WBEZ Chicago9%
What the ROAD to Housing Act means for Chicago 28%
By Abby Miller29% Esther Yoon-Ji Kang29%
7/15/2026, 9:50:43 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Self-Serving Bias, Negativity Bias, and Framing Effect, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 20.8% saturation with 174 hits. Analysis detected 1,481 faulty-reasoning hits from 838 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 39.1% and a BS Rank of 28% (14,819 of 20,472 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 72.40% of the article peer group.
Developers in the Chicago area are optimistic about a new sweeping federal law that aims to increase housing supply and affordability, but advocates say the legislation doesn’t address the most pressing needs — that of low-income renters.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law Saturday, after President Donald Trump refused to sign the bill despite overwhelming bipartisan support.
The bill, touted by experts and leaders as the most significant housing legislation passed in decades, includes more than 40 measures that are meant to boost the country’s housing supply through incentives, grants and reduced regulations.
Local developers say the act will help them build more housing at a time when labor shortages and higher material costs are resulting in less construction starts and higher prices for buyers.
Tim Swanson, founder of development firm Inherent L3C, said the act is powerful because it touches on everything from manufactured and modular homes to loans for home repairs.
The North Lawndale-based company specializes in affordable modular housing, or homes built off-site in factories and then assembled on a lot.
Inherent is projected to build 40 homes this year, according to Swanson.
The builder plans to double that number in 2027 and believes the housing act will help it reach that goal.
The bill directs the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development to review federal construction financing programs to identify and remove barriers for modular housing developers like Inherent.
HUD is also directed to fund a study for standardizing modular home code.
Swanson said new financing programs and grants would be a big boost.
“The scalability for our work is entirely tied to the inputs and the outputs — the ability to permit 120 homes and the funding to do it,” Swanson said.
“We’ve seen those [funding] pieces move without a ROAD to Housing Act, and so I expect that to further increase now that we have a larger federal lens on it.”
There’s also a provision that blocks large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes if they already own 350 or more properties.
“I agree with the provision that restricts large corporations, like Blackstone, from buying up unlimited numbers of homes to rent, thus giving them undue control of a rental market,” Jeff Benach, CEO of Chicago-based Lexington Homes, said.
The provision is a welcome change but “more of a guardrail than a driver of affordability,” Frank Manzo, economist at the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, said.
Redfin data shows investors own about 15.5% of the market share in Chicago, as of March.
That’s a 0.1% increase year over year, according to Redfin.
“Limiting this pool of potential buyers will free up some properties and reduce prices somewhat at the margin, but other items that boost the supply of housing will ultimately play bigger roles in improving affordability over the next few years,” Manzo said.
“That group of corporations and large investors, they’re not forced in any way to suddenly put their properties on the market right now and have a huge influx of supply that people can now buy.”
While the housing industry feels hopeful about the law, some say more needs to be done to address the housing shortage for low-income renters.
According to a report by Housing Action Illinois and the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there are about 34 per 100 affordable and available rental homes for the state’s lowest-income households, families with annual incomes at or below 30% of the area median income.
“Illinois’ most severe housing needs are [those of] renters with the lowest incomes and people experiencing homelessness, and we really need more direct federal investment right now,” Bob Palmer, Housing Action Illinois’s policy director, said.
He said the bipartisan nature of the law generated “a lot of the excitement, but we’ll have to wait and see what the actual impact is,” given that most of the provisions require action by the Trump administration and Congress — either appropriating funds, issuing proposed rules, or establishing grant programs or new agencies within the federal government.
Palmer said there are some provisions that could have short-term impact, like lifting the cap on what banks can invest in affordable housing projects, particularly federal low-income housing tax credit projects.
Doug Schenkelberg, executive director of the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness, said he hopes the downstream effects of making housing more accessible and affordable for middle-class families will impact people without housing.
“A large percentage of folks experiencing homelessness are working and have income.
They simply can’t afford housing,” Schenkelberg said.
“So anything that makes the housing market more accessible overall increases supply overall.”
He added that the provisions in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act that specifically address homelessness are aimed at loosening restrictions and making it easier for people to qualify for services and vouchers.
However, “unless they put more funding to those vouchers and create new vouchers, the fact that more people are eligible doesn’t necessarily mean that more people are getting housed,” Schenkelberg said.
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