Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago, a Center for Independent Living (CIL) and advocate for people with disabilities, calls on the Mayor’s re-established Department of Housing to address the City’s historic failure to ensure its Affordable Rental Housing Program is accessible to people with disabilities. Indeed, the new Department represents a unique opportunity for the Mayor and the City to – finally – make things right for Chicagoans with disabilities who have long endured the tremendous challenge of securing accessible and affordable housing. Specifically, the Department’s first order of business should be to address the federal complaint Access Living filed on May 14, 2018, which outlined how – for decades – the Affordable Housing Program ignored the accessibility requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Fair Housing Act and, as a result, thousands of units that should have been accessible and affordable are, simply, not. See original press statement at this link.  The ruling on this lawsuit could impact more than 50,000 rental units in over 650 developments and, presumably, the Department of Housing would be the agency tasked with remedying the long-standing problem.