Your landlord wants you out: what they may and may not do

A tenant comes home and the key does not turn. Or the heat has been off for three days in February and the landlord is not answering. Or there is a note on the door saying to be out by the weekend.

None of those is an eviction. In Illinois an eviction is a court case, from beginning to end, and what happens outside that process has a different name. This article is general information, not advice about your case.

Which rules cover you

Three sets of rules can apply, and which one you are under depends on where the building is.

• Inside the city, Chicago's residential landlord and tenant ordinance covers most rental units and gives tenants rights beyond state law.
• In much of suburban Cook County, the county has an ordinance of its own.
• Elsewhere in Illinois, state law applies.

The ordinances set detailed requirements about deposits, notices, disclosures and repairs, and a landlord who ignores them can face consequences that have nothing to do with whether the rent was paid. That last point is worth reading twice: being behind on rent does not remove your rights.

What an eviction actually looks like

It runs in order, and each step exists.

1. A written notice. Its form and its length depend on the reason — unpaid rent, a breach of the lease, or ending a tenancy.
2. A case filed in court. If the notice period passes and the matter is not resolved, the landlord files. You are served with papers.
3. A hearing. You are entitled to appear and to be heard. Defences exist and they are not exotic: the notice was defective, the rent was paid or was refused, the repairs were never made, the real reason is retaliation for a complaint.
4. An order, and then the sheriff. If the landlord wins, the court issues an order and only the sheriff enforces it. Not the landlord, not a building manager, not a relative with a van.

The single most damaging thing a tenant can do is not appear. A tenant who does not come to the hearing usually loses regardless of what the defense would have been.

What a landlord may not do

These are not grey areas.

• Change the locks, or remove the door.
• Take your belongings out, or refuse to let you get them.
• Shut off heat, water, gas or electricity to make you leave.
• Threaten you in order to make you go without a court case.
• Retaliate because you complained to the city, asked for a repair, or organized with other tenants.

A tenant who is locked out or has utilities cut off has remedies of their own, and they can be substantial. The behavior is treated seriously precisely because the alternative would be a system where whoever holds the keys wins.

The threat that is not a legal threat

Some tenants are told, in so many words, that a complaint will lead to a call to immigration authorities. Say this plainly: a housing court decides housing questions. Your immigration status is not what the case is about, and using it as leverage to make you give up a home is not a landlord exercising a right. It is a threat, and it is itself the kind of conduct the law treats as retaliation.

Fear of exactly this is why illegal lockouts happen more often to people who have recently arrived. A landlord who assumes a tenant will not go to court is not making a legal calculation. They are making a bet.

The deposit

Security deposits are the other half of most disputes, and the rules around them are strict: how the money must be held, what has to be told to the tenant, what may be deducted, and how quickly what remains must be returned with an itemised statement of any deductions. Landlords who get this wrong can owe more than the deposit.

Two practical habits protect you. Photograph the unit on the day you move in and on the day you move out, with the date visible. And give your forwarding address in writing, keeping a copy — a deposit cannot be returned to an address nobody has.

Repairs and heat

A landlord is required to keep the unit habitable, and heat in a Chicago winter is not optional. Where a landlord will not act, there are routes: written notice, complaints to the city, and in defined circumstances remedies the tenant can use directly. They all depend on the request having been made in writing and on being able to prove when.

Stopping the rent without advice is the tempting move and the risky one. It can be a defense, and it can also hand the landlord the case.

What to keep, starting today

• The lease, all pages, including anything you signed later
• Every receipt or transfer record for rent and for the deposit
• Requests for repairs in writing — a message with a date is evidence, a phone call is not
• Photographs of conditions, dated
• Every notice you receive, including the envelope

The next step

If you have been locked out, that is a same-day problem, not a next-week one. If you have received a notice or court papers, bring them with the lease and note the date printed on them. In this area the calendar is usually the most important fact in the file.