Despite BUILD’s failure, housing advocates celebrate legislative wins

CHICAGO – After months of negotiations in the spring legislative session resulted in no final action on Gov. JB Pritzker’s flagship housing proposal, housing advocates are celebrating a few legislative victories — and holding onto hopes for future negotiations.

Bob Palmer, policy director for the statewide housing coalition Housing Action Illinois, said some of the major victories came on the funding front. For one, the General Assembly rejected the governor’s proposed cut of $10 million to the HOME Illinois Program, which aims to prevent and end homelessness in the state.

Lawmakers were facing a tight fiscal year, meaning any new funding would be an uphill battle. Even so, David Zoltan, a Chicago-based housing activist, said not increasing funding amid rising inflation is “effectively a cut” for a crucial HOME Illinois program.

Read more: How the Illinois Senate’s housing proposals compare to Gov. JB Pritzker’s BUILD plan | Pritzker’s affordable housing plan gets Senate hearing as municipalities remain opposed

While Pritzker’s flagship housing proposal, Building up Illinois Developments, or BUILD, did not pass in its entirety, the General Assembly did approve its $250 million in capital investments, including $100 million to develop new housing projects, $100 million to the Missing Middle and Affordable Homes program and $50 million for new and first-time home buyers.

Palmer said he encourages the governor’s office to distribute the money to communities as soon as possible to address urgent housing needs, especially without the complementary BUILD legislation to back investments.

“Regardless of whether the legislation passed this year or next year, there still is the need for more money to develop affordable housing to increase the housing supply,” Palmer said.

But some progressive lawmakers wanted more. State Sen. Mike Simmons, D-Chicago, argued that the allocation as it stands is “inadequate” to address Illinois’ housing shortage, and that the state must pass progressive revenue methods to fully fund affordable housing programs.

Affordable housing advocates also celebrated a budget increase and 10-year extension of Illinois’ Affordable Housing Tax Credit, a 25-year-old initiative encouraging private investment into affordable housing projects.

Allison Clements, Executive Director of Illinois Housing Council, a major proponent of the tax credit, said it has a proven track record in the affordable housing space, having helped create over 26,000 homes. The organization estimates that the tax credit’s expansion will produce 9,856 new affordable homes in the next five years.

“We know the need is high, we know the demand is there, and we know it leverages private donations,” Clements said. “It’s not just the state giving us money. It’s incentivizing donations to be able to be made to affordable housing.”

BUILD plan’s future

Pritzker has said he’ll continue to work with lawmakers on the BUILD plan and pointed out that plenty of successful legislative efforts have taken multiple sessions to complete. In a June 1 news conference, he mentioned the recent passing of House Bill 3564, sponsored by Rep. Nabeela Syed, D-Inverness, and Simmons. The bill, which bans landlords from charging 11 junk fees and requires fees to be disclosed up front to renters, was over a year in the making.

“Governor Pritzker will continue championing housing affordability so that finding, building, or owning a home is within reach for every Illinois family,” a spokesperson said in a statement to Capitol News Illinois.

The governor first announced BUILD during his State of the State address in February. The plan’s goal was to promote housing affordability by preempting local zoning rules to expand housing supply statewide. It arrived at a time where political candidates on both sides of the aisle are responding to affordability and cost of living concerns in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections.

It was one of three distinct housing proposals to emerge in the General Assembly, including an alternate plan put forth by municipalities, in response to the state’s housing shortage.  According to a 2025 study from the University of Illinois, Illinois is short 142,000 homes and will need to build 227,000 units over the next five years to keep pace with demand.

Its provisions included authorizing accessory dwelling units, encouraging the construction of middle housing, eliminating tenant-based parking requirements, standardizing impact fees, expediting timelines with third-party inspections and permitting the construction of multi-family dwellings with one stairwell. The end goal, according to proponents, is for it to increase supply and decrease housing and living costs across Illinois.

Sen. Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet, added that it’s only natural for legislation on a topic so complex to take some time, given that it encompasses diverse groups of stakeholders and impacts all areas of the state.

