Answers · Chicago building permits
What is dataset ydr8-5enu?
ydr8-5enu is the City of Chicago's Building Permits dataset on its open data portal — one row per permit the City issues, carrying the permit number, permit type, issue date, address, work description and reported cost. It reaches back to 2006 and is free to query over HTTP.
It is the file behind every permit figure on this site: 2,744 permits issued in the 30 days to 2026-07-29, and 5,319 distinct contractors across 90 days.
It is a live file, not a snapshot. The City adds permits continuously and changes the shape of the file without warning — in July 2026 it retired an entire permit type, which returns zero rows rather than an error to anything still asking for it.
How this is measured
- Dataset
- ydr8-5enu
- Publisher
- City of Chicago
- Filter
- Columns named above are the ones this site selects and renders: permit_, permit_type, issue_date, street_number, street_direction, street_name, work_description, reported_cost.
- Measured
- 2026-07-29
The query
$select=permit_,permit_type,issue_date,street_number,street_direction,street_name,work_description,reported_cost
Permit Signal
Permit Signal is a reading of this dataset, filtered to one contractor's trade. The first delivery is three real records, free, with the government source link on every row.