Illinois REALTORS is abandoning the fight for statewide zoning mandates and instead sending its own staff directly into city halls across Illinois, launching a new program aimed at getting homes built one municipality at a time. The shift comes months after Governor JB Pritzker's ambitious BUILD Act, which would have forced cities to allow denser housing on smaller lots, died without a vote in the General Assembly.
The newly launched Illinois Housing Supply Accelerator Program pairs the trade group's regional governmental affairs directors with municipal leaders to identify and remove local barriers to construction, according to The Real Deal. Rather than pushing one statewide standard, the program is designed to tailor housing-construction solutions to each local market, offering ordinance and zoning reviews, policy templates, and technical expertise, per Illinois REALTORS. Illinois REALTORS represents more than 50,000 real estate professionals across the state, and its network of regional staff forms the operational backbone of the new effort, according to Capitol Fax.
Illinois currently faces an estimated shortage of 142,000 homes and will need to build between 225,000 and 227,000 units over the next five years just to keep pace with demand, according to Abundant Housing Illinois. The state has also fallen dramatically behind on production: Illinois ranked near the bottom among states for new-homebuilding rates, issuing just 157 permits per 100,000 residents from June 2025 to May 2026, with Alaska posting a slower building rate, per The Real Deal's reporting. Between 2021 and 2026, home listings across the state dropped 64%, while new construction permits fell to 13%, according to the same Abundant Housing Illinois data.
How the BUILD Act Collapsed
Pritzker proposed the Building Up Illinois Development Act, known as the BUILD Act, calling for the elimination of single-family-only zoning on certain-sized lots statewide, the legalization of accessory dwelling units, and other measures aimed at cutting red tape affecting housing construction. Introduced in February as House Bill 5626 by Representative Kam Buckner, the measure would have allowed up to eight units on lots over 7,500 square feet, according to the Daily Herald. Illinois REALTORS supported the bill, but it failed to pass out of committee during the spring legislative session.
Municipal leaders rejected the BUILD Act in May, criticizing what they described as its one-size-fits-all approach and objecting to the statewide preemption of local zoning authority. The Illinois Municipal League countered in April with its own Reducing Expenses and Advancing Local Housing Act, offering opt-in incentive funds, sales tax exemptions on building materials, and permitting reforms rather than mandates, as reported by Multifamily Dive. Even so, the state budget lawmakers ultimately passed included $250 million dedicated to housing programs, down payment assistance, and infrastructure grants, the Daily Herald reported.
Local Governments Now Asking Realtors for Help
Municipal leaders are now turning to Illinois REALTORS directly, asking the trade group for help figuring out how to build more housing without ceding local control. Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, representing 275 Illinois municipalities, published a report in May titled Home Grown: Local Strategies In Action, showcasing more than 70 local housing initiatives — including a missing-middle zoning program in Champaign that generated 229 units across eight developments since 2018, according to Multifamily Dive's coverage.
“The battleground is local,” Jeff Kolbus said, per The Real Deal's reporting. Jeff Baker, also quoted in that reporting, said the housing shortage is worsening every day and that communities need tools they can use now. Baker added that the program is intended to move from recognizing the housing problem to getting homes built.
What the Program Actually Offers
The accelerator gives participating communities online resources and specialists to help identify barriers to building more housing, and it can help both communities and developers find construction solutions, according to the seed reporting. Developers are described as ready to build once local hurdles are cleared. The initiative also draws on the national Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook, a framework jointly created by the National Association of Realtors and the American Planning Association to help local governments remove land-use barriers, per REALTOR Party.
The regional housing crunch extends beyond homeownership numbers. An April report co-released by Housing Action Illinois and the National Low Income Housing Coalition found the Chicago metropolitan area alone faces a shortage of roughly 224,000 affordable rental homes for extremely low-income renters, a gap Hoodline previously reported has contributed to regional housing instability. Whether voluntary, city-by-city partnerships can generate enough new units to close a 142,000-home statewide deficit — without the legal force of a statewide zoning mandate — remains an open question as the accelerator program gets underway.
