Cook County

What’s in the Cook County Residential Tenant and Landlord Ordinance and why all landlords must oppose it

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Landlord Call to Action

Suburban landlords have been sleeping for decades.  And who can blame them?  Suburban renting is nothing like the complex procedure of Chicago (and Evanston) renting.  Sure, suburban housing providers have heard of the Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance (CRLTO) for years.  Most don’t really know (or want to know) what’s in it.  What they do know is that it doesn’t apply to them.  Unless suburban landlords take a major stand, that’s all going to change soon with the newly proposed

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BREAKING: Cook County to Introduce County-Wide Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance

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Cook County Seeks County-wide RLTO

UPDATE: See here for more on this proposed ordinance that is set to be voted on by the Cook County Board on December 15, 2020.

Yep – you heard that right.  Coming soon to rental units in the suburbs is the pain felt for years by landlords in the City.  At a time when it seemed that the regulations affecting landlords could not get more voluminous and complex, the Cook County Board is debating a newly introduced Cook County Residential Tenant and Landlord Ordinance this morning July 30, 2020 (you can watch the County Board proceedings Live here).  I haven’t made a deep dive into the law, but here are a few high points from my first pass through:

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County Releases Additional Information on Just Housing Amendment

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Better than Nothing

Well, we had heard rumors that the County was going to release some additional guidance on the application of the Just Housing Amendment in practice.  Earlier this week, they did just that.  The materials do not clear up many of the questions plaguing those of us “on the ground” and some of the information in the materials is contrary to the actual verbiage in the rules (so landlords need to carefully evaluate these materials).  We will try to discuss some of this in the coming days.  In the meantime, here is a link to the Cook County Human Rights Commission’s

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More on new Cook County jury trial procedures

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interrogatoriesThe courts have now had a little over a week to work out some of the procedural kinks in the wake of the new procedures for Cook County evictions with jury trials.  I have heard from a number of sources about some of the interesting “features” of the new system for jury trials in Cook County evictions.  Each of the sources I have spoken to has confirmed the rumor that the jury trial judges assigned to eviction cases are not allowing the litigants to conduct discovery as part of the jury trial process.  (Discovery is the pre-trial gathering of evidence through legal procedures such as depositions, requests for the production of documents, requests to admit facts, and interrogatories.)  Instead,

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Cook County proposes adding “Section 8” participants to Fair Housing protected classes

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See update

The housing provisions of the Cook County Human Rights Ordinance (Ordinance No. 93-0-13) are the county equivalent to the federal Fair Housing law.  Currently, the Cook County law prohibits discrimination in housing transactions (for those landlords covered by the law) for sixteen protected classes.  These are the fourteen protected classes from the Illinois Human Rights Act (race, color, sex, age, religion, disability, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, marital status, parental status, military discharge status, source of income, housing status) plus two additional classes (housing status and source of income).  Although the Cook County ordinance includes source of income, it expressly excludes participation in a housing choice program (ie. Section 8).  Therefore, as of today, Cook County landlords may discriminate based upon a prospective tenant’s participation in Section 8.

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