Well, good morning. Guess what we're about to get right now?
The Protecting Richter's Ordinance!
I am truly honored to stand in solidarity with the incredible housing and tenant advocates
who have never wavered in their collective fight to build a housing system that works for every Chicagoan.
We're also joined today by just ordinary Chicagoans,
who for too long have shouldered the burden of instability and unsafe living conditions
that no one should ever have to accept.
As we gather today, we are in the midst of a crushing housing crisis,
one that has forced undue hardships on working families,
not just here in Chicago, but across this nation.
Our homes are more than financial assets and opportunities for corporations
to increase their profit margins.
They are where families come together at the end of a long day.
They are where life's biggest moments happen and lasting memories are made.
Where children grow up, neighbors become friends, and communities are built.
As our families fight to get by and get ahead,
we've watched as rents continue to skyrocket.
while faceless, unaccountable corporations continue to buy up homes
and consolidate their influence over the housing market.
But we're done watching Chicago.
Housing is a human right.
It cannot just be a rallying cry.
It must be the reality for every Chicagoan.
We must use every tool available to us to keep Chicagoans in their homes
and protect the stability that is the lifeblood of our communities.
For too long, Chicago has lagged behind other cities.
Past administrations have kept organizers at arm's length
while declining to implement critical protections that have yielded results across the country.
We have not updated our renter protections since they were first established over 40 years ago
under the leadership of Mayor Harold Washington.
And needless to say, relief is long overdue and Chicagoans deserve an approach that puts
people first and not profits.
And that's why I'm incredibly proud to formally announce that my administration is introducing
the Protecting Renters Ordinance.
This sweeping overhaul of our existing laws will create new transformational protections
for renters protecting Chicagoans from predatory landlords,
expensive and unexplained junk fees, displacement, and no-fault evictions.
It will bring our housing laws into the 21st century,
creating a new office that will streamline enforcement
and level the playing field of our mom and pop landlords.
And it will establish a rental registry,
empowering the city to hold corporate landlords accountable
while granting transparency to ensure renters know exactly who owns their building.
The impact of these issues stretch far beyond lease agreements and maintenance requests.
Landmark research from the University of Chicago reaffirms that housing instability
has a direct relationship to increase rates of violence.
As we continue to build lasting safety in neighborhoods across our city, we must prevent unnecessary displacement and invest in stability and peace, and do this to make sure that there's peace in mind for every family.
The fight we are embarking upon today comes at a critical time.
Affordability remains one of the greatest challenges facing our city.
And we will build the new housing our city needs, but we must ensure new investment creates opportunity and not displacement.
The resistance that we will face will be certainly fierce.
Corporate interests are already mobilizing to defeat us and preserve the status quo.
But we will not back down.
And I know that because of the people that I see that are standing here today,
that this coalition will continue to build.
This ordinance would not have been possible without the years of steadfast advocacy
and community organizing that has brought this moment to fruition.
So I want to thank our partners on the city council who have worked collaboratively
with our administration to formulate this ordinance and push forward.
So today is just the beginning.
Thank you all for standing up and joining this fight.
So now let's continue to work.
God bless you all.
And God bless the greatest city in the world, Chicago.
And now, please welcome Commissioner Lissette Constaneda.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Thank you, Mayor Johnson, for having space in your vision of safe and affordable city
that uplifts the needs of renters and recognizes the need to protect this class of Chicagoans.
I am Lise Castaneda, the Commissioner of the City Department of Housing,
and I am so proud to be here because this work has been a long time coming.
First, I want to thank all of the advocates here, the Advisory Committee on Renting Right,
a group of housing justice advocates, industry advocates, and policy experts
who were central to getting the policy right.
Mayor Johnson's vision of investing in people and protecting Chicagoans touches
many issue areas, but today we are focused on renters. 54% of households in
Chicago are made up of renters. Almost half of those households are rent
burdened, spending over 30% of their income on rent. The department has heard
many stories, too many stories, like those of the residents of South Shore who face absentee
slumlords who allow their buildings to fall into disrepair and decay while continuing to
collect rent. Or stories like a slumlord in Rogers Park who allowed a rat infestation
in his building, which led to a tenant being mauled by rats as he slept. And so we say
enough is enough. The Protecting Renter's Ordinance Five Pillars are crafted to take
issues like this head-on and safeguard Chicago's renters. The first pillar will establish a
comprehensive citywide rental registry so that would-be renters have information on a building's
history before they sign their lease. It also allows the city to know who actually owns our
city's rental properties and gives the department the power to hold bad landlords accountable.
The second pillar of PRO will establish the Bureau of Rental Housing Services.
