Category: Laws and Justice

Applying for Apartments in Chicago and Cook County in 2020

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If you're a renter applying for an apartment anywhere within Cook County in 2020 the process is going to be a little different than it has been in previous years. It will probably take longer than it has before, it will be in two steps, and for the first few months of the year it's going to be absolute mayhem. This is not only going to be the case for Chicago but for all of Cook County, including suburbs like Evanston, Cicero, Elmwood Park, Berwyn and Oak Park. And for once, it isn't just going to be the big landlords who have to change how they operate, but every single landlord in the county.

I talked a little about the Just Housing Amendment back in September but there have been some changes following disputes over how it is to be implemented from the landlord lobby. Continue reading Applying for Apartments in Chicago and Cook County in 2020

Published by

Kay Cleaves

The Best Tenant Victories of 2019

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Normally when I run the "Naughtiest Landlords" list each December I include a list of the nicest landlords of the year as a counterpoint. Modern trends in news media including the elimination of local papers and the tendency of modern social media to boost signals only for high-conflict situations have made it progressively more difficult to find coverage worthy of inclusion in the "nicest" section of the list. After four years of trying, I'm deeming it an impossibility this year. But I do want to have some sort of happy counterpoint to last week's rogues gallery so this week I am instead offering a list of courtroom victories from the past year where tenants triumphed over truly atrocious landlords.

While this doesn't serve as an adequate replacement in our ongoing attempt to prove that the average landlord operates with good intentions, it does hopefully provide an uplifting counterpoint reminding those in tough rental circumstances that sometimes the little guy can win one. Continue reading The Best Tenant Victories of 2019

Published by

Kay Cleaves

The Naughtiest Landlords of 2019

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With Christmas right around the corner it's time once again for our annual list of the worst landlords in the business as found in newspapers from across the country this year. We'll hopefully have the "nicest landlords" list next week, but in the modern news culture of focusing on the bad in the world the latter stories are much, much harder to track down.

This is the fifth anniversary of the naughtiest landlords list so you guys know what to expect. Without further ado, here's the folks who are getting coal in their stockings. Let's hope they use it to heat their properties. Continue reading The Naughtiest Landlords of 2019

Published by

Kay Cleaves

The Rise and Fall of Chicago’s Courtyard Apartment Buildings

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If you've rented in Chicago for very long you've probably lived in a courtyard apartment building. If not, you've probably at least visited someone who lives in one. There's thousands of them all throughout the city, with the exception of the downtown areas which are dominated by skyscrapers. A standard "U"-shaped courtyard building is a three story tall walkup building with five entrances surrounding a central green space. Each entrance usually has six apartments, sometimes seven or eight if there's finished basement apartments.

In addition to the standard U shape, there's also half courtyards (shaped like an "L"), 1.5 courtyards (shaped like an "S" and usually on block corners) and double courtyards (shaped like a "W"), but they're all basically similar. These buildings are unique to the Chicago area and almost invariably about 100 years old.

Today we're going to explore the reason why we've got so many of them, and also why we don't see many new ones popping up in the 21st century landscape. Continue reading The Rise and Fall of Chicago’s Courtyard Apartment Buildings

Published by

Kay Cleaves

Doubled Up: The Homeless Kids Next Door

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During the ongoing Chicago teachers' strike much has been made of the over 16,000 homeless students in the Chicago Public School system. That large number is one of the linchpins in the union's demands for additional support staff and a written commitment from the city government to follow their plan for increasing affordable housing stock within the city.

When your average consumer of news media thinks of "homeless children" they may picture a family or group of runaway children living in a shelter, or perhaps sleeping in a car or a motel. They might even picture that stereotypical family sleeping on benches or in cardboard boxes in the street. Some of you may think back to the stories from last winter of Candice Payne, the real estate agent turned non-profit director who rented hundreds of hotel rooms for homeless people sleeping rough during our run of terribly cold weather.

But this is not the case. The majority of Chicago's homeless schoolchildren (about 88% of them) are living in a situation referred to by the federal government as "doubled up". Yes, that's an officially accepted term. It means that they're crashing with friends or family, sometimes for months, sometimes for years. Continue reading Doubled Up: The Homeless Kids Next Door

Published by

Kay Cleaves