Agreement Signed off by City Council Requires City to Rehab or Build Thousands of Apartments for Low-Income, Disabled Residents and Follow Federal Civil Rights Housing Laws
Contact: Lena Parsons, [email protected], 773-425-0725
Ashley Eisenmenger, [email protected], 217-552-5921
Paris Kissel, [email protected], 513-827 0887
May 20, 2026, CHICAGO –– Access Living, Chicago’s Center for Independent Living (CIL) and a nationally leading advocacy organization for people with disabilities, today announced resolution of an eight-year-old civil rights lawsuit alleging the City of Chicago funded and developed tens of thousands of affordable rental housing units without ensuring that the required number are accessible to people with disabilities.
Access Living filed its complaint in federal court in May 2018, alleging violations of the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The court denied the City’s motion to dismiss in March 2019 and its summary judgment motion in September 2024, holding that federal accessibility requirements applied to all of the affordable rental housing assisted by the City, whether or not any particular building received federal funding. Settlement discussions commenced shortly thereafter.
Although it denies legal liability, the agreement requires the City of Chicago to identify, build or rehabilitate 2,800 units to comply with federal accessibility standards, develop policies to prevent future civil rights violations and pay damages for interfering with Access Living’s mission of promoting full community integration for Chicagoans with disabilities.
This is the second-largest accessible affordable housing settlement in the nation’s history. It and the 2016 settlement against Los Angeles (4000 total units) are substantially larger than any such litigation brought over the past 40 years by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
This is a historic resolution to a long-fought case that will benefit the people of Chicago for generations. Advocates and lawyers hope it will inspire similar reforms in municipalities across the nation that have similarly failed to comply with federal civil rights laws.
Chicago’s City Council approved the agreement today in its regular monthly meeting.
The agreement, which will be incorporated into a judgment by U.S. District Court Judge Edmond E. Chang of the Northern District of Illinois, will apply to all properties with five or more units funded by or through the City after June 2, 1988. The ruling could impact more than 40,000 rental units in more than 900 developments.
“Since Access Living was founded 45 years ago, the lack of affordable, accessible housing has been the greatest obstacle to our mission of ensuring the right of every person with a disability to live independently, with dignity, in the community. We have been frustrated for decades by the failure of the City of Chicago to enforce our rights in its Affordable Rental Housing Program. This settlement will finally begin to address that with this settlement,” said Daisy Feidt, Access Living’s Executive Vice President.
The agreement—which will be enforceable as a court order—will require the City to identify, build or rehab 2,800 units that comply with accessibility standards. Of that number, 2,000 must be accessible to people with mobility disabilities and 800 must be accessible for people with hearing and vision disabilities. Also, at least 250 units of the 2,800 will be affordable to households at or below 30% of the area median income ($36,450 for a family of four) and an additional 250 units will be affordable to households at or below 50% of the area median income ($60,750 for a family of four)i.
Further, the City of Chicago must implement policies to ensure that all city-funded housing is operated in compliance with accessibility requirements. Those Policies include how units are to be marketed and filled, how to manage waiting lists and transfers for disability reasons, consideration of reasonable accommodations, handling assistance animals, communication processes and grievance procedures. These policies are expected to impact more than 40,000 units throughout the city.
The agreement comes following more than eight years of litigation through three mayoral administrations, and lengthy settlement negotiations stretching over more than a year.
“More than a quarter of Chicagoans are disabledii,” said Kenneth Walden, Civil Rights Attorney at Access Living said. “This lawsuit forces the City of Chicago to follow basic civil rights laws established more than 50 years ago. We look forward to working with the City as it embraces this important obligation to the people of Chicago.”
Since its founding, the highest demand for Access Living’s services has come from disabled consumers in search of affordable and accessible housing. Stories of impacted consumers include a physically disabled woman who had to climb 25 stairs because she could not afford to live somewhere else, a man forced to live in a nursing home for decades because he could not find affordable housing with wide-enough doors for his wheelchair, a woman who used a wheelchair forced to call the fire department if she needed to leave her second floor unit, and a woman with Lupus who was homeless and finally had to move into an apartment with stairs in order to retain her rental voucher.
