain dedicated to improving housing access and affordability.

But those solution should be developed through local partnerships, not statewide mandates that dictate a one size fits all approach to every community.

The focus on voluntary voluntary locally driven solutions, which we have suggested from the beginning of these discussions demonstrates that meaningful progress can be made on housing while preserving local decision making.

Jeff is local decision making it sounds like it's part of the process.

Part of the approach that the Illinois realtors are taking.

Yeah, entire concept of the accelerator is to let every individual local municipality decide for themselves.

So your city's results may look different than my cities.

>> At the same time, that doesn't mean that there's not statewide action that can't be taken.

There are those the state now controls a lot of minimum building codes.

And so that's something that the state can work on.

The doesn't really infringe on any sort of local control elements.

So well, all our accelerator does preserve that element of local control.

There are still a major role for state law lawmakers as well.

>> Chloe residents of also expressed concerns that development your neighborhood can sometimes lead to displacement.

How can developers take those concerns into consideration?

>> Yeah, I'm will part of storm Chicago does and what strong towns as a national movement is all about is empowering people in their neighborhoods to be small builders.

Homebuilders themselves.

So part of what I really like about the bill, the plan is that, yeah, you can get a conventional mortgage to finance a for flat.

Right now.

Lake, it can work with the house and accelerators that can give a municipality's tools to build resources to help the folks in their cities become homebuilders themselves.

That is where we'll have to leave