The New Burnham Plan has 46 evidence-based policies, each explained in plain words. They cover housing, transit, public safety, schools and economic opportunity.
THE POLICIES
HERE ARE 46 PLANS TO FIX 46 PROBLEMS.
Each one fixes something specific. Start with the plain-language version. Underneath is the detail: what it costs, what it takes to pass, and where it has already worked.
START HERE
If you only read three, read these.
These three show what this plan does for a family: homes people can afford, a walkable downtown for your own neighborhood, and childcare that makes it possible to raise kids here.
Housing Abundance
Rents and home prices Chicagoans can afford, because the city lets enough homes get built again.
I want more homes in the two-flats, three-flats and coach houses Chicago was built on, so more neighbors share the city's bills instead of the people still here paying more.
READ IT →
Complete Neighborhoods: The Frunchroom
Your neighborhood gets its own downtown, with a free plaza and a main street you can walk.
Think of the last place you didn't want to leave: a square in Italy, a ski town, Disney World with your kids. These neighborhood downtowns, called frunchrooms, open at a pace of about four a year starting in Year 3, with at least 30 by Year 10, and they keep coming until every part of the city is in one. Among the sites that qualify, the most disinvested go first.
READ IT →
Chicago Family Care for All
Raising a kid in Chicago you can actually afford: childcare for $10 a day and 12 weeks of paid leave at 90% of your pay.
Childcare is for families who live in Chicago. Paid leave is for anyone who works here, including commuters. Today, infant care at a Chicago child care center averages about $1,560 a month for one baby.
READ IT →
Here are all 46, grouped by the role each one plays in the renovation.
Every policy has a job in the renovation: clear out what's broken, design and pay for the work, build the foundation, systems and rooms, then protect it. Many run at the same time.
SEE MY PRIORITIES
SEARCH THE POLICIES
ALL STEPS
ABATE
DESIGN
CONSTRUCT · FOUNDATION
CONSTRUCT · SYSTEMS
CONSTRUCT · ROOMS
WARRANTY
SHOWING 46 POLICIES
STEP 1 · ABATE
Stop the damage first.
Before we build anything new, we stop what keeps draining the city: hidden budgets, bad leases, slow permits and waste.
Contextual Zoning
Room for more neighbors in the neighborhoods people want to live in, so the people already there don't get priced out.
If a kind of building already stands on your block, you can build one like it, with no zoning hearing and no sign-off from your alderman.
READ IT →
Regulatory Streamlining
Homes and businesses get built sooner, because permits stop taking forever.
Every building permit gets a deadline, and if the city misses it, you get your fees back. Every department reviews at once, and you get one list of fixes.
READ IT →
CPD Fiscal Protection Act
I want fewer police lawsuit payouts draining the city budget, and real backing for officers who do the job right.
Officers get trained in what works, and problems get caught early. From 2019 to 2024, about $295 million in payouts came from cases involving just 272 officers.
READ IT →
TIF Abolition
Your property taxes should go back where they belong: to your schools, parks and city services.
In 2024, Chicago's 108 TIF (tax increment financing) districts collected about $1.6 billion that would otherwise have gone to schools, parks and city services. I'll start winding the districts down on day one.
READ IT →
Productive Land Incentive
People buying a home in Chicago to live in can get help from a $10,000 grant.
The grants are paid for by a surcharge on vacant land and surface parking lots, and the surcharge rises every year. Today our tax system charges you for building and rewards sitting on an empty lot.
READ IT →
Chicago Efficiency Initiative
City Hall should spend your money well, so it goes after its own waste first.
It does this before it asks you for a new dollar, and without cutting the services you count on. The target is about $300 million a year by Year 4, built line by line from an outside review the city paid for.
READ IT →
Honest Government
A city where permits, licenses and tax dollars don't depend on an alderman's private yes-or-no.
Thirty-eight members of the City Council have been convicted of crimes since 1968, and fifty years of new ethics rules haven't fixed it. So I'll take away the decisions that can be sold.
READ IT →
The Public Work Act
You should be able to see who shapes what the city does, not just who the city pays.
Consultants and nonprofits doing public work for Chicago, paid or free, come under the same open-records and disclosure rules as the city.
