Chicago’s Push for “Just Cause” Evictions

A citywide coalition of housing advocates is renewing the fight for a measure that would make it more difficult — or at least costly — for investors to push out longtime tenants.

Later this month, Chicago City Council members will reintroduce a ​“just cause” ordinance restricting the reasons landlords can file for eviction or refuse to renew a lease. It’s backed by more than 100 organizations, including the Chicago Teachers Union, the Illinois Public Health Institute and the Metropolitan Planning Council.

Under the proposed ordinance, tenants could still be evicted for failing to pay rent or violating the terms of their lease. And in cases where landlords want to rent to a relative or take the property off the market, they wouldn’t be required to renew leases — but they would have to pay relocation assistance equivalent to several months’ rent.

That assistance ​“should just be a cost of doing business as a landlord,” says Rachael Wilson, a senior organizer at the Chicago Housing Justice Coalition, which is pushing for the just cause ordinance. ​“If you’re going to provide someone with housing and then take it away, it should be your responsibility to ensure that they can find a new safe place to live.”

Tenant advocates in Chicago have been trying to pass just cause since at least the 1980s. The ordinance was last considered in 2020 but stalled in committee after then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot introduced what advocates saw as a weaker replacement, requiring only that landlords give additional notice for ending leases. Advocates hope that the ordinance has a better shot at passing now, with more than 20 supporters already signed on, some of them newly elected in 2023 — including Ald. Desmon Yancy, the lead sponsor.

Ten states, Washington, D.C., and nearly 30 localities already have some form of just cause protections in place, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Some have been in place for decades, while two states, Colorado and New York, passed laws just last year.

Available research suggests that these requirements work as intended when it comes to reducing evictions, which can come with collateral consequences for physical and mental health, education and household income.

“Good cause eviction protections are one of the most powerful tools that we have to keep people in their homes,” says Kenton Card, a research associate at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs.

This spring, Card and colleagues conducted a study scrutinizing a common talking point from opponents of just cause protections: that they discourage the construction of new housing. When examining the number of new building permits issued in counties within three states with the protections in place, they found no decline relative to similar counties in neighboring states without such protections on the books. ​“I think this is a vacuous claim,” says Card.

State legislatures in Maryland, Connecticut, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Hawai‘i are currently considering measures related to just cause.

Not all of these laws would have aided people in Herrera and deMartelly’s situation. Many of the existing laws treat renovations — like those Herrera and deMartelly’s new landlord plans to undertake — as a ​“just cause” for landlords to move out tenants. But that can create a loophole known as ​“renovictions”: when landlords use the guise of minor improvements to skirt protections, evict long-term tenants and raise rents for new occupants.

Los Angeles’ just cause ordinance for example, passed in 2023, initially considered ​“substantial remodels” as a just cause for eviction. But tenant advocates charged that this provision was being abused by landlords. One prominent landlord attorney even posted how-to videos describing renovations as a ​“legal loophole” that can be used to ​“beat” tenant protections. 

In March, the Los Angeles City Council voted to temporarily ban landlords from evicting tenants during renovations while a permanent solution is explored. 

Chicago’s proposed ordinance also allows landlords to expel tenants in order to make substantial repairs, with an additional safeguard: In addition to providing relocation assistance, the landlord must have a statement by a licensed contractor stating that the planned repairs necessitate moving residents out. 

On their own, just cause measures offer no protection from the most basic form of displacement: landlords raising rents beyond what tenants can afford. In many places where eviction protections are already in effect, those protections are coupled with rent control, preventing landlords from dramatically hiking rents in order to force tenants out (at least on paper).

Rent control is still banned at the state level in Illinois, but Chicago’s proposed ordinance contains a measure of protection: Rent increases of more than 10% also trigger the requirement for relocation assistance, if the tenant decides to move out.

And while just cause protections aren’t a panacea, they can help buoy tenant organizing around a host of other issues, notes Greg Baltz, an assistant professor at Rutgers Law School, where he co-directs the Housing Justice and Tenant Solidarity Clinic.

Making any kind of collective demand can come with the risk of retaliation, but having a clear right to just cause helps address some of ​“the fear that tenants have to navigate when deciding whether or not to organize at all,” Baltz says.

In gentrifying neighborhoods, enhanced protections could also change the calculus for landlords hoping to quickly (and cheaply) oust tenants as part of a speculative investment.

“So many landlords, when confronted with organizing, say, ​‘Oh, I can’t afford what you’re asking,’” says Baltz. ​“Whether or not that’s true, if you have just cause eviction protections … a savvy business person should be taking those into account when they’re deciding how much to pay for a property.”