The Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago (HBAGC) supports increasing the availability of affordable housing in the City of Chicago and strongly encourages private sector involvement in its creation. Providing diverse housing options for city residents strengthens our neighborhoods and enriches our city. The City of Chicago’s “Bouncing Back: Five Year Housing Plan 2014 – 2018” offers many new and compelling ideas which can serve to add significant numbers of new and renovated units to the affordable housing pool. HBAGC fully supports these initiatives and others described in the 2014-2018 Five-Year Housing Plan. The association believes that the private sector should play a leading role in the creation of affordable housing. We further believe current ARO policies can be improved to stimulate the creation of affordable housing with no new subsidies, at no new cost to taxpayers. The vast majority of housing for Chicago’s work force, fixed income seniors, wounded veterans, young teachers, police officers, etc., is provided by private investors and owners at less than the cost of comparable government sponsored and subsidized new construction units.