Chicago tenant advocates are asking for at least $20 million in the city’s 2025 budget to help tenants fight against what they say are unfair evictions, create a registry of landlords, and help to stabilize displacement of tenants and homeowners in areas surrounding the future Obama Presidential Center.
The three proposals would help address some inequities faced by tenants highlighted in Injustice Watch’s five-part series “The Tenant Trap” in August, which identified hundreds of buildings in Chicago where tenants faced eviction at the same time the city was suing their landlords over unsafe conditions.
Ordinances that would create the programs have either died or are stalled in the City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate. But advocates said they plan to renew their push for the ordinances next year, and they say the funding allocations would help get them through City Council.
Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez, 25th Ward, who chairs the committee, said he supports the stalled measures, but said it’s “a little difficult to pass legislation that’s dire for working people” when well-connected property owners in the city stand opposed.
He pointed to the fierce opposition to Bring Chicago Home, a failed proposal to raise the transfer tax on property sales worth $1 million and above to generate $100 million per year for homeless services.
“I take issues with fiscal conservatives,” Sigcho Lopez said. “We should be able to talk about fiscal responsibility to talk about the public good.”
As Sigcho Lopez fights his battle at City Hall, tenants across Chicago are fighting their own grassroots battles.
Last month, tenants in Pilsen were sued by their landlord in what they say was retaliation for asserting their rights to withhold rent. In Kenwood, a group of tenants held a press conference to pressure their landlord into giving them a seat at the table when it permanently sells the building they call home. And downtown, tenants from South Shore and Woodlawn gathered outside City Council clad in bright yellow shirts to remind the mayor of his campaign promises ahead of annual budget hearings.
Tenant advocates argue these are uphill battles, and the reasons they fight for protections as the city finalizes a $17.3 billion budget for next year, which includes a shortfall of nearly $1 billion. To close the gap, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration has proposed a number of measures, including increasing property taxes and cutting budgets across city departments — including his own office — by 3%. City Council must approve a balanced budget by December 31st.
Johnson declined to be interviewed for this report, but through his Department of Housing spokeswoman, he said the city is “committed to finding progressive revenue solutions, so that we can invest and protect affordable housing for our residents in the coming years.”
Johnson has signaled his support for the measures, which were cited in his administration’s transition report — the aspirational document that serves as a blueprint of an administration’s priorities.
The Johnson administration is conducting feasibility studies for the advocates’ proposals and allocated federal grant money to close a fourth-quarter gap for a pilot program for one of the proposals, the spokeswoman said in a statement. The administration is proposing a $239 million budget for the housing department next year.
Just cause for evictions
A portion of the advocates’ requested funds would pay for a rental registry proposed by the Chicago Housing Justice Coalition, which is calling for an overhaul of the 1986 Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance. The registration would require landlords to disclose the name of a person ultimately responsible for the building. Most landlords in the city own their buildings through companies legally created to shield owners from liability.
The coalition has also been fighting since 2019 to enact specific criteria landlords must meet before filing for evictions — such as nonpayment of rent or serious lease breaches. Currently no such criteria exist.
Their proposal stalled last year after an ordinance introduced in 2020 died. But the coalition is gearing up for reintroducing an updated version next year. The new proposal would continue to call for a rental registry, which the coalition said would cost the Department of Housing $3.5 million to implement but would become a revenue-generating stream in future years because landlords would pay a fee per dwelling unit. Mom-and-pop landlords would be exempted from the fee.
“The Tenant Trap” found 2,654 buildings with a history of serious code violations, which are mostly owned through limited liability companies. At least one building detailed in the investigation was owned by out-of-state investors who have since pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud. Some of these investors have owned or continue to own other properties in the city, but no centralized information system exists to have a clear view of their holdings.
At a budget hearing earlier this month, alders including Ald. Nicole Lee, 11th Ward signaled their support for a landlord registry, explaining their constituents have trouble figuring out who their landlord is.