“We want to make sure that housing, first and foremost, is a human right, and secondly, is a business,” Ventura said. “So striking the right balance of that does take a little bit of time, but we are dedicated to make sure that people have housing in Illinois that is affordable.”

While BUILD drew a large coalition of supporters, among them Illinois REALTORS and a large number of housing advocacy organizations, it also divided interest groups and legislators.

From the outset, BUILD faced its fiercest opponent in the Illinois Municipal League, which argued against a “one-size-fits-all” approach to zoning, instead favoring preserving municipal mandates. It released its own counter-proposal in late April, which generated discussion but gained little traction as the Republican-backed Senate Bill 4200.

Other critics questioned BUILD’s mechanisms to promote affordability across all income levels, specifically for the state’s most vulnerable lower-income residents.

During multiple committee hearings, skeptics highlighted the BUILD’s potential for gentrification and lack of mandates for affordable housing, which caters to people with moderate to low incomes and may be subsidized by the government to preserve prices. Zoltan said there’s no “magical solution” where building housing will make affordability happen – the government must fund it.

These two sets of concerns dominated discussions of BUILD, leading to prolonged discussions in a six-hour Senate’s Executive Committee hearing in April.

Sen. Cristina Castro, D-Elgin, who chairs the committee, has maintained throughout those hearings that housing legislation requires a “holistic” approach, taking into account increased housing supply, accessibility and affordability all across the state.

She also highlighted the importance of involving community engagement in the housing proposals, as she and her colleagues were “bombarded” with input from constituents, housing advocates and developers over the bills.

“They also wanted to provide input and feedback, and I don’t think they had enough time during session to adequately provide that feedback and also be a part of those solutions,” Castro said.

For Ventura, the main takeaway from the April hearing was that BUILD still needed a lot of work to move forward, even as other housing affordability concerns persisted.

“We did need some housing legislation to still move,” Ventura said.

Senate plan emerges

From there, Senate Democrats introduced their own eight-bill affordable housing package with less than a week left in the session. The bills, which had been filed earlier this year, contained some modified provisions of the BUILD Plan as well as separate legislation for tenant protections and affordable housing support.

While none of those made their way to the governor’s desk, three cleared the Senate and await House action.

Among them is Senate Bill 3762, Simmons’ Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, which would grant tenants and tenant associations the right of first refusal if their building owner looks to sell the property.

Even as a supporter of BUILD, he expressed concerns that it could empower developers to “flip” existing buildings into luxury housing at the expense of renters.

“We got to make sure that these bills are not just going to create a free-for-all for development in the way that just creates a lot of expensive units that are unaffordable, because that does nothing to solve the affordability crisis,” Simmons said.

Ventura championed Senate Bill 3501, also known as the Restock the Block Act, which would protect housing stock by imposing annual 10% fees on private equity investors owning more than 10 single family homes or 8 multi-unit buildings. Revenue from those fees would go to fund affordable housing projects and rental and mortgage assistance. The bill also includes a 90-day wait period for tenants to place bids, and an additional 10-day period for nonprofits and local governments to purchase the property.

“The goal, again, is to make sure people who live in our communities can continue to either rent there or own property there, and really hold on to that existing stock,” Ventura said.

Zoltan lauded Ventura’s bill for being the only one designed to generate funding for affordable housing from “exactly the right people,” but lamented that the overall Senate package moved “a little too late” to get past the finish line.

Sen. Graciela Guzmán, D-Chicago, also advanced a slate of tenant protections in House Bill 4377.

Castro touted Guzmán, Ventura and Simmons’ bills as signs of progress in housing deliberations, noting they’d been in the works long before their reintroduction near the end of the session.

In Castro’s eyes, there is no single solution to the affordable housing crisis, and she reminds constituents that this is not a “one session conversation”.

“Sometimes these bills take multiple sessions in ongoing stakeholder engagement, community engagement, and we are committed to continuing those conversations,” Castro said.

Marisa Guerra Echeverria an undergraduate student in journalism and political science with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and a fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.