“I have been in situations over and over again where I could not access affordable, accessible apartments. And even now, I live with the risk of my rent going up and my voucher not covering this unit,” said Angela Lacy, a long-time housing advocate and Access Living community member.
In 2018, Lacy was bouncing between less than accessible apartments of friends and family before settling a few years ago in her first fully accessible unit.
Similarly, Michael Grice, a wheelchair user and disability advocate for decades, previously lived in a nursing home and has since found stable housing in his first accessible apartment building since acquiring his disability 40 years ago.
“It is dehumanizing for a young person to be forced to live in a nursing home. I was without community and peers,” said Grice. “Now I have my own place and have community.”
In 2016, Access Living began an investigation to determine whether the City of Chicago was complying with the accessibility requirements of the ADA, Section 504, and the FHA in its Affordable Rental Housing Program. The investigation by anonymous, disabled testers revealed that many developments in the City’s Affordable Rental Housing Program were not constructed to allow individuals who use wheelchairs to enter, access, and/or use buildings, rooms, and amenities. Violations found included:
- Main entrances that were inaccessible to an individual in a wheelchair because of steps or other barriers
- Doors in units and into units identified as “accessible” were too narrow for wheelchairs
- Inaccessible bathroom sinks or faucets in the “accessible” unit
- Not a single unit with roll-in showers
Access Living’s investigation also discovered the City failed to implement and enforce policies necessary to make the Affordable Rental Housing Program overall meaningfully accessible to people with disabilities, including policies to connect units with accessible features to individuals who need those features. A new City-maintained database of rental properties and the new policies should begin to impact that.
The online portal will list properties with affordable and accessible units that received funding through the City. That list and the Housing Locator tool are not yet complete but when completed, the list of affordable and accessible units will include all properties on the covered by the agreement including unit addresses, owners, property management, accessible units and accessible features.
“Many of our consumers have never lived in a home that fully meets their needs and struggle to simply find one that meets their needs,” said Feidt. “Many people with disabilities are forced to strain their bodies and health with apartments that they can’t safely navigate or sometimes end up on the streets. All these factors contribute to an unnecessarily decreased quality of life.”
Nabi Yisrael is another Access Living consumer who celebrates this win. He has also struggled to find housing that is affordable and accessible for his power wheelchair. Yisrael has Multiple Sclerosis and has lived in units where he had to pull himself up stairs to access a unit his chair didn’t fit into. Now he lives in an apartment that is fully accessible.
In addition to the housing renovations and new policies, the agreement also provides the City will pay $2,250,000 in damages to Access Living related to the frustration of its core mission.
Throughout the litigation and settlement process, Access Living has been represented by Relman Colfax, PLLC, a Washington D.C-based civil rights law firm specializing in civil and disability rights litigation. Prior to her death in 2019, Access Living’s founding CEO Marca Bristo served as an expert witness in previous Relman Colfax litigation on behalf of two Centers for Independent Living against the City of Los Angeles. That case, which settled in 2016, required Los Angeles to provide 4,000 highly accessible units and adopt policies to ensure priorities for people with disabilities. Recognizing that Chicago’s affordable housing portfolio was largely inaccessible, Bristo retained Relman Colfax to handle the litigation that resulted in the settlement announced today. The Chicago and Los Angeles settlements represent the largest resolutions of accessible affordable housing litigation in the country’s history.
“Like too many other cities, Chicago ignored its obligation under federal law to make sure city funded housing was accessible,” said Michael Allen, partner at Relman Colfax and lead attorney in Chicago and LA’s housing lawsuits. “We are proud to have assisted Access Living to remedy this situation, which will ensure opportunities for thousands of Chicagoans with disabilities to live in housing in the community. We hope that cities all over the country wake up to their accessibility obligations and come into compliance without the need for litigation.”
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Established in 1980, Access Living is a center of service, advocacy, and social change for people with disabilities led and run by people with disabilities. We envision a world free from barriers and discrimination – where disability is a respected and natural part of the human experience and people with disabilities are included and valued. For more information, visit accessliving.org
i https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/doh/provdrs/renters/svcs/ami_chart.html
ii https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mopd/supp_info/disability_data_chicago_accessibility.html