A permanent Right to Counsel program
The second budget proposal calls for $4 million to permanently fund Right to Counsel, a three-year pilot program launched in 2022 to provide attorneys for low-income Chicagoans facing eviction lawsuits.
The pilot period was funded with $8 million in federal funds tied to the Covid-19 pandemic. It was initially set to expire in June of next year, but advocates pushed for an extension through December 2025. As part of that extension, Johnson’s budget proposal allocated $750,000 from federal passthrough funds, but advocates say it’s not enough to meet the demand.
Michelle Gilbert, the legal and policy director for the Law Center for Better Housing, which led the implementation of the program, said for a long time the belief was defendants in eviction court didn’t need an attorney because they had no rights.
“We are actually proving that tenants do have rights, and when they do have attorneys, they can win cases,” Gilbert said.
In the first two years of the program, Gilbert said 2,150 households were served. There are roughly 20,000 evictions filed in the city every year.
Johnson introduced an ordinance in September 2023 that would make the pilot program permanent, but it has not moved since. A subject matter hearing was scheduled this summer by the Committee on Housing and Real Estate, but it was quietly canceled without a new date.
Countywide, about 80% of landlords are represented by attorneys, according to a 2019 LCBH report. Meanwhile, about 90% of tenants have no legal representation in the eviction process.
While the vast majority of tenants facing eviction do so for nonpayment of rent, “The Tenant Trap” found some tenants land in eviction court when they exercise their right to withhold rent to force landlords to fix building issues.
Retaliation is illegal under the city’s landlord-tenant ordinance, which means tenants who face eviction for withholding rent can sue their landlords or attempt to convince eviction court judges the eviction is retaliatory. But few judges ask tenants whether they have a defense against the eviction or are willing to hear tenants out when they raise the issues themselves, the Injustice Watch investigation found.
Tenants who sue their landlords for retaliation also face an uphill battle.
In September, a group of tenants in Pilsen asked Cook County Circuit Court Judge Allen Price Walker to order a landlord not to file eviction cases against tenants while their retaliation case was ongoing. The attorney representing the tenants, Sam Barth of the LCBH, argued the mere filing of an eviction suit puts a black mark in tenants’ records.
Price Walker pushed back, saying the landlord-tenant law allows tenants to defend themselves in eviction court, and tenants could use an order in their favor to correct their record. It was unclear to him why he needed to issue an order blocking evictions, Price Walker said.
“The harm here is the actual filing of the eviction,” Barth explained.
Price Walker remained unconvinced and denied the request. The landlord later filed an eviction lawsuit against the three tenant leaders who said they had withheld rent because of code violations. A hearing on two of the cases is scheduled on Thursday.
South Shore housing preservation
The third budget proposal calls for $12.5 million in set-aside funds to start programs to stabilize displacements in South Shore and Woodlawn, where long-term tenants and homeowners are being forced to move because of a combination of rent hikes and investors flocking in to buy homes, which has led to higher property values.
The request would fund some of the programs to be created under the South Shore Housing Preservation Ordinance, which was introduced last year and is also stalled in the Committee on Housing and Real Estate.
Dixon Romeo, executive director of Southside Together, said the funding is a fraction of the $60 million residents want to fund all the programs proposed in the ordinance, including grants for homeowners, an office of the tenant advocate, and relocation assistance. The proposal also calls for a rental registry.
“We need the mayor to fight with us; we need the mayor to be bold on this issue and push it through in its full form — the scope and scale of it,” Romeo said. “We know Brandon is better, and part of seeing that, I think, is going to be with this ordinance.”
At a summit meeting in Woodlawn in June, Johnson has said he supports housing protections, but he wouldn’t commit to holding a hearing on the proposal — the first step for it to move forward in the legislative process. Johnson’s 2025 budget includes $2 million in federal funds for homeownership preservation in South Shore.
At the press conference at City Hall in October, more than a dozen tenants, homeowners, and advocates came to remind Johnson of his promises to support South Shore housing protections.
“Housing is a human right,” they chanted. “We won’t go without a fight.”
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