Third big structural story this week, and for once — something actually passed. The Council loosened parking mandates. Mark the calendar. This is Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today: parking minimums, the hidden rent tax, and a new piece arguing aldermanic power is the engine of City Council corruption. Finally — a story where I get to root for something. After a week of stalled trials and oversight that grades out at a D, somebody finally moved a lever that actually lowers what it costs to build near a train. Let's start with the number that reframes the whole fight — UCLA's Institute of Transportation Studies on cost per parking space. UCLA's ITS pegs structured parking in the tens of thousands per space. Mandate it building-wide and that cost doesn't vanish — it lands in the rent, whether or not the tenant owns a car. Right — so who are we protecting here? The person who doesn't even drive is paying for a garage they never asked for. That's a tax on the renter, dressed up as a courtesy. Here's the pushback though, Brian — people near transit will tell you parking already feels scarce. Loosen the rules and you're not lowering their rent, you're taking their spot. Scarce because we never priced it. And drop the minimums all you want — if a single alderman can still veto a transit-adjacent project, the savings never reach a tenant. HUD already called that veto a civil-rights violation. Which is where the Center for Effective Government piece bites. Their diagnosis — unchecked aldermanic power breeds corruption — lines up with the root cause HUD named from the civil-rights side. Different complaints, same power center. And it's the case file behind that Ethics Committee D. The grade wasn't an accident — it described a system built to look the other way. So the parking win is real, but narrow. You can shave construction costs all day — if the ward veto survives, you've just made a cheaper building nobody's allowed to put up. And stack it against Tuesday — $202 million lined up for three thousand units in Lincoln Park and Bucktown, and not one line naming an affordable count. Lower the build cost, fine. Where do the savings go — the rent roll, or the pro forma? That's the live test for Glockner's IG powers too — can they actually reach a nine-figure TIF deal? If the structural problem is power that answers to no one, access isn't just a procedural question. Exactly. Parking reform's the first thing this week that might fix a block. But it only counts if the alderman can't kill it and the IG can see the receipts on the money. Chicago just passed a rule letting developers skip parking spaces near transit — but if you've ever circled your block for twenty minutes looking for a spot, doesn't cutting parking requirements just make that worse? It's an understandable instinct, but the research pretty consistently points the other way. Parking isn't free. Somebody pays for it, and in a city, that usually means the renter or the buyer. A UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies report published earlier this year found that, in cities with the highest minimums, required structured parking can cost nearly as much as the building itself — and sometimes kills projects entirely. Then that cost gets built into the rent whether a tenant owns a car or not. And in Chicago specifically, the Center for Neighborhood Technology found parking supply already generally exceeds actual demand, so we've been requiring more parking than people use. The new ordinance, passed by City Council on June 16th as part of Mayor Johnson's Cut the Tape initiative, eliminates mandatory parking requirements for new developments in transit-served corridors. It also unlocks certain density bonuses, so builders can fit more homes on the same footprint. A Denver study published last fall points the same way: after Colorado removed parking requirements, more affordable units got built because developers could spend land and construction money on housing instead of concrete decks. So who actually benefits most from this — is it citywide, or does it really only help people who already live close to the L? That's the equity question to watch. The Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation, an affordable housing developer in Humboldt Park, is already getting cited as the kind of group that can now build more homes on sites where a parking requirement would've eaten the budget. The UCLA synthesis says lower-income households — the people least likely to own cars — were effectively subsidizing parking they didn't use through higher rents, so the relief should matter most for them. The test is whether those density bonuses actually get used in disinvested neighborhoods near transit, not just in already-hot corridors where developers were building anyway. Here's Center for Effective Government:
Burke joined a dubious club that day in 2019: More than three dozen Chicago aldermen have been indicted by federal grand juries over the past 50 years. Indeed, since the Department of Justice started collecting data in 1976, more public officials have been convicted of corruption-related offenses in the federal judicial district that encompasses Chicago than anywhere else in the country, according to a report from University of Illinois Chicago professor Dick Simpson.
This is from the U of C Center for Effective Government and its joint series with Crain's — and it opens at a Burger King at 41st and Pulaski. The same security camera that caught the Laquan McDonald shooting later turns up in the Ed Burke shakedown charge. More than three dozen aldermen indicted in fifty years. This federal district has convicted more public officials of corruption than anywhere in the country. At that point, the design of the system is the story. And that design choice is aldermanic prerogative. One alderman gets the final say on what gets built in their ward, and Burke turned that into a permit toll booth on a Burger King remodel. Tie it to the parking thing we just hit. You can drop every parking minimum near transit you want — if a single ward still holds a veto over the project, you haven't fixed the block. HUD already called that veto a civil-rights violation. That's why this lands right on top of the Ethics Committee D grade from City Bureau. The grade gave you the score; this report gives you the case file behind it. It describes a system built to look the other way. Got a tip, a story idea, or a correction for us? Send a note anytime to chicagodailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We read every message, and your feedback helps shape the show.
You'll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if something caught your ear, you can dig into the original reporting there.
That's Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily for this Friday, June 12th. This is a Lantern Podcast.