Like many other communities across Illinois, Rockford is facing a housing crisis.

The city reports that 42.9% of renters across our community are cost burdened. Home buyers are burdened at about half the rate of renters. Burdened means they spend more than thirty percent of their income on housing, straining available income for other items like healthcare, transportation, food and education.

While many local leaders are working to bring housing costs down through various efforts, i.e. zoning changes, property tax waivers, and more, these changes alone won’t make a meaningful difference. Without additional action Rockford’s crisis will worsen.

Across Illinois we have an opportunity to leverage unspent federal bond capacity for the 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) allocations awarded annually to Illinois. The Build Illinois Homes Tax Credit creates a stable, predictable funding source for affordable housing development and leverages existing federal tax credit sources.

To understand what this means for us here in Rockford … On March 10th, 2025, the City of Rockford Planning and Development committee, unanimously approved a Housing Strategy to “create and preserve the 6,000-9,000 housing units by 2035 to support and build on regional growth.”

Without the Build Illinois Homes Tax Credit, we are leaving money on the table for housing production and filling gaps with other essential locally controlled funds that could be used elsewhere to spur additional economic development.

For the city to meet this goal it committed to several actions, including, “Combine HOME and CDBG funding with innovative financing approaches, such as TIF funding, tax rebates, and fee reductions to support housing development and redevelopment.”

I sincerely appreciate this; however, why not support bringing money from outside our community to allow our “in house” resources to go further?

To see the practicality in the Build Illinois Homes Tax Credit on an actual project in Rockford, I share the project I am currently preserving in downtown – The LaFayette Hotel. The Lafayette is an historic adaptive reuse project that transitions a once transient hotel to affordable housing for residents who make up to $39,360/annually (single person household).

The LaFayette total project costs are approximately $18.6M. This was a very tight project. We had to leverage several state and local resources to fill the gaps, including $650,000 in City HOME funds.

Had the Build Illinois Homes Tax Credit been in place, it would have generated sufficient equity through the sale of the Build Illinois Homes Tax Credits. This means we wouldn’t have needed our local funds, and they could have gone elsewhere to develop even more housing and create greater economic impact.

Rockford’s housing challenges are not unique; they reflect a broader statewide issue. Illinois has a shortage of more than 289,000 affordable rental homes for its lowest-income residents.

In many Illinois communities, including Rockford, the cost of developing housing exceeds what the market can sustain in rent or sale prices. And, as previously mentioned, while local leaders are taking steps to address this gap, without new solutions, the housing crisis will only worsen.

This bipartisan legislation has broad support from the business, housing, and real estate communities. Passing the Build Illinois Homes Tax Credit (HB 1147/SB62) is a smart, common-sense investment in our future.

I ask that you join me in advocating for the passage of the Build Illinois Homes Tax Credit to spur housing production. Please call your legislators today and ask them to support HB 1147/SB62.

Ron Clewer is the National President for Community Revitalization for Gorman & Company. He also serves the boards of Winnebago County CASA, Northern Illinois Center For Nonprofit Excellence, Transform Rockford and on the statewide preservation organization, Landmarks Illinois.