Home Grown

A collection of housing best practices implemented by municipalities across the seven-county Chicago region.

How To Use This Resource

These examples serve as a resource to help local leaders learn from their peers and develop new strategies tailored to their communities.

Each case study includes an overview of how it came about, how it works, why it was successful, how it was funded, and key lessons learned. Case studies are organized into three main categories — policies, programs, and developments — and further divided into subcategories. Click on a subcategory to view its case studies, then select the icon to access the full details for each individual case study.

Developments

Policies

Programs

Contact

Have a question about a case study or a suggestion for a new one?

Contact Ben Schnelle, Manager of Housing and Community Development Initiatives, at bschnelle@mayorscaucus.org.

Background on Home Grown

The first iteration of Home Grown, developed in 2006 by the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, Chicago Metropolis 2020, and the Metropolitan Planning Council, was prepared as a binder of loose-leaf case studies distributed to many local leaders and developers at a variety of forums throughout the region. In this way, case studies could be easily added and removed as the landscape changed and new, innovative solutions came to the region.

By 2010, case studies were also being added online. In 2014, as part of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, and Metropolitan Planning Council’s effort to create the Homes for a Changing Region online toolkit, the first Home Grown website was launched.

This current version was released in 2026, updating over 30 case studies from the previous version and adding nearly 40 new ones. It was thoroughly researched and written by a team from the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus and BRicK Partners. This version was supported by funds from the Illinois Housing Development Authority.

The Team

The Metropolitan Mayors Caucus is a membership organization of the Chicago region’s 275 cities, towns, and villages. The Caucus provides a forum for metropolitan Chicago’s chief elected officials to collaborate on common problems and work toward a common goal of improving the quality of life for the millions of people who call the region home.

BRicK Partners is an independent, women-owned consulting and collaborative management firm specializing in housing and community development. Founded in 2012, BRicK is focused on supporting local leaders and innovators in devising and implementing solutions to some of the vexing challenges facing this industry, with a particular focus on replicable, scalable and sustainable regional strategies.