Mayor Johnson’s Protect Renters ordinance sounds good. Of course I share the goal of protecting renters and stabilizing or lowering rents. Hell, it’s the cornerstone of my plan for fixing the city. However, because it’s so important to me, I’ve actually been doing years of homework on how to meet those goals. And I’m sorry to say that this ordinance won’t do it — the bulk of it is nothing more than election season antics. If implemented, this ordinance would almost definitely raise rents, usher in more corporate and investment firm landlords, de-incentivize building improvements tenants deserve and dramatically worsen the housing crisis in Chicago.
I’m a renter myself. I’m not ignorant of the reality of bad landlords. They exist and they’ve existed for a long time. In Lakeview, in the 80s, we had a notoriously awful landlord called “Blue Dog” that I spent a lot of time and energy fighting from my position in the Alderman’s office. Trust me, I’m not here to defend bad landlords.
Chicago renters deserve safe housing. They deserve real enforcement when landlords ignore mold, pests, broken heat, unsafe conditions, or basic repairs. But when this ordinance shifted from protecting renters to making it harder to provide housing, I knew I had to speak up.
One provision would trigger penalties and relocation payments when a rent increase is deemed “unconscionable.”
Let’s start with a simple question: what does that even mean? Five percent? Ten percent? Twenty percent? The ordinance doesn’t say. And that’s intentional — it’s an attempt to implement rent control in a roundabout way (because the state of Illinois currently doesn’t allow rent control).
Those kinds of antics aren’t housing policy. Rent freezes without significant increases in housing supply will increase rent, not decrease it. Austin has seen rents decline, not because they froze rent, but because they built a ton of new homes quickly. That’s real, good housing policy.
The proposal would also require relocation payments in some situations when leases are not renewed or when buildings are renovated, converted, or removed from the rental market. In some cases, those payments could run into the thousands of dollars. That may sound like tenant protection. But in practice, it risks making it harder to improve housing that desperately needs improvement.
If a small housing provider wants to replace aging plumbing, update electrical systems, or renovate an apartment that’s needed work for years, the city shouldn’t be making that process more expensive, more complicated, and more legally risky. If it does? Some owners won’t do the work. Others will sell. That’s just the truth.
I recently heard from a housing provider on the South Side who told me about a shooting that occurred in one of his buildings. Following the incident, the other tenants repeatedly urged him to remove the tenant living in the unit where the shooting occurred. They described patterns of past and ongoing dangerous activity and said they no longer felt safe.
Under Chicago’s current Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, this provider didn’t think he had sufficient grounds for eviction. So one by one, every other tenant moved out. Eventually the only tenant left in the building was the one that had made everyone else feel unsafe.
The point isn’t that tenants shouldn’t have rights. They should. The point is that housing policy is complicated because real life is complicated. And broad rules written to solve one problem often create others.
Good public policy accounts for how people respond to it. The reality is that every new legal obligation, every additional cost, and every new layer of uncertainty makes it a little harder to provide housing. The big dogs, the corporate landlords, can afford that kind of bureaucracy. The mom and pop owner of a two-flat in Hermosa or a six-flat in South Shore cannot.
And when those independent owners decide it’s no longer worth the risk, they rarely sell to another mom-and-pop landlord. They sell to the highest bidder, one that has the resources to navigate the legal complexity and absorb the costs. More often than not, that’s a larger investor, a private equity firm, or an LLC with a team of attorneys. If we want more local ownership of our housing stock, not less, we should be careful not to write policies that unintentionally push small housing providers out of the market.
That’s why I wish this conversation wasn’t framed as renters versus landlords. Most housing providers aren’t massive corporations. They’re Chicagoans. They’re people who are already struggling to maintain older buildings, families trying to build generational wealth, and folks providing homes in their own neighborhoods - to their own neighbors. Housing providers aren’t a monolith, they’re not all bad and they’re not all good, and the same is true for tenants. So if we’re serious about solving the housing crisis, we have to stop pointing fingers and start working together toward real solutions.
Chicago doesn’t need more political posturing. It needs a housing policy that works for working people. And it needs leaders willing to tell the truth about what is driving housing costs and what it will take to bring them down.
Because like so many of Chicago’s challenges: we’re going to have to build our way out of this.
—Mike Quigley
Whatever chance you had of earning my vote for Mayor you just lost with your own political posturing.
With all due respect, Representative Quigley, I think you’re getting this very wrong.
First of all, there is not a reference to unconscionable rent increases in the ordinance that was introduced on Monday.
Secondly, as to relocation payments: you give absolutely no attention to the VITAL question of what the city should do to protect tenants who are displaced through no fault of their own. I work for a tenants rights organization, and I see firsthand everyday the devastating impact these displacements have on tenants.
Finally, I do not understand why you are framing this ordinance as being in opposition to building more housing. Building more housing is necessary AND it also does not protect tenants from bad landlords and unexpected displacement.