Chicago built new homes at the slowest pace of any of the nation's 10 biggest metro areas last year, according to a new report. It's a long-term result of the highly regulatory climate, low population growth and other local factors, and it is helping fuel fast-rising home prices. Audio: Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon says Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades – Chicago’s Morning Answer
April 3, 2026
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Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Illinois lost another 54,000 tax filers and dependents, net, according to the IRS. Since 2000, fleeing taxpayers have taken $94 billion of annual adjusted gross income with them.
Get used to it Chicagoland. There were years that you could count housing starts in Detroit on 2 hands.
It’s good that builders aren’t building new housing. As many of you have noted, population has been stagnant so it would be irresponsible to build more housing. Probably why our prices of existing homes continues to rise in Chicago. Supply and demand Old Joe.
Illinois and the Chicago area in particular are toxic to investment and will be for the foreseeable future until the political climate changes. Absolutely nothing is getting better, anyone in just about any industry can tell you there are few plans for expansion or investment in this state. No new business = no new jobs = no need for new houses.
But I’ll bet #1 nationally for taxpayer funded $800,000 a unit “affordable housing”….(with therapeutic “sage burn” balcony & grow roof)😅😅
Every Aldercritter has veto power.