A Note From the RPBG President
Last week we learned that petitions have been circulated to place a non binding referendum on the November ballot in the 49th Ward, asking whether the Legislature should lift a state wide ban on rent control.
In this newsletter RPBG Director and our staff writer Steve Cain lays out our case against rent control and he explores issues pertaining to affordable housing. We in the industry ought to understand the perspective from residents of the community - folks who, we hope, will also be open to hearing us out as to why we feel that rent control is a bad idea for the Rogers Park community, the City of Chicago and the State.
In the coming months, the RPBG looks forward to interacting with members of the Rogers Park community and engaging in a healthy, heartfelt and mutually respectful discussion on this important issues and explore real world approaches to creating and sustaining affordable housing.
Anyone interested in participating in such a discussion should reach out to us at
[email protected]
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Mike Glasser, RPBG President
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Property owners in Chicago can be forgiven if they feel like they are under siege. Local politicians of all stripes, from Aldermen to State Representatives to the Democratic candidate for Governor, seem to be tripping over each other to placate angry renters clamoring for more regulation of the rental market.
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Just a short list of the worst of these recent proposals include Rent Control, “Good Cause” evictions, and ever increasing fees and set-aside requirements for affordable units under the city’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO).
Given these attacks on our livelihood and our character, it is easy to understand why property owners feel so frustrated and scapegoated by tenants and politicians alike. But what property owners often fail to acknowledge in this current political and economic climate is where this anger and resentment is coming from, and why it has become such a political hot potato in the current election cycle.
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To many property owners, the battle over rent control feels a lot like the movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. First comes that vague feeling that something is amiss. People start acting strangely for no apparent reason – just a few at first, then more and more as the movie advances. By the time we figure out what is really happening, it’s too late. The pod-people have taken over, and there is nothing we can do to stop them!
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Well, the good news is, the pod people have not yet taken over. But the bad news is, there is an increasing chance that they’re coming and that it may, indeed, be too late to stop them.
This article is intended to start a conversation about how best to fight rent control in Chicago (and elsewhere in the Chicago region and beyond). But it is also an acknowledgement that we may not be successful in doing so and will have to find ways to adapt if we lose the fight and rent control becomes the new normal.
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The NBOA’s 2018 Summer Soiree was a great success, attended by over 350 real estate professionals.
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By any measure, the economy is exceptionally strong. The unemployment rate was 3.9% in July and has been below 4.5% for over a year. We have seen an extraordinary run of net job gains which have now continued uninterrupted for almost eight years. The last time we registered a monthly job loss was September 2010. May and June both saw net gains of more than 200,000; in February, the gain was 324,000.
The markets have had their ups and downs this year, but remain at a level that can only be described as stratospheric. After peaking at over 26,600 in January, the Dow Jones fell to just below 24,000 in early February, but has mostly stayed above the 24,000 level since that time. The Dow is currently well above 25,000. Recall that, in March 2009 in the depths of the Great Recession, the Dow stood at just a little over 6,600.
Even Chicago, which has lagged the country in its economic recovery for most of the past decade, is starting to look like less of a basket case. The BLS estimates that the Chicago MSA had an unemployment rate of just 3.4% in May. Even the June unemployment estimate – up a full percentage point to 4.4% – is still much lower than at almost any point since the onset of the Great Recession.
With all this good news, is there any reason why we shouldn’t all be popping the champagne and drinking a toast to our new-found prosperity? Well, I hate to be a party-pooper, but I can think of a few!
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Mike Glasser, RPBG President
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We in the RPBG feel honored that we have a close friend in the waste hauling industry – Scott Post, of Independent Recycling. Scott generously sponsors many RPBG events and charitable initiatives, including a recent project at Sullivan High School.
In such a ‘rough and tumble’ industry, how great to have a reputable and fair industry representative like Scott.
Last March, in a presentation made at our “Best Practices Seminar,’ Scott explained how single source recycling works, and important steps that owners can take to implement a recycling plan that goes beyond the bare minimum needed to comply with the City Recycling Ordinance and implement a plan that can really make a difference. This ordinance took effect on January 1, 2017.
The Recycling Ordinance requires that property owners and managers go beyond implementing a recycling program, but also educate residents on the “do’s and don’ts” of recycling.
Educating residents on recycling can be quite a task for property owners and managers to take on – a burden because we are already tasked with educating residents on a range of other important issues, such as the Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, bed bugs, lead paint, carbon monoxide detectors, etc. As to recycling, many residents require constant reminders to get recycling right – knowing which plastics, cardboards and glass can go in the container, and what belongs in the regular trash.
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More Headlines From The Neighborhood
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Verella Osborne, President, Legal Document Management, Inc.
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Because U.S. criminal and civil laws are separate, a criminal act does not affect a tenant’s civil right to possession of his residence. The first order of business is to confirm the location of the tenant’s incarceration and obtain his inmate number by searching the databases listed below.
A landlord cannot commence eviction proceedings until the tenancy has been breached. Simply being arrested for a crime does not, itself, breach the tenancy. You must have a valid lease in effect with an enforceable criminal activity provision whose language states that no arrest or conviction is necessary and that a breach has been caused by a “preponderance of the evidence.”
Without this language in your lease, your tenant has to be convicted of a crime before a breach has occurred. This can take years. With the proper language, you may serve a 10-Day Notice for Breach of the lease. However, the CRLTO allows the tenant the right to cure the breach within 10 days, so there must be another criminal act within or shortly after the 10-day cure period to allow you to evict based on that breach.
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Rogers Park Builders Group encourages and supports responsible residential and commercial property investment, development, and ownership in the Rogers Park community.
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