Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s proposal to require landlords in many cases to give tenants more notice before not renewing leases or raising rents moved forward Tuesday, though both renters’ groups and building owners said the measure has problems.
The plan passed the Housing Committee and will go to the full City Council next week.
In a series of eleventh hour changes, the mayor’s ordinance was tilted more in favor of renters, to the point that representatives of landlord organizations testified against it at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting.
The version aldermen considered calls for landlords to give 120 days’ notice before not renewing a lease or raising rent for tenants who’ve lived in the same unit for more than three years.
Tenants who’ve been in the same place for between six months and three years would get 60 days’ heads-up, and 30 days for renters with less time than that.
Currently, all tenants get 30 days notice before eviction.
But some tenant advocates say the new version still doesn’t go far enough. The Housing Justice League wants 90 days’ notice for all tenants with less than three years in an apartment, and for larger landlords to pay at least $2,500 in relocation fees to help tenants cover costs of moving.
The Housing Justice League and its allies on the City Council are pushing their own “Just Cause” ordinance that includes stronger tenant protections.
And some aldermen also say the Lightfoot proposal will hurt landlords who own small buildings, by making it too hard for them to remove problem tenants.
Lightfoot’s ordinance has had a tortured path through the City Council.
She introduced an earlier version to the City Council in May, angering some aldermen who said they had been trying to negotiate a better deal for renters.
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Opponents in the City Council immediately used a parliamentary procedure to shunt the package to the council Rules Committee, where Chicago mayors often send proposals they don’t like to wither on the vine.
Lightfoot said then she didn’t think she would need to amend her plan to get it passed. “I have no expectations that the proposal will be revised,” she said at a news conference after the council meeting.
The mayor rounded up the votes to easily get it out of Rules. But the ordinance got amended significantly in the hours leading up to Tuesday’s hearing, with several aldermen saying they didn’t get to see the final version until just before the Housing Committee took it up.
The debate takes place as the hits to Chicago’s economy because of the COVID-19 pandemic have many residents struggling to pay rents.
Twitter @_johnbyrne