This bureau will be able to enforce and protect the rights of tenants, offer free legal advice
and representation to income-eligible tenants, and coordinate rental inspections.
The Bureau will also offer education and support to landlords to ensure that they understand their responsibilities as building owners.
In the third pillar, the ordinance will modernize our residential landlord-tenant ordinance.
This effort will make our RLTO simpler and easier to understand, so that tenants can exercise their rights more easily.
Additionally, these updates to the RLTO will ban junk fees
While we appreciate the efforts taken at the state level to establish a floor for addressing junk fees
PRO goes further by outright banning things like move-in fees and any fee that does not have a documented cost
For the fourth pillar, the Protecting Renters Ordinance makes permanent the city's eviction counseling program called Right to Council
This program provides full legal representation for all income-eligible tenants with an eviction defense and legal advice for all eligible tenants.
Right to Council returns up to $3.35 in fiscal benefits for every $1 invested.
And since 2022, the City of Chicago has realized $13.6 million in cumulative benefits.
And finally, the ordinance will require a just cause for eviction and lease non-renewal.
Landlords will need to have a just reason before asking a tenant to leave their unit.
And if they do not, they will be required to support the tenant with relocation assistance.
1,000 tenants in Chicago every year lose their housing through no fault of their own.
This provision is to ensure that tenants have the support necessary when their lives are upended
and they will no longer have access to the place they have called home.
The Protecting Renters Ordinance is what Chicagoans need right now.
PRO is what renters need right now.
Thank you all for your support.
It is my pleasure to bring up Tulsi McDaniels of Metropolitan Tenants Organization.
Thank you so much, Commissioner. Thank you, members of the press.
When tenants' rights are under attack, what do we do?
When tenants' rights are under attack, what do we do?
My name is Tulsi McDaniels, and I'm a community organizer with the Metropolitan Tenants Organization.
MTO operates Chicago's only citywide tenants' rights hotline, which responds to thousands of calls per year.
Every day, we educate, we organize, and we empower tenants across all corners of the city.
Black, brown, working-class tenants, CHA and HUD tenants, elderly tenants, people renting their very first apartments,
and small mom-and-pop-owned buildings to large property management companies.
These stories, the everyday lives of residents from all across Chicago, reveal a disproportionate
power held between landlords and tenants in Chicago today. It leaves tenants vulnerable
to housing exploitation and contributes more broadly to displacement, eviction, and homelessness.
Even in situations where a tenant has done everything right and used the current RLTO
law to the fullest extent, it is not enough. I want to clearly communicate that tenants
are not protected from predatory landlords in Chicago. Landlords whose paychecks are
met by the hard-earned dollar of working people. This is why we need the Protecting Renters
Ordinance. I would like to highlight two aspects of the PRO that are of particular importance.
First, the Bureau of Rental Housing Services. Our current system does not do enough to protect
the rights of tenants with urgent needs. It doesn't work with Section 8 voucher holder in
South Shore, whose landlord regularly entered her unit without notice, or a grandma in Market Park
who felt she had no choice but to sign a lease full of illegal provisions. These are real tenants
that need an agency that focuses on enforcement to hold these landlords fully accountable.
The Bureau of Rental Housing Services would make sure that the laws expanded by the PRO are proactively enforced.
The second part of PRO that I would like to highlight is just cause.
Right now in Chicago, a landlord can generally refuse to renew a tenant's lease for any reason or no reason at all.
MTO sees this in action all the time. These no-fault evictions are a tool of gentrification.
We've dealt with speculative investors kicking out entire buildings in order to renovate and double the rent.
Without just cause, tenants are unexpectedly displaced through no fault of their own.
The consequences of this can be devastating, and MTO has worked with individuals who were forced to leave Chicago altogether,
individuals who were forced to live in their cars or in shelters,
and individuals who suffered medical emergencies related to the stress of their unexpected displacement.
This is why Just Cause legislation is so vital.
The principles behind it are simple.
Landlords must disclose their reason for not renewing a tenant's lease.
And if the reason is not the tenant's fault, the tenant should be entitled to relocation assistance to support their unexpected move.
It is time for Chicago to join cities like New York, L.A., Oakland, SF, and St. Paul in enacting just-cause legislation.
Let's pass the Protecting Renters Ordinance. Thank you.
And now I'll pass it off to my tenant, Jonathan Smith.
Good morning to the members of the press, Commissioner, Mayor.
Good morning.
My name is Jonathan Smith. I'm a lifelong Chicago resident.
I've been renting since 2009, and I've lived in my current apartment for the past 13 years.
I'm here because I want to explain what happens when a tenant follows the rules, but the system meant to protect them doesn't work.
For the last three years, the new property management company of my building, LeVar Properties, has allowed the conditions in my apartment to steadily decline.
