If Chicago wants more housing, it should remove barriers to building

Chicago is converting 25 Downtown office buildings to apartments this year — more such projects than the city has seen in the past 20 years combined, the Sun-Times reported in June. This is welcome news, and we need more of it. Bloomberg and Axios have reported that Chicago rents are up more than 35% since before the pandemic, which outpaces other major cities over the same period. Despite demand, these conversion projects struggle to launch in Chicago because developers face expensive…