February Happy Hour
We're excited to kick off 2024 with a happy hour in the South Loop! We will be gathering at Roots Pizza at 6 pm on Wednesday, February 21st. Roots Pizza is a short walk from the Harrison Red Line, LaSalle Blue Line, and the LaSalle Metra station. Hope to see you there!
RSVP for the February Happy Hour
Ending Parking Mandates in Chicago
Recently, we launched a petition to Chicago City Council to end parking mandates citywide. Parking mandates require new buildings to provide a specific number of parking spots per housing unit or per square foot of commercial space. These mandates can add hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost to missing middle housing while simultaneously reducing property tax revenue, reinforcing our housing crisis, car dependency, budget cuts, and sprawl. We hope that Chicago will follow the lead of dozens of major cities such as Austin, Minneapolis, and San Jose and end parking mandates citywide.
The petition has already garnered over 550 supporters. Add yours today!
Support ending parking mandates
500 New Homes in Old Town 🏗️
500 homes, including 100 affordable homes, have been proposed at the intersection of North Ave and LaSalle St in Old Town. The project would replace two gas stations, a vacant storefront, and a surface parking lot (talk about a winning combination!), and is walking distance to the Sedgwick CTA Brown/Purple Line station. Unfortunately, the high rise project has faced intense pushback from neighbors who, ironically, almost all live in neighboring high rises.
Urban Environmentalists has started a letter campaign to 2nd Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins expressing our support of the project and highlighting its many community benefits. We hope that Alderman Hopkins will prioritize 500 new homes over concerns about views.
Tell Alderman Hopkins you support new homes!
Andersonville Housing Win 🇸🇪
Who would've thought that an 18 unit project would cause such a ruckus? After the initial proposal was denied last month, this relatively small building received a flurry of attention, resulting in Alderman Vasquez annoucing his support for three-flats citywide, among other things. In the end, a less modern looking, and unfortunately one floor shorter, version of the proposal was approved.
While we're thrilled to see 15 new homes, including three affordable homes, get built in Andersonville, this project stands as a great example for why we need citywide zoning reform and less dependence upon parcel-by-parcel zoning requests. Affordable housing should not be held hostage by neighbors who would rather see nothing built at all.
We encourage our members to thank Alderman Vasquez for approving 15 new homes in Andersonville, and we look forward to continuing to work with the Alder to get more affordable housing built in the 40th Ward and throughout Chicago.
Want to see more homes approved? Donate to UE today!