Despite touting a drop in violent crime and pushing an ambitious affordable housing agenda, the City of Chicago continues to spend far more than most of the nation while falling short on public safety and cost-effective governance. That’s the conclusion from a wide-ranging conversation between Chicago’s Morning Answer hosts Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson and Wirepoints president Ted Dabrowski.
At the center of the discussion was the eye-popping cost of so-called “affordable housing” developments in Chicago. A recent report from transit writer Richard Day revealed that in 2023, the cost to build a single affordable housing unit in Chicago reached a staggering $747,000. While state-level projects are slightly more efficient, they still come in at an average of $454,000 per unit — a figure Dabrowski and Proft both called “ridiculous.”
“These aren’t affordable housing projects — they’re taxpayer-financed boondoggles,” Dabrowski said. “Middle-income families trying to play by the rules are being fleeced to subsidize wildly inefficient projects driven by politics, not economics.”
Proft pointed out that identity politics and bureaucratic micromanagement are driving much of the inflated cost. Between the Chicago Department of Housing and the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA), multiple layers of overlapping programs and regulatory criteria have distorted the market. According to Day’s research, only 3% of project evaluation points are tied to cost efficiency. The rest are based on energy certifications, accessibility features, and the demographic makeup of developers.
Dabrowski emphasized that the root of Chicago’s housing affordability crisis is not solved by subsidies or central planning, but by zoning reform. “The real reason housing costs are high is because we don’t build enough housing,” he said. “Local zoning restrictions and red tape limit development, and then the same politicians turn around and use that problem to justify wasteful spending.”
The conversation then turned to crime, where Mayor Brandon Johnson has been publicly celebrating a 22% drop in violent crime in April. While Dabrowski acknowledged the downward trend is good news, he noted that Chicago continues to lag well behind other major cities.
“Let’s not pretend the city is suddenly a model of public safety,” Dabrowski said. “Chicago had 141 murders through mid-May. That’s more than New York City, which has more than triple the population, and more than Los Angeles.”
He attributed the national drop in violent crime to a broader post-pandemic normalization, with less economic disruption, fewer COVID restrictions, and a public less tolerant of soft-on-crime policies. But he questioned whether Chicago’s gains are the result of sound policy or just following national trends. “Everybody wants to take credit when crime goes down, but no one wants to own it when it spikes,” he said.
Dabrowski also warned that structural issues — including the continued impact of the SAFE-T Act and pretrial release policies — are still undermining public safety. High-profile crimes involving individuals out on felony bond continue to make headlines, including a recent case in which a man accused of kidnapping and shooting three women was reportedly in the country illegally.
And even when crime does drop, Chicago remains an outlier. “Less bloodshed is good, but we’re still not at the level of our peer cities,” Dabrowski said. “When Chicago is no longer the outlier in crime rates, then we can talk about real progress.”
Wirepoints has recently released data showing that Illinois has among the slowest rates of housing stock growth in the country — less than 1% over the last four years — further exacerbating affordability issues. Dabrowski warned that unless city and state officials take meaningful steps to remove regulatory barriers and incentivize responsible development, taxpayers will continue footing the bill for inefficient, top-down programs that deliver little in return.
“It’s the same pattern over and over,” Dabrowski concluded. “Government creates the problem through overregulation, then sells the solution as more spending and more control. And the people paying the price are the families who just want to live in a safe, affordable city.”
For more policy analysis from Ted Dabrowski and his team, visit Wirepoints.org.