The Illinois Association of Realtors is reporting that efforts to add Section 8 protection to the Cook County fair housing law seem to have stalled.
The report indicates that the association’s Assistant Director for Advocacy and Local Issues,Mike Scobey has indicated that the law change is not likely to make it to a vote of the full Cook County Board.
A quick review of the twittersphere, however, indicates that tenant’s rights organizations like the Metropolitan Tenant’s Union and the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs have not given up the fight.
Please be aware that I will never participate in the section 8 voucher program due to:
1.non equal standards of the eviction process:
a.Hud can evict without paying an eviction process fee and the evictions can
happen in a few days.
b. Standard landlord is not able without incurring more cost to evict a person
which can be a long process; especially ,when a tenant does not accept a
summons. There should be an internal agencies that handles issues of
this nature with NO cost to the Landlord with proper documentation for
removal.
2. Process for relocating tenants is to long. Easy to get them in but a longer
process to have the tenant removed.
3. No support or finance for Landlords for dealing with problematic tenants.
4. Should have time limits on the use of the voucher program. This will help to
eliminate individuals who manipulate the system.
The program should be OPTIONAL not mandatory. This is not a dictatorial system of government.
There are many landlords who share your view. There are many landlords who participate in Section 8 and love it. For now, participation in Section 8 is not required in many places, however, landlords in Chicago (and possibly other municipalities) have no choice and cannot discriminate based on Section 8 participation. Those landlords who violate Chicago’s fair housing ordinance are asking for trouble! Landlords would be wise to check with their local municipality to see if they have a fair housing ordinance that would require participation before discriminating based upon program participation.