Government isn’t exactly a multiple choice test, but eliminating the wrong answers can still be a good step toward a lasting solution.

Impact For Equity recently released a report titled “Many high-cost suburbs continue to violate state affordable housing law” (tinyurl.com/Impact4Equity).

With footing in outside data – notably June’s joint report from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Project for Middle Class Renewal, which said Illinois currently is short 142,000 housing units but would need to open 227,000 over five years to meet projected demand – the report spotlights the 2003 Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act, amended in 2021 and 2023.

Altogether the result depicts a problem that’s worsened over time while largely toothless attempts at fixes gather dust as they’re ignored in multiple municipalities. More than a third of the local governments required to submit plans didn’t do so and more than 75% off those that did submit plans turned in noncompliant documents.

However, the Illinois Housing Development Authority’s standards for determining whether a plan is compliant “are inconsistent, unclear and likely overestimate actual compliance,” the agency said, lest there be any wondering why legislation alone hasn’t solved this problem.

The law’s goal is for every municipality to have at least 10% of its housing stock qualified as affordable based on monthly rent or, for owner-occupied homes, a combined monthly cost of mortgage, property taxes and insurance, and comparing those totals to the median household income according to U.S. Census Bureau calculations. Right now, according to Impact for Equity, 43 of 44 affected municipalities are in the Chicago metro area, and the monthly figures are $1,181 for renters and $1,575 for homeowners.

The Authority runs numbers every five years, which seems too infrequent given market trends. The Illinois Realtors website reports the median price of Chicago area single family homes and condo units jumped 8.5% from October 2024-October 2025. To say the median incomes hasn’t experienced a similar spike is an understatement.

Nine of the governments that did submit plans took note of a fundamental challenge: they don’t control their residents’ salaries. Further, town populations are quite a small percentage of the overall region used in these calculations. For all the governments in the 20203 cycle, the report noted, there are nine Illinois and four Indiana counties all linked economically to Chicago.

Affordable isn’t a sufficiently objective adjective as to be solved through government action, whether the noun is housing, medication, child care, higher education or any number of semi- or fully-public sectors.

If the solutions were easy we’d have them already, but it’s hard to mount a justification for keeping the AHPAA on the books – or to envision a new plan with worse results.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.