1) Campaign Email - patrick@hanleyforillinois.com
2) YOUR PLATFORM: Link to your website about housing - hanleyforillinois.com/issues
3) YOUR COMMUNITY: Is your district suffering from a housing shortage?
Yes - like so many communities nationwide and in Illinois, prices in the 9th District are astronomical, locking out renters from near-suburban opportunities to work and live as well as homeowning opportunities in the northern suburbs and that all-important first step on the ladder towards wealth creation. As home and rental prices rise, so too does the median average age home-buyers, making our district a more challenging place to raise young families and putting pressure on elementary school districts. Even when units are added to the market - affordable or otherwise - they are quickly bought up, sometimes months or years in advance of development, demonstrating the stark need for more units, more diverse housing options, and new thinking around housing policy.
4) YOUR RECORD: Are there pro-housing policies or specific housing developments you have supported in the past that you would like to highlight?
We moved to Winnetka in March of 2020, just a week before Chicago shut down due to COVID-19 and a couple months before the death of George Floyd. In the racial and cultural reckoning that followed, I helped organize a mass protest in the northern suburbs. But I also went to speak with the Village. I shared public comments connecting racial injustice and exclusion on the North Shore directly to our housing shortage and overly-restrictive zoning rules. I then went on to lead a monthslong seminar on racial injustice in the suburbs, which returned again and again to historical racism in housing and the urgent need for housing reforms across the suburbs. Before that, in Northbrook, I was a vocal advocate and organizer with Northbrook Working Families coalition, advocating for Northbrook to add affordable housing and fulfill its obligation to develop and publish a plan to put Northbrook on a path towards more housing (I’m delighted to share that ~8 years later, some of these developments have actually come to pass!).
5) YOUR Plans: Housing costs are increasing for everyone, but renters in particular are bearing the brunt of this crisis, with many frequently spending 30, 40, and even 50% of their income on rent.
What can the State do to bring down prices for both subsidized and market rate housing, and what are some actions that you support in order to achieve that?
Affordability is a north star for my campaign and for my politics. Housing drives a significant part of inflation and unaffordability in our region. We must pull all levers to increase the supply and development of new units, diversify the units that exist in various markets, relax overly-restrictive zoning rules where demand and density makes sense, and support economic actors (especially nonprofits) as they finance, plan, develop, and build the units that we so urgently need. The reforms you mention are each attractive in proper contexts. I do support state policies which would allow property owners to subdivide large plots by-right and add ADUs. I support the extension of favorable IDHA loans to ease capital requirements of developments to build. I want to explore ways to convene stakeholders (developers, builders, contractors, municipalities, etc.), to come up with a series of standardized housing models (and associated municipal best-practices ordinances) to help streamline the building of pre-approved units, particularly addressing tiny houses or “missing middle” housing, where regulations may be a significant factor in delaying or defeating innovative proposals. I support the formation of a state task force to review municipal ordinances within and beyond Illinois to develop and share best practices across different regions. When it comes to the hundreds of thousands of missing housing units in Illinois and tackling our affordability crisis, it's all hands on deck. We need open-minded, bold leaders in Springfield who can roll up their sleeves, work with stakeholders across the supply chain and impacted communities, and champion creative, visionary solutions to bring down the cost of housing.
5) Would you work on state legislation to end local exclusionary zoning that only allows for single family homes , and require municipalities to allow apartments and other types of housing in all residential areas?
Yes, I would work towards state legislation that encourages municipalities to adopting more varied and inclusionary zoning codes.
6) What kinds of housing would you like to see in communities that currently have exclusionary zoning?
All of the above! ADUs, duplexes, missing middle apartments and multiunits, affordable housing each have their place in diversifying the housing stock of healthier, fairer, thriving communities. As a state senator, I view my role not simply as legislating but also convening local leaders to share best practices, new innovations, and tackle regional challenges, like housing. Sometimes, municipalities view housing with blinders on. When we take a collaborative, regional approach, I believe we can get much more done and ultimately, build more units.
7) Do you support “by right” permitting, where cities must make clear, objective zoning and building standards, thus allowing developers following these rules to build new projects without delay?
By right permitting is a great tool to fast track building, give confidence to developers, and quickly add more units. Yes, I support front-loading the regulatory decision-making, bringing stakeholders together to hammer out pre-approved units and developments, which would then allow developers and builders to move much more quickly on greenlit projects.
8) How would you increase funding for Affordable Housing?
