After the mayor released the full text of his Protect Renters' Rights ordinance, Alderman Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward) introduced a competing bill called the Fair Accountability in Rentals ordinance (FAIR). We do not have the full text yet as it is still being worked on, but from the announcements, the new ordinance that the city of Chicago aldermen are putting up against the mayors bill has a few key differences:
1. Removes the just cause evictions
2. Removes the moving assistance
3. Removes the fee to register your rental with the city
4. Increases the fine that a landlord would pay for a lockout
Just Cause Evictions
The Mayor's plan wants to punish landlords for non-renewing tenants unless the tenant breaks a lease term or stops payments. In our opinion, this will lead to higher rents, units that have hazards that are not taken care of, and dangerous living conditions to tenants. Put yourself in a landlords shoes: you just found out that there is lead-based paint in an apartment that is over 100 years old, you can't safely remove the lead paint with the tenant living there, and you can't afford to pay a tenant $10k to move out and then pay a company $20k to do the work. So what do you do? Unfortunately, many landlords in financial hardship will choose to brush it under the rug and keep the tenants living in a dangerous situation. Another situation: you have a tenant in a 4-unit building who is harassing their neighbors and causing the rest of the building to suffer. A good landlord now would non-renew them to make a better living situation for their tenants, but this part of the law would prevent that. That means that good families would be subject to living with tenants who are committing crimes, have drug activity, gang issues, etc. because of the burden to prove that in court in order to non-renew the problem tenant.
Moving Assistance
Forcing a landlord to pay $5,000-$20,000 to non-renew a tenant means that rent would have to be raised by that amount to cover the losses. This would make an already unaffordable housing crisis 10 times worse. Illinois law is keeping housing unaffordable. What we need to focus on isn't keeping landlords from keeping up with property taxes and insurance rate increases, we need to focus on creating competition and cutting the red tape to build middle housing. One study showed per unit the government fees add $160k to build a new property. This means that building in areas where rent can be kept affordable is a no-win process until we fix these issues.
Remove Registration Fees
I can agree that knowing who landlords are and what buildings are rented can be a good thing, but charging for it just means raising the rent on a tenant, which is the opposite of what the city should be trying to do.
Lockout Fines Increased
Cook County has an eviction problem, and this is why landlords require such high hoops to approve a tenant. If we got our evictions down to 2 to 3 months, as the other counties around us have, more tenants would qualify for better apartments. With that being said, breaking the law and doing a self-help eviction should have a high-cost fine. One more note: Chicago needs to define a squatter and get CPD on board with removing them without being scared of backlash.
Overall, the law proposed by Alderman Villegas should give a much more equitable Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance update that is needed without causing rents to get even more expensive than they already are.
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