OPINION
By Townhall News Editorial Board
Chicago leaders have expressed optimism that a proposed apartment registry will improve the city’s troubled record on building safety, according to an Illinois Answers Project investigation published Oct. 13 and updated Oct. 14. The reporting found that many of the buildings with the highest violation counts have unclear ownership structures, making enforcement difficult. City officials have framed the registry as a transparency tool that would help identify problem landlords and hold them accountable. The instinct is understandable. The logic, however, has a fundamental flaw: Chicago’s building safety crisis is not primarily an information problem. It is an enforcement problem.
The Illinois Answers Project’s analysis builds on years of investigative reporting into the city’s failure to protect tenants. A 2021 investigation by the Better Government Association and the Chicago Tribune found dozens of cases in which Chicagoans died in fires inside buildings that city officials knew were unsafe but never addressed, according to the Illinois Answers Project’s prior reporting. The City Council scrapped a requirement for annual inspections of multifamily buildings three stories or taller in 2017 at the behest of then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, according to the Illinois Answers Project. Under the existing complaint-driven system, several dozen inspectors were tasked with responding to more than 56,000 building-related complaints citywide in 2022, according to city records cited by the outlet. The math alone reveals a system designed to fail.
Two competing proposals now before the City Council would establish some form of citywide rental registry. The PRO Act, sponsored by Mayor Brandon Johnson, would create a new Bureau of Rental Housing Services under the Department of Housing, charging annual registration fees of $20 to $60 per unit depending on building size, according to a real estate industry analysis. The FAIR Act, sponsored by Ald. Gilbert Villegas, would house a similar office within the Department of Buildings with far less data collection and no fee structure written into the ordinance text. Both proposals were scheduled for a City Council vote on Oct. 14, according to that same analysis. The debate is not over whether a registry should exist but over how much data it should collect, who administers it, and who pays for it.
Proponents of the registry make a reasonable case. Many problem properties in Chicago are held through layers of limited liability companies that obscure true ownership. An Illinois Answers Project analysis found that buildings with the most violations frequently have unclear ownership. A registry requiring disclosure of natural persons behind LLCs could help the city identify repeat offenders who operate across multiple properties. Seventeen of the 75 largest cities in the country already operate rental registries, according to urban planning research. The concept is neither radical nor untested.
The problem is not the concept but the context. Chicago has a long and well-documented history of failing to use the enforcement tools it already possesses. FOX 32 Chicago reported in early October that a South Side building at 7000 S. Parnell Ave. had failed five annual inspections, received 35 complaints through 311, and was the subject of an active court case involving 32 violations. The city’s Department of Buildings described the owner’s compliance as “inconsistent and minimal,” according to the report. This is a federally subsidized Section 8 property. The city knew about the problems. It had the authority to act. The tenants still lived with mice, roaches, and water leaks.
Adding a registry on top of an inspection regime that cannot process the complaints it already receives risks creating an expensive new bureaucracy that generates data nobody acts on. The PRO Act’s fee structure would raise an estimated $22 million annually, according to the ordinance’s provisions. That is real money drawn from property owners who will inevitably pass costs along to tenants through higher rents. Before imposing those costs, the city should demonstrate it can competently manage the enforcement powers it holds today.
Fair-minded observers will acknowledge that better ownership data could improve targeting of enforcement resources, and that the status quo is unacceptable. Those points deserve weight. But the pattern in Chicago governance is familiar: when existing systems fail, the response is to build new systems rather than fix the broken ones. The result is layered bureaucracy, diffused accountability, and tenants who remain in danger.
Chicago’s renters deserve safe housing. They also deserve a city government that earns the right to expand its regulatory reach by first proving it can execute its current responsibilities. Competence before expansion is not a radical proposition. It is the minimum standard taxpayers and tenants should demand.
Sources: Illinois Answers Project, Oct. 13, 2026 (updated Oct. 14, 2026) — https://illinoisanswers.org/2026/10/13/chicago-leaders-optimistic-apartment-registry-will-boost-citys-troubled-record-on-building-safety/