READ IT →
Dibs On Our Streets
I want to take back our streets and keep our parking money in Chicago.
The money you put in a Chicago parking meter goes to the private investors who lease the meters and leaves the city. The lease runs until 2083 and the money will keep leaving the city until then. Under the terms of the lease's sale to a new owner, Chicago gets just 5% of the lease's net income. I'm calling for a citywide boycott of metered parking, and as mayor I'll take the deal to court. Until then, I'm asking you not to put your money in the meters.
READ IT →
Public Assets Protection Act (PAPA)
Chicago should hold on to the public assets it owns, like its water system, streets and parking, instead of selling them off for quick cash.
Under the Public Assets Protection Act, selling or leasing a money-making city asset for more than ten years takes competitive bids, an independent valuation and a City Council supermajority, and the deal has to beat what the city would make by keeping it.
READ IT →
STEP 2 · DESIGN
Hire the crew and know the budget.
This step sets up the team that runs the renovation and the money that pays for it, before the work starts.
Chicago Remodel Fund
Your neighborhood gets rebuilt from the pipes up, and the programs that keep families in it are funded for good.
The Chicago Remodel Fund is a permanent line on the property tax set aside for neighborhoods, so these programs stop losing the budget fight every year. It costs the median homeowner about $1.75 a day, or $53 a month, and you vote on it.
READ IT →
River Crossing Fee
Drivers who don't live in Chicago pay a toll to cross the Chicago River, and Chicago residents are not charged. The money restores our bridges and rebuilds our neighborhoods.
The toll is paid by drivers who come in from outside the city and use our streets all day. It's $10 at rush hour and $3.50 at other times.
READ IT →
Chicago Mobility Fund
The vehicles that wear out our streets pay to keep them in better repair.
Bigger, heavier vehicles take up more space, do more damage and are more dangerous. So they pay more for the city vehicle sticker, and the sticker money becomes our road maintenance fund. Low-speed vehicles (LSVs), small electric vehicles for short trips, register for free, and so do motorcycles and mopeds.
READ IT →
Mayor's Delivery Unit
The plan's promises actually get done, and their progress is tracked where you can check it.
Chicago has never been short on announcements. The Mayor's Delivery Unit is a small team in the mayor's office, with the standing of a cabinet department. It tracks every commitment and publishes a progress report every quarter.
READ IT →
Chicago Data & Technology Alliance
When someone profits from Chicago's public data, Chicago should get a share.
Every permit, 311 call, bus and water main produces data that others build businesses on while the city gets the invoices. Every new tech deal will give Chicago co-ownership and a share of the profits.
READ IT →
STEP 3 · CONSTRUCT · FOUNDATION
Homes, paychecks and clean water.
Without enough homes, wages that cover the bills and safe water from the tap, nothing else holds up.
Housing Abundance
Rents and home prices Chicagoans can afford, because the city lets enough homes get built again.
I want more homes in the two-flats, three-flats and coach houses Chicago was built on, so more neighbors share the city's bills instead of the people still here paying more.
READ IT →
Lead-Free Chicago
Every lead water line in Chicago comes out before the federal deadline, decades ahead of the city's plan.
Chicago has about 412,000 water lines that are lead or have to be replaced, and the city's own plan finishes in 2076, when a kid born this year turns fifty. Owners who go through the city program get no bill for the replacement. A surcharge on the water bill pays for it, and the surcharge ends when the last pipe is out.
READ IT →
Keep Chicago Chicago
When your neighborhood finally gets the investment it waited decades for, you get to stay and enjoy it.
Protections for renters and longtime homeowners go in before the city announces a new neighborhood plaza and the investment around it.
READ IT →
Dignity Wage
If you work full time in Chicago, you can afford to live here.
Every full-time job in Chicago would pay at least $63,500 a year, $30.53 an hour in today's dollars. That's 120% of what it costs one adult to live in Cook County. It phases in over four years.
READ IT →
Housing First Chicago
Fewer people should be sleeping outside. We give people a stable home first, then the help to keep it.
Treatment and support are built around the person's new home, and every provider works from one shared list of people who need a home. Houston took this approach and cut homelessness by 64% from 2011 to 2023.