I submitted maintenance requests through their online portal exactly as they instructed me to.
Many were marked as complete, even though no repairs were ever made.
I have ongoing water intrusion from leaking pipes that now extends throughout my apartment.
I requested a professional black mold inspection because I believe the repeated water damage has led to mold.
That request was ignored, yet it was still marked as completed.
During the record-breaking cold in February of 2025 and January of 2026, my building went without heat for three days each time because Lviv deliberately cut off our heat and hot water.
I reached out to all levels of city government, and I do mean all.
Despite all those calls, people including children, elderly tenant, and myself were left without heat during extremely dangerous below-zero temperatures.
That experience taught me something.
The problem isn't only bad landlords.
The problem is that tenants are passed from agency to agency,
and no one is truly responsible for seeing the problems through to a resolution.
This is exactly why I support the Protecting Renters Ordinance.
The Bureau of Rental Housing Services would give tenants a single place to go
instead of being bounced from agency to agency.
The rental registry will make ownership and repeated violations easier to attract,
allowing renters to make informed decisions of where they choose to call home.
The Tenant's Bill of Rights will make tenant's rights easier to understand
instead of burying them in legal jargon.
A right that people don't understand is a right that they can't effectively use.
It will make those rights clear and accessible to every renter.
Stronger administrative enforcement will help resolve problems before they ever reach a courtroom
Tenants should not have to become experts in housing laws just to obtain safe and fair living conditions
My story is one of thousands
There are thousands of Chicago tenants living this reality to date
Let me be clear
This ordinance isn't about punishing landlords
Because one day I myself aspire to become a landlord
This ordinance reflects what Chicago stands for, equality for all.
I respectfully ask everyone to support this protected renter's ordinance.
That not only helps create a housing system that protects both tenants and landlords before disputes ever end up in court,
but also so that the next tenant who does everything right doesn't have to spend years fighting to have a safe place to live.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you very much to Jonathan and Tulsi.
With that, we'll take a couple of questions quickly.
We have time for one question, folks.
Good morning, Major. How are you?
Good morning. I'm wonderful. Thank you.
So, quick question.
How exactly is he going to work?
And, in fact, this may affect some landers who have probably bad renters because of different reasons.
Can you elaborate more with that?
Yeah, well, first of all, over half of the city, the vast majority of Chicagoans are renters, right?
So I would not classify the city of Chicago working families as bad people.
I think that characterization is a misnomer, to say the least.
This is really about creating a process that is transparent, that's open,
to ensure that the housing and affordability crises that exist across this country, that we address it.
The bureau that we are establishing is creating a space where for both renters as well as landlords can have a convergence in one location to be able to address the critical issues.
But in no way will I describe the people of Chicago as collectively bad.
In fact, people are working hard every single day to make the ends meet.
you know my top priority is to build the safest, most affordable big city in America,
and this ordinance places us that much closer to achieving that goal.
Hey, Mayor.
Hey.
You've noted that the majority of Chicagoans are renters,
and a lot of the people who don't often side with you in the city council,
they have wards that are majority renter.
What's your message to them, those folks in the city council who might not agree with you
but are representing a ton of renters?
Well, this is about being in agreement and in lockstep with Chicagoans.
That's what my focus has always been.
and there has been a thorough process that we have gone through with members of city council and stakeholders
to ensure that this ordinance reflects the best part about who we are, and that's showing up for working people.
We need to pass this ordinance.
Look, the average price of a home in New York is $1.1 million, and I know they're working to address that.
Los Angeles, $900,000 is the average price of a home, and that's for 900 square feet or so,
and I know Mayor Bass is addressing it.
Here in Chicago, we have a pathway that allows for affordability.
to be the full direction of our city and as we work to build the safest most affordable big city
in america this is an approach that places us in a much stronger position uh to to remain a place
for working people to live and grow it good morning mayor good morning um as i know you've
tried to uh camp or administer on bringing down housing costs making it cheaper and easier to
How do you ensure that things like relocation assistance and the annual registry fees do not make it more expensive to build housing or be passed on to tenants?
Well, you know, first of all, our smaller landlords, mom and pop, if you will, they will be exempt from the renter registry.
But keep in mind, as our commissioner indicated, it creates a greater expense when families are being forced out of their housing without any just cause.
We also know that the displacement leads to greater violence, which ultimately impacts our economy.
So this approach is actually responding to the affordability element that I believe that everyone across the city is concerned about.
But it also addresses another key component, which is allowing for stability to exist within our communities, which leads towards greater safety in our communities.
All right. Is that everyone? Thank you.
All right, we're done. Congratulations, you all. Let's get it done. Thank you all very much.