Politics

Johnson’s Scaled-Back Push to Protect Renters Passes First Test

A key Chicago City Council panel advanced Mayor Brandon Johnson’s scaled-back effort to rewrite a 40-year-old law to add new protections for renters and additional ways to hold “slum lords” accountable.

The Committee on Housing and Real Estate voted 12-9 Wednesday to advance the revised measure designed by Johnson 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.

The proposal will now head to the full City Council for a final vote on Sept. 23. However, just two alderpeople can block a vote on the proposal at that meeting, according to the City Council’s rules.

Complicating the measure’s path to passage, the City Council’s Zoning Committee is scheduled to consider and vote on a rival proposal Thursday. That measure was crafted by Johnson’s critics on the City Council and is supported by landlord groups and the city’s business community.

“Go ahead and pass yours today and we’ll pass ours tomorrow and then we’ll see,” said Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward), the lead sponsor of the rival proposal.

Johnson called Wednesday’s vote, which was scheduled with just minutes to spare to comply with the state’s open meeting requirements, “a momentous step forward in the decades-long struggle to make safe, stable, and affordable housing a right for every Chicagoan.”

“Our fight is not over,” Johnson said in a statement. “Renters in our city have been waiting for relief for 40 years, we cannot wait any longer.”

The fight over the city’s rules governing landlords and tenants is now central to the 2027 mayoral and aldermanic contests. It is likely the last chance for Johnson and his allies to pass new legislation demanded by the progressive organizations that fueled their rise to power.

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.

Before Wednesday’s hearing, which lasted nearly three hours, Johnson revised his proposal to remove a provision that would have prevented landlords from evicting tenants or refusing to renew leases unless they violated their leases by failing to pay rent or violating other rules.

In addition, the version of the ordinance that advanced Wednesday would not require landlords to pay $10,000 or 10 months’ rent if tenants are forced to move because of an “unconscionable” proposed rent increase. Nor would the ordinance require landlords to provide relocation assistance to renters who lost their housing through no fault of their own.

Jonah Karsh, of the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, said the removal of the just cause provision was disappointing, but was necessary to give the proposal the best shot at winning at least 25 votes on the City Council.

“We’re certainly not going to give up,” Karsh said.

In addition, the ordinance will not apply to buildings with fewer than six units if one is occupied by the building’s owner, as originally proposed, officials said. That will help smaller landlords keep rents low, officials said.

A New Rental Services Bureau 

The measure would also create a tenant bill of rights and establish a Bureau of Rental Housing Services within the Department of Housing funded by new fees on landlords, according to the proposal.

The proposed ordinance would also require the owner of every rental property in the city to identify themselves to city officials. Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th Ward) said some of the worst landlords in Humboldt Park create shell companies that make it impossible to hold them accountable for violations.

The measure would require most landlords to pay a $20 per unit fee to fund the new bureau, which would step up enforcement efforts against landlords accused of violating city ordinance and help tenants facing eviction navigate the legal system. It would also make a city pilot program that offers legal help to tenants permanent. Officials said that program has generated $13.6 million in benefits since 2022 and cost just $4 million.

That is expected to raise $22 million, and fund the new 28-employee bureau, which will include 12 new positions, said Jung Yoon, the mayor’s director of policy. It would take three years for the measure to be fully implemented, Yoon said.

Department of Housing Commissioner Lissette Castañeda said the new bureau would make it easier for the city to go after “slum lords” who force their tenants to live in despicable conditions by giving officials new power to track violations and demand accountability.

The new bureau will also relieve some of the burden on alderpeople, who constantly field complaints about landlords and tenants by giving them a place to send their residents for help, and benefit landlords by helping to resolve disputes before they end up in court, Castañeda said.

In addition, the measure will give landlords a new opportunity to correct violations before fines are imposed, Castañeda said.

The mayor’s critics on the City Council said Johnson’s proposal would actually cost renters more by giving landlords no choice but to raise rents to cover the new fees and expense of having to navigate an expanded bureaucracy.

“This vote represented a mistaken impulse to layer costs and burdens on the buildings that house the working families of Chicago’s neighborhoods,” said Michael Glasser, the president of the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance. “Every measure in the ordinance makes it harder to offer affordable rents to the working families who need them. Not a single measure does anything to reduce costs or to add a single new unit of housing.”

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.

The measure crafted by Johnson’s critics 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.

The measure supported by landlord groups would also ban move-in and move-out fees, according to the proposal.

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.

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 original proposal introduced by Johnson’s critics would roll back those requirements for some landlords, an error that Villegas said would be corrected.

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