You bought your investment property, got it all dolled up, and spent thousands of dollars to get it looking just right. Your photographer came out and took amazing photos, making your significant other jealous that your own home doesn't look as good. You are ready to hop onto Zillow and other sites to list your property. But please, before you list that property, there are some important local regulations Chicago landlords need to know about before describing the apartment in a way that may break Fair Housing laws.
In Chicago, we are not only bound by Illinois law, but also the Chicago Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance. Below, we will go over both local laws and federal laws that you need to think about when writing your ad, as well as some examples that may not be so obvious.
Protected Classes
To understand what you can and cannot say, you must understand the protected classes both in federal law and our local laws. The federal Fair Housing Act includes the following classes as protected from housing discrimination:
Race
Color
Religion
Familial status
National origin
Sex (including gender identity)
Disability
Illinois adds a few more classes in the state law under the Illinois Human Rights Act:
Ancestry
Source of income
Age
Military status
Sexual orientation
Pregnancy
Marital status
Age
Order of Protection status
Certain criminal histories
It seems fairly apparent that to ensure you are not discriminating against any of the 17 listed classes, you should determine if prospective tenants are a good fit for your rental properties. However, we live in a very lawsuit-heavy country, and what might seem simple is far from it. Below, I'll go over some things that could potentially cause you to get sued, or otherwise cause you to get a fair housing violation from the government that you may have never even thought of.
Example #1:
Let’s say a housing provider shows a unit to a potential tenant in Cook County, and they send the applicant the same application they send to everyone. On the applications, it asks “are you married?”. This seems like a harmless question that many have used to make sure there are no other applicants that are not filling out an application, however, real estate agents have encountered problems by using this question. Real estate agents have had fair housing charges and discrimination charges brought up against their licenses for that very question. You see, with marital status being a protected class in Illinois Landlord and Tenant laws, just asking this question on the application - no matter how you plan to use it - is considered discriminatory practice.
Other questions on your rental application that can get you into hot water include asking about a tenant's race, ethnicity, or criminal history.
Now let's look at an example that got a property management company in hot water.
Example #2:
A real estate agent had a client who only wanted market renters, and didn’t want any Section 8 tenants. So in keeping with their client’s wishes, the real estate agent put “no Section 8 accepted” in their ad on Craigslist. This not only cost the real estate agent her license, but also the company she worked for had to pay thousands in fines, and the managing broker also lost their license. These are very serious offenses as acknowledged by the consequences.
Beyond putting in things like “no Section 8 tenants” in your ad, other similar wording in your ad that can cause severe legal consequences include:
No criminal records accepted / No felons
No evictions accepted
No housing choice voucher (This is the same as saying no Section 8.)
No past legal action taken against prior landlords.
No animals
Let's break each one of these down:
No criminals may apply.
Cook county has very strict laws on what crimes you are allowed to deny a tenant for. If you just outright say all criminals or all felons are not accepted, you are breaking Fair Housing laws. The City of Chicago realizes that their police force often targets minorities for crimes, and therefore puts more minorities into prison than other races. Because of this, the government has made rules not allowing landlords the right to deny someone housing based on a crime that does not endanger the home or other tenants if they were to commit it again. You also cannot deny housing to a potential tenant for a crime that has happened more than 5 years ago. So yes, that means that if you have a single family home and someone has been in jail for murder for the last 10 years, when they apply to rent your house you cannot deny their application based on the crime committed.
A side note: you must decide if you will accept a tenant based on credit before running their background check for legal issues.
No evictions accepted.
The U.S. Department of Housing came out with a memo on Fair Housing that says if someone was evicted, you are required to dig deeper to see why they were evicted. For example, say they had medical issues that caused them to be late on rent, they could now be solved and won’t cause any further issues. Or another example might be that they were evicted because the landlord wanted to do work on the home. You must allow for exceptions when screening the tenants.
No housing choice voucher.
A common loophole that landlords used to use was to say the tenant had to make 3x the amount of the monthly rent that they were responsible for, or that they had to have a high credit score to get the apartment; However, once again the U.S. Department of Housing has stated in their memo that if a tenant has Section 8, the government has already decided that they can afford their portion of the monthly rent. This means that you cannot use credit or income to deny a tenant with a Section 8 housing choice voucher. So you really cannot deny a tenant that has a Section 8 voucher for the area and number of bedrooms that your home has without a separate valid reason.
No past legal action.
If a tenant calls the city on a landlord or sues a landlord for not fixing something, and then applies to rent your unit, it may be a headache you don't want to take on but this cannot be the reason you deny a tenant.
No animals.
You can say no pets, but service animals and emotional support animals (ESAs) have to be accepted in Illinois.
Beyond your advertisements and your tenant screening process, there is one other thing many newer landlords fail at, and that is giving equal access to those with disabilities. This happens in two common ways:
1. The landlord advertises on a site that is not ADA compliant, or the landlord puts their application online and it is not ADA compliant. This means that those who have vision issues are not able to use your website or have trouble reading through your website.
2. Not allowing for reasonable modifications. If someone in a wheelchair needs a ramp, then as a landlord you are not required to pay for its installation; however, you must allow them to build the ramp on your property. These modifications may also include things like access to showers, or lower cabinets in the kitchen. If they can afford to do the modification, and then when they move out put it back to the way that it was, you cannot deny them the ability to do the work.
All of these rules make dealing with finding a new tenant in Chicago an absolute headache. What makes it worse is many of you are working another 9 to 5, trying to keep up with your family, get your workouts in and live your best life. This is a lot to manage, and it is completely understandable that these rules may slip right past you. The good thing is that you don’t have to do it all on your own! So, if you are tired of doing it all yourself and you’re looking for a stress free experience running your Chicago properties, you need a leader in Chicago property management. Please give Chicago Style Management a call at 224-601-5415, or reach out to us at info@chicagostylemanagement.com to see how we can make you more money than you’re currently getting, but with less stress. We would love to work with you!
