Chicago is accelerating efforts to redevelop long-vacant city-owned land by promoting middle-scale housing across its South and West sides, a strategy city leaders say could help address affordability gaps while revitalizing disinvested neighborhoods.
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Developers recently broke ground on a $5.4 million project in North Lawndale that will add seven middle-scale homes to the community. The development is part of the city’s broader Missing Middle Housing Initiative, which focuses on medium-density housing types such as duplexes, triplexes, and six-flats—forms that bridge the gap between single-family homes and high-rise apartment buildings.
Funding for the initiative is supported by a $1.25 billion, five-year housing and economic development bond approved by the city. Officials say the program is designed to expand housing options while making better use of underutilized land already owned by the city.
Chicago’s approach is rooted in the scale of its vacant land inventory. According to the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University, the city owned an estimated 8,800 vacant lots as of 2023. Most of those parcels are zoned for residential use and are concentrated on the South and West sides—areas that have faced decades of population decline and underinvestment.
Through the Missing Middle Housing Initiative, the city is selling vacant lots to selected developers for $1 and offering up to $150,000 per unit in construction assistance for market-rate homes. Developers are chosen through a competitive request-for-proposals process. The program’s first phase launched in January 2025.
“As we continue to confront the housing crisis head-on, initiatives like Missing Middle address the critical disparities that exist in access to homeownership,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement. “With each project, we demonstrate what’s possible when government and community come together to lay the foundation for a more equitable and thriving city.”
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City officials estimate Chicago’s affordable housing shortfall at roughly 100,000 units. Housing experts say missing middle housing—often constrained by zoning rules and building code requirements—could play an important role in closing that gap by delivering more attainable ownership opportunities without dramatically altering neighborhood scale.
In North Lawndale alone, plans call for 115 homes to be developed through the initiative. Once completed, the units will be marketed to buyers earning up to 140% of the area median income, expanding access to ownership for moderate-income households.
“Missing Middle is a fast-track repopulation and wealth-building strategy that’s underway less than a year after developers were selected through the RFP,” stated Ciere Boatright, commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development. “That’s how we cut the tape. That’s how we revitalize neighborhoods. And that’s how we create wealth-building opportunities for local buyers.”
City leaders say the initiative reflects a broader shift toward leveraging publicly owned land to spur neighborhood-scale housing production while addressing long-standing inequities in access to homeownership across Chicago.
Originally reported by Ryan Kushner, Editor in Smart Cities Dive.
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