On May 13, 2018, Relman Colfax filed a lawsuit alleging that the City of Chicago’s affordable housing program is inaccessible to people with disabilities. The complaint—filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on behalf of Access Living —alleges that since 1988 the City directed hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding to private developers to create an Affordable Rental Housing Program (with more than 50,000 units) that does not comply with the accessibility requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504), and the Fair Housing Act.
On September 30, 2024, U.S. District Court Judge Edmond E. Chang denied the City of Chicago’s summary judgment motion in its entirety, rejecting all of the City’s defenses in a massive case brought by Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago challenging the City’s failure to ensure that City-funded affordable housing units are accessible to people with disabilities. The opinion is perhaps the first time a federal court has held that a city’s entire affordable rental housing program must comply with the federal accessibility requirements of the ADA, Section 504 and the FHA. As a consequence, it could be a real wake-up call [...]