Politics
Johnson’s Push to Protect Renters Seizes City Hall Spotlight as 2027 Election Fight Begins
Video: Joining “Chicago Tonight” are Lissette Castaneda, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Housing; Jonah Karsh, organizer with the Metropolitan Tenants Organization; Michael Glasser, president of the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance; and Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward), chair of the Chicago City Council Zoning Committee. (Produced by Andrew Montequin)
A push by Mayor Brandon Johnson to convince the Chicago City Council to back his rewrite of a 40-year-old law to add new protections for renters and scale back the power of landlords has seized the spotlight at City Hall, just as the battle lines are beginning to be drawn in the 2027 election.
Johnson’s proposal is designed to shift the balance of power toward renters from landlords, who have profited from the sky-high demand for apartments in Chicago, allowing them to impose new fees and steep rent increases.
But that effort — likely Johnson’s last chance to champion new legislation demanded by the progressive organizations that fueled his come-from-behind win in the 2023 mayoral election — drew swift and vehement opposition from landlords and business groups, with whom he has long been at loggerheads.
“For far too long, renters have been left on their own while being forced to navigate rising costs, predatory practices, and corporate consolidation in a housing market that too often puts profit before people,” Johnson said in a statement.
The average rent in Chicago jumped to $1,956 a month at the end of 2025, rising 9.5% since 2023, the biggest increase of any major city in the country, according to real estate data provider CoStar.
Approximately 622,000 Chicagoans lease their homes, and 40% spend more than a third of their take-home pay on rent, according to city officials.
Johnson wants to ban move-in and move-out fees imposed by landlords, create a new “Tenants Bill of Rights” and ensure that tenants facing eviction would have the help of an attorney and the support of a new city agency dubbed the Bureau of Rental Housing Services.
The mayor’s proposal would also require landlords to disclose the owners of the buildings they lease on a citywide rental registry designed to prevent them from using shell corporations from hiding their identity and records.
Fees of approximately $20 per unit, with big landlords paying more than smaller landlords, would fund those efforts, which are estimated to cost $20 million per year, according to the mayor’s proposal.
In addition, the revised law would require landlords to provide a valid reason for evicting a tenant or refusing to renew a lease — or force them to pay as much as $5,000 or five months’ rent to their former tenant. Landlords in small, owner-occupied buildings would have to pay three months’ rent or $3,000.
Landlords would have to pay $10,000 or 10 months’ rent if tenants are forced to move because of an “unconscionable” proposed rent increase, according to the original ordinance.
The mayor’s staff said they plan to amend that language in an effort to prevent rent increases “with the intention of encouraging the tenant to refuse to renew the rental agreement.”
That provision could serve as a way to chill Chicago’s red-hot rental market without violating the state’s ban on rent control, according to supporters of Johnson’s measure, but would likely trigger a legal challenge.
While Johnson had hoped the City Council would pass his proposal before beginning their annual August recess, the measure faces an uncertain future even as both the mayor and his critics acknowledge that the city is facing a severe shortage of housing for working-class Chicagoans and agree that elected officials must do more to make living in the city more affordable.
That means the ordinance could face a vote this fall, just as alderpeople confront a gap in the city’s 2027 budget, estimated at $1.16 billion, and ramp up their bids for a new term in office. Johnson, although he is widely expected to seek a second term, has not formally announced whether he will run for reelection.
The mayor’s critics on the City Council said Johnson’s proposal would actually cost renters more by forcing landlords to pay new fees and navigate an expanded bureaucracy. Those critics quickly introduced their own version of a revised Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance, which was originally championed by former Mayor Harold Washington.
It will be up to Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward), the chair of the Zoning Committee, to agree to hold a hearing and vote on the mayor’s proposal — but he is backing an alternate measure, one supported by landlord groups and the city’s business community.
That proposal is designed to crack down on bad landlords who lock out their tenants, retaliate against tenants who assert their rights, do not provide safe living conditions and fail to return security deposits.
It would also ban move-in and move-out fees, derided by Johnson as “junk fees,” Villegas said.
But it would not force landlords to pay a penalty for evicting tenants without cause, nor would it prevent landlords from imposing additional fees on tenants, according to the proposal from the mayor’s critics.
While both proposals would establish a registry of rental units in Chicago, the plan backed by the mayor’s critics would not create a new city agency to administer it, or impose new fees on landlords.
That measure would also expand the number of rental units in Chicago that are exempt from city regulations. The current law does not apply to owner-occupied buildings with six or fewer units, while the new measure would allow those who own as many as 12 rental units across Chicago, even if the owner does not live in one of the units, to operate without city oversight.
Johnson frequently accuses his critics of choosing to align themselves with corporations over the people of Chicago.
“Even corporatists, in the interest of corporations, even they have capitulated to what I have been calling for, for a very long time, and that’s affordability,” Johnson said, adding that his critics’ proposal “comes dramatically short of what’s needed at this moment.”
In 2020, the City Council revised the law to require landlords to give tenants who have lived in the same unit for more than six months but less than three years 60 days’ notice before they could be evicted, while those who lived in the unit for more than three years get 120 days’ notice.
Tenants who have lived in a unit for less than six months can be evicted with just 30 days’ notice, according to city law.
The law was also changed to require landlords to allow tenants to pay back missed rental payments and court fees up until the eviction order is finalized by a judge.
The proposal introduced by Johnson’s critics would roll back those requirements for some landlords, an error that Villegas said would be corrected.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
