Grand Boulevard holds more city-listed affordable rental units than any other Chicago community area: 2,406 of the 29,550 units on the city’s Affordable Rental Housing Developments list, 8.1 percent, in 30 developments. This page ranks the ten community areas with the most listed units, from our reading of the city’s list, and shows the development count beside each because the two measures pick different leaders: by number of developments the leader is Humboldt Park, with 48. Three limits apply to every entry. The list is the city’s own list of developments its programs support, “provided as a courtesy to the public” in its description’s words — and by that same description it does not include every city-assisted unit and it excludes unsubsidized housing that happens to rent low — so these are city-listed units, not all affordable housing. The file’s units column is undocumented, so each figure here is a count of listed units, not of units open or available. And the list carries a date: December 30, 2024, unchanged at the portal when this page was built. This page takes no position on where anyone should live.
1. Grand Boulevard — 2,406 listed units in 30 developments
The Bronzeville-area community leads by units: 2,406 listed across 30 developments, about 80 units per development against an average of 49 across all 598 listed developments, and 1.23 times the second-place count.
2. Near West Side — 1,958 listed units in 35 developments
1,958 listed units in 35 developments — tied with North Lawndale for the fourth-largest development count on the city’s list.
3. Near South Side — 1,473 listed units in 12 developments
1,473 units in 12 developments; at about 123 units per development, its entries are the largest of the ten.
4. Uptown — 1,432 listed units in 39 developments
1,432 units in 39 developments — the second-highest development count on the city’s list, behind Humboldt Park — and the first North Side area in this ranking.
5. Near North Side — 1,312 listed units in 24 developments
1,312 units in 24 developments, fifth.
6. East Garfield Park — 1,205 listed units in 14 developments
1,205 units in 14 developments, about 86 per development.
7. North Lawndale — 1,193 listed units in 35 developments
1,193 units in 35 developments, the same development count as the Near West Side with fewer listed units per development — about 34 against the Near West Side’s 56.
8. Rogers Park — 1,178 listed units in 10 developments
1,178 units in 10 developments, the second-fewest on the list, at about 118 units each.
9. Humboldt Park — 1,139 listed units in 48 developments
1,139 units — ninth by units but first on the city’s list by developments, 48 of them, about 24 units apiece.
10. Oakland — 1,063 listed units in 18 developments
1,063 units in 18 developments, tenth — ahead of Douglas at 896, the first area off the list, and Washington Park at 883.
Questions these numbers can answer
Which Chicago community area has the most city-listed affordable rental units? Grand Boulevard, with 2,406 of the 29,550 units on the city’s list — 8.1 percent. The ten areas here hold 14,359 units, 48.6 percent of the total, in 265 of the 598 developments, 44 percent. By developments rather than units, Humboldt Park leads with 48, then Uptown with 39, then West Town with 36 (640 units, which keeps it off this list), then the Near West Side and North Lawndale with 35 each.
How many community areas have none? Eleven of the 77 carry no development on the city’s list: Archer Heights, Beverly, Burnside, Clearing, East Side, Forest Glen, Hermosa, McKinley Park, Morgan Park, Mount Greenwood and O’Hare. The other 66 carry at least one.
Does a high count mean units are available? The list cannot say. It records developments and a units figure the portal does not define; it records nothing about vacancies, waiting lists or applications. Nearly half the listed units, 13,127 of 29,550, are in developments the file labels multifamily; 10,759 more, 36 percent, are in developments labeled senior, so an area’s count can be mostly units with an age requirement. The dataset’s own description says where that information lives: “For information on rents, income requirements and availability for the projects listed, contact each property directly,” and for other properties in Chicago and Illinois it names ILHousingSearch.org and a phone line, (877) 428-8844. The Department of Housing also keeps an Affordable Rental Housing Resource List page; what either currently says is on those pages, not this one.
Where these numbers come from
The city’s Affordable Rental Housing Developments dataset (s6ha-ppgi), 598 developments carrying 29,550 units in its units column, as updated December 30, 2024 and retrieved for the parent analysis; the portal still showed 598 rows and that update date on August 22, 2026. Each development is counted in the community area the file itself assigns. Units are summed as listed; the dataset’s own description calls it a list of developments supported by city programs that does not capture every city-assisted unit and excludes naturally occurring affordable housing. The family labels (multifamily, senior, supportive and others) are the file’s own, folded for spelling. The list of areas with none, the label groupings and the parent’s reading of the file are in the second half of our piece on the New York rent-board vote, which sets that vote beside Chicago’s own subsidy inventory: New York City’s Rent Board Set 2026-27 Stabilized Increases at Zero. Illinois Law Bars Chicago From Controlling Private Rents.
Computed by KCM Desk from records retrieved July 28, 2026, and re-checked against the portal on August 22, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.
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- Chicago Housing, by the Numbers
- New York City’s Rent Board Set 2026-27 Stabilized Increases at Zero. Illinois Law Bars Chicago From Controlling Private Rents. — the piece whose second half reads Chicago’s affordable-rental list, the parent of this page
- The Federal Rent Schedule for Chicago, ZIP by ZIP: Its Median Two-Bedroom Figure for the City’s Core ZIPs Is Up 46 Percent Since 2019
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