Maya Dukmasova

Injustice Watch and its partners connected and scoured nearly two decades of court data for ‘The Tenant Trap.’ Here’s how this unprecedented data analysis was conducted.

In Illinois, tenants have a legal right to withhold rent from landlords who fail to maintain their buildings. But exercising the right is an obstacle course of legal requirements and bureaucracy. Tenants rarely make it through.

Every year, Chicago receives some 40,000 complaints about building issues, resulting in more than 17,000 inspections, but getting recalcitrant landlords to fix code violations is an uphill battle. Even when government brings the heat, landlords are allowed to delay and even ignore the city’s demands — all while collecting the rents.

Class action lawsuits against landlords offer some hope of accountability for building neglect, but they don’t fix apartments. By the time tenants win they could be long gone.

An Injustice Watch investigation found thousands of lower-income renters in Chicago are trapped in unsafe buildings, forced to pay rising rents, even as many landlords are allowed to shirk their responsibilities to keep buildings safe, warm, and free of rats.