Our budgets are a statement of values. Particularly now, Illinois faces enormous budgetary pressures. We're being called on to fill-in for federal failures to fund education, healthcare, infrastructure, housing, and many other key priorities we care about. That said, as I've stated above, affordability is the north star of this campaign and housing is a key driver of broken family budgets. Funding affordable housing adequately must be a key priority and core value for future state budgets. We can do this through direct grants and equity (as-in Vienna), low-cost loans using public dollars (expanding IDHA), dedicating revenue streams from development or economic growth, or even dedicating an expanded sales tax to include services and directing new revenues to housing. All to say, there are plenty of levers that *can* be pulled, but in a restrictive budget environment, we will need champions that prioritize affordability, growth, and delivering on building more housing for Illinoisans.
9) The Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act (AHPAA) requires every Illinois municipality whose housing stock is less than 10% affordable to develop plans to increase the amount of affordable housing in the community and allows certain groups to file appeals when affordable housing developer’s proposal to build new affordable housing is improperly denied by an AHPAA community. Since the law’s passage in 2003, enforcement of AHPAA has been uneven, with only 10 of 44 communities subject to the law submitting compliant plans in 2024 and no appeals filed despite affordable developments regularly collapsing in AHPAA communities.
How would you improve AHPAA’s planning and appeal processes to ensure affordable housing developers face fewer barriers when proposing and building developments in our state’s most affluent communities?
Illinois' affordable housing challenges are too urgent to accept two decades of weak AHPAA enforcement. To strengthen the planning process, we need meaningful consequences for non-compliance. The Attorney General’s office should actively pursue mandamus actions against municipalities that fail to submit compliant plans, and we should tie LIHTC awards and other state housing funding to AHPAA compliance, so municipalities that ignore their obligations lose access to the resources that make other development possible.
For the appeal process, we need to dramatically lower barriers to filing: establish a dedicated fund to cover appeal legal costs for developers, housing advocates, and community organizations; create a streamlined process with clear standards for what constitutes "improper denial" (particularly denial based on affordability-related pretexts); and require IHDA to actively publicize the appeal mechanism and actively recruit cases.
Most importantly, we need to tackle the zoning barriers that municipalities are supposed to be analyzing but often ignore. State legislation could pre-empt restrictive local zoning in AHPAA communities (minimum lot sizes, single-family-only requirements, parking mandates), the way we're doing with ADUs statewide, so that when developers propose affordable housing, zoning code isn't the first brick wall they hit. Only by combining real enforcement with reduced barriers and adequate funding can we turn AHPAA from a two-decade-old paper promise into actual affordable homes in the communities that most need them.
10) Are there any particular social or affordable housing models you support and would like to emulate in Illinois? (e.g. Austrian Social Housing, Montgomery County, etc.)
I am partial to tiny houses and organic addition (as in Muskegon or Cleveland). I am interested in public land trusts, but recognize some adverse incentives around equity sharing and home improvements. I am very eager to see how Chicago Green Social Housing plays out, with its own roots in the Viennese example of direct public investment. In terms of permissive zoning changes, Minneapolis has been a leader, and we are already seeing how prices and rents have fallen (and how the city has *not* been overdeveloped as was feared!). I'm sure there are countless other examples and I am eager to learn more as we leave no stone unturned in pursuit of adding more units and generating more affordable, inclusive growth in Illinois.
11) What are common-sense tenant protections you support?
A few tenant protections I'm supportive of include right to repair (and/or repair and deduct), retaliation protection, strict oversight or ban of excessive fees (in particular fees in excess of costs); disclosures and advance notice of rent increases (at least a month, but more likely two); oversight of security deposits, increasing transparency, documentation of expenses, and timely return. Discriminatory practices are unacceptable, on the basis of race, disability, immigration status, source of income, etc. I also support basic tenant rights, such as advance notice of landlord visits, the right to break leases under extreme circumstances (such as domestic violence), and increased payment flexibility.
12) Are there any active tenant protection laws in Illinois that you believe are not being properly enforced? How would you change this?
We have many tenant protections on the books in Illinois, but enforcement remains patchwork and challenging. IDHR ought to have increased authority and scope to investigate complaints around housing conditions and order repairs. We could expand the repair-and-deduct provisions, raising the cap to half of monthly rent and finance or allow tenants to pay for repairs without having to front cash. We must do a better job enforcing retaliation protections. We could establish a legal aid fund for tenants, require municipalities to raise awareness around protections, or communicate directly with new renters to share their rights. That all said, I'm eager to hear from you what other laws are being routinely ignored and partner to come up with better enforcement mechanisms.
