Chicago Needs The Accountable Housing and Anti-Discrimination Waitlist Ordinance
Across Chicago, people continue to face barriers when searching for affordable housing – they must rigorously research, travel all over the city, and figure out the documentation they need all while operating under time and resource constraints. When people do identify opportunities, it’s often through their networks: their friends and family, religious and community leaders, social workers, and elected officials. This means that opportunities are often confined to who you know. And in a city as segregated as Chicago, that makes it that much harder to chip away at our persistent segregation.
Despite these challenges, there is no central system where affordable housing opportunities are listed so that someone searching can go to find a unit, join a waiting list, or see what units they qualify for.
Even when renters find and apply for a unit, they are often rejected without an explanation and are left to start over without understanding why. Despite clear fair housing laws, the City has no systematic way to track rejections or identify patterns of discrimination.
To address this significant need, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee is working with the Chicago Housing Initiative (CHI) to advance the Accountable Housing and Anti-Discrimination Waitlist Ordinance (AHAD) – a pilot that would create an interactive tool that will allow elected officials, community-based organizations, and housing providers to connect people directly to all available affordable housing units. CHI has brought in diverse stakeholders to conduct research on other jurisdictions that have implemented similar programs and to identify a funding mechanism. The City has committed, through its co-governance model, to a series of meetings to implement this ordinance.
This pilot program would give the Department of Housing and the City Council the ability to monitor affordable housing programs by tracking the number, location, and quality of each unit as well as gather demographic data about who is able to secure housing and who is being excluded.
Given that the City currently doesn’t have a way to collect this information, without the necessary data and monitoring, discriminatory policies or practices will continue.
At a time when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has proposed rolling back its Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing Plan requirements, the federal tool designed to ensure that housing providers market their units to diverse communities, the need for local oversight is even more urgent. Chicago has the opportunity to lead and protect its residents.
By adopting the pilot program, the City would send a clear message that discrimination has no place in Chicago’s housing market and would take an important step towards ensuring every Chicagoan, regardless of race or income, has a fair opportunity to finding a safe, affordable place to live.
Chicago Lawyers’ Committee will continue working alongside Chicago Housing Initiative and our partners to advance this important pilot program through City Council.