READ IT →
Housing Stability Initiative
Families stay in their homes, and small landlords stay afloat.
Low-income tenants and every senior facing eviction get a lawyer, and small landlords get rental help within 30 days instead of six months.
READ IT →
OPEN
Chicago Open for Business Act
You should be able to open a business in Chicago without being sent from office to office or left waiting on an answer.
Apply once online and get a decision on any standard business license in 30 days. If you meet the rules, you should be able to open.
READ IT →
Chicago Sovereign Fund
Chicagoans should get factory jobs, and the city should get an ownership stake in the companies it buys from.
Chicago's plan will buy solar panels, batteries, e-bikes and small electric vehicles for years, so I'd recruit the companies that make them to build here and hire Chicagoans first.
READ IT →
Compassion for Human Beings
Every neighbor should feel safe calling the police, because that makes all of us safer.
If you live in Chicago, you're a Chicagoan, and city workers and city resources serve the people who live here. Police still serve any criminal warrant signed by a judge.
READ IT →
STEP 3 · CONSTRUCT · SYSTEMS
The systems people count on.
These are the things a family checks before deciding to stay: childcare, transit, health care, schools, safety and the streets and pipes under them.
Paved Paradise
You won't keep dodging the same pothole, because each street is rebuilt from the pipes up, once, and then kept up on a schedule.
You won't watch a crew tear up your street to reach a pipe a year after it was repaved. Every rebuilt block comes with as-built drawings, a record of exactly what was built and where, and a warranty on the work.
READ IT →
Chicago Family Care for All
Raising a kid in Chicago you can actually afford: childcare for $10 a day and 12 weeks of paid leave at 90% of your pay.
Childcare is for families who live in Chicago. Paid leave is for anyone who works here, including commuters. Today, infant care at a Chicago child care center averages about $1,560 a month for one baby.
READ IT →
Mental Health & Addiction Recovery
Anyone in a mental health or addiction crisis can get real help.
Mental health clinics reopen on the South and West sides, and crisis care is there around the clock. The police and paramedics who bring someone in are back on patrol within minutes.
READ IT →
Chicago Powers Itself
Chicago should have lower power bills, and police and fire stations that stay lit when the grid goes down.
Chicago makes its own power right here, with solar panels on city roofs and a power plant in every new neighborhood plaza, all tied together by a city microgrid that keeps police and fire stations running in a blackout.
READ IT →
Chicago Schools
I want to get kids back in class by catching them early, when they first start missing school.
We catch chronic absence after three to five missed days instead of eighteen, and the hardest-hit schools get someone whose whole job is getting kids back. More than four in ten Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students missed at least a tenth of the 2024-25 school year.
READ IT →
Chicago Trades Pipeline
Chicagoans get careers building Chicago, with no college debt.
Replacing lead pipes, digging a subway and rebuilding our neighborhoods will take more skilled workers than we train today, so we'll train them here, with the unions.
READ IT →
Chicago Guardians
When someone is in a mental health crisis, trained professionals respond instead of police.
Chicago Guardians sends a medic and a mental health professional, 24 hours a day, starting in the first neighborhoods the plan rebuilds around a new plaza and main street. A sexual assault survivor talks first to a trauma-trained advocate, not a police officer.
READ IT →
Enjoy the Ride
Trains and buses you feel safe on, because transit is the one thing no suburb can match.
The plan puts uniformed Transit Ambassadors and police officers on the trains, keeps cars clean and stations bright, and builds heated shelters at the busiest bus stops. It's all paid from money the CTA (the Chicago Transit Authority) already has.
READ IT →
Chicago Human Economy
Technology should make Chicago stronger, not just the companies using our streets, water and power.
Any company that uses Chicago's public resources does it on terms that give something back. That starts with Chicago Ride, a city rideshare run as a public benefit corporation, which competes with Uber and pays drivers the Dignity Wage, the plan's new minimum wage.
READ IT →
Fresh Chicago
Every Chicagoan should have fresh food within a half mile of home.
We help grocers open and stay open, keep farmers markets running year-round, and put empty lots to work growing food.