Landlords, tenants wrangle over proposed eviction rules

Landlords and tenants once again clashed during Tuesday night’s Housing and Community Development Committee meeting, where they discussed proposed revisions to the city’s Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance (RLTO).

More than 40 landlords and tenants attended the often contentious meeting in the City Council Chambers at the Civic Center. Sharp disagreement among the crowd and between committee members themselves added a dramatic flair to the nearly three-hour conversation.

“It feels like the perception is significantly different between these two sides,” said committee member and resident Loren Berlin.

The sticking point in the entire proposal is a new provision in the drafted RLTO called a “Just Cause for Eviction” ordinance, which would require landlords to provide a legitimate reason for evicting a tenant or not renewing a lease.

Under the city’s existing housing law, landlords can choose not to renew a lease for any reason, and they also don’t have to tell the tenant why they are not being renewed. If the Just Cause ordinance gets passed, landlords will still be able to evict or not renew, but for a specific list of reasons, including nonpayment of rent, material breach of the lease contract, tenant refusal to renew, occupancy by the owner, condo conversion, significant repairs and demolition.

Those on the tenant side of the discussion, led by Council Member Devon Reid (8th Ward), maintained that Just Cause provides basic protections that renters in Evanston have long gone without. Establishing a Just Cause ordinance, they argued, would prevent landlords from not renewing tenants just because they ask for repairs or because the landlord finds them annoying, for example.

Most of the landlords who spoke at Tuesday night’s meeting, on the other hand, said Just Cause would put an undue burden on the landlord, limit their ability to deal with “problem tenants” and be “one-sided” in giving tenants the power in the landlord-tenant relationship.

Speaking on behalf of North Shore Housing Providers, property tax attorney Aron Bornstein gave a presentation responding to the drafted ordinance. He called Just Cause “bad” and “unethical,” and said it will cause an “endless circle of misconduct” by bad tenants.

As drafted, the Just Cause rules would give tenants 10 days to correct or “cure” a lease violation or nonpayment. That grace period would cause some renters to commit the same breaches over and over because they could correct the behavior on the 10th day and get away with it, Bornstein claimed. Committee members Joanne Zolomij and Hugo Rodriguez, both landlords themselves, said they wanted to add an additional provision that would allow eviction or nonrenewal for repeat offenses corrected within the 10-day allotment.

During the public comment portion of the meeting, several small “mom and pop” landlords asked the committee to consider an exemption from Just Cause for housing providers with six or fewer units, as well as for cases where the owner lives in the building. Some committee members, including Zolomij, expressed support for that idea, but Reid said he adamantly disagreed with granting any exceptions that would take protections away from tenants.

Meanwhile, several residents of the Avidor, a 55-and-older apartment building, spoke to the committee again after voicing concerns about fellow residents receiving nonrenewal notices and fearing retaliation from their property manager.

“People I know and like have been told to leave,” said Avidor resident Ann Jennett, who said forcing landlords to provide a reason for eviction and nonrenewal makes them more accountable for their actions. “We don’t know why. They don’t know why.”

Stuck in the middle

For the last two months ahead of Tuesday’s committee meeting, a Just Cause Task Force consisting of Reid, Rodriguez, landlord Eric Paset, tenant Helen Cho and fair housing lawyer Nareen Kim has met every week to draft the proposed Just Cause Ordinance. The task force came out of the committee’s July meeting, and Reid proposed the idea as a way to bring a full drafted ordinance to the table this fall. 

But Paset and Rodriguez said Tuesday night they didn’t think the task force was a fair process, and that they both want to pause the entire effort, go back to the drawing board and have more open discussion with the committee about how to forge ahead.

“I think that this ordinance has not been given enough time. This originally was introduced by staff to us, and it was a revision of an existing ordinance in Evanston done by tenant advocacy organizations. That already brings an unbalance to the whole thing, so that needed to be addressed,” Rodriguez said.

“Obviously, we have issues on both sides that need to be protected, and my problem with the way we are now is that there is no balance. The Just Cause Task Force was not balanced. It was three to two [in favor of tenants], and it was not a voting issue. It was a push through an agenda that we didn’t have enough time to discuss.”

Landlords like Bornstein, Paset and Dan Schermerhorn of Schermerhorn and Co. also criticized how the ordinance would create more hoops for small landlords to jump through, which they said would drive out mom and pop housing providers who offer cheaper rents and a better working relationship than corporate landlords.

Reid said they were spreading “misleading information” about the proposal, saying that all landlords will still have tools at their disposal to remove tenants creating problems. He also was the one committee member to explicitly disagree with slowing the process, arguing that tenants are losing leases right now and need protections as soon as possible.

“I appreciate your commitment to the issue, and I stand with you on it. I just want to make sure that we still have housing that’s affordable,” Berlin told Reid, while stressing she also wanted more time and information given the intractability of this problem between landlords and tenants. “Believe it or not, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. I just want to proceed with clarity and make sure that we do this in a way where we don’t end up with institutional investors owning 95% of our [housing] stock in 10 years.”

In a tense moment near the end of the meeting, Reid responded that Just Cause would not drive out affordable housing run by small landlords and said Berlin’s comments suggest an inherent “bias toward housing providers.”

“I’m not hearing folks mention concerns about tenants. What I keep hearing over and over from this committee is this is going to do this to housing providers, this is going to create some undue burden,” Reid said. “No. It’s going to create the proper amount of burden when you’re providing housing to human beings.”

Speaking to the RoundTable after the meeting, local small landlord Mark Karlin said he, unlike most landlords present, was in full support of the proposed Just Cause Ordinance. He said he hoped the revisions would ultimately pass because too many people, like those at the Avidor, are not renewed for allegedly “complaining too much.”

“My feeling is that for my tenants, it’s my property, it’s my responsibility,” Karlin said. “If they say that a lock is broken or the bathroom is leaking, then it’s the responsibility of the landlord to do it because it’s the landlord’s property.”

At this point, without much clarity or direction, much less a consensus, the committee is set to discuss the Just Cause issue again at a special meeting in December, and possibly an additional, so far unscheduled, special meeting in November.