Accountability Check: Chicago’s 2014-2018 Housing Plan

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In our January newsletter I said that we were going to cover the city's new five year housing plan for 2019-2023, which was approved by the city council towards the end of last year. In last week's article (which you guys seemed to like, thanks!) I said that we would be covering it today, and we are to an extent, but not directly. We'll cover it directly next week. Because as I reviewed it, it became apparent that it is a promise and a plan, and like any promise its worth depends on the reputation of the person who makes it.

There are certain times when promises and proposals are so exciting that we don't think about how trustworthy the source might be. When someone proposes marriage, we're often swept off our feet with relief and joy without thinking about how many times our partner has been divorced. When a landlord offers us an apartment after getting denied a few times by others, we might leap to accept it without reading the lease.

The new five year plan was breathlessly covered by media outlets, mostly because of its leap from introduction to approval by the city council in less than a month. As it has been approved we will look at it. But my personal motto is “remember where you came from.”

This is not the first five year plan for housing that Chicago has had. It is the sixth consecutive five year plan, which means we're now entering our 26th straight year of municipal five year housing plans. So first let's take a look at how Chicago did in keeping its promises from the old one, which was in effect from January 2014 through December 2018. Continue reading Accountability Check: Chicago’s 2014-2018 Housing Plan

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Kay Cleaves

Chicago Deserves Better Than Rent Control.

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I'm going to admit right off the bat that I am absolutely terrified of writing this article. The topic of rent control in Chicago has been on my to-do list since it hit the news in early 2018 and every time since then that I've looked at that line item I've flinched and avoided it. We covered it a little in our newsletter back in March when it was on the primary ballot. It's never been mentioned in depth in the blog. But nothing going forward in this blog can really be addressed without taking on the matter, and I did recently promise one of my industry colleagues that I would finally go on the record about it, so here we are.

Meet This Article's Cities

For this article we will be comparing the rental data for a selection of cities and neighborhoods within those cities, each chosen for a specific purpose. We will, of course, be looking at Chicago, which has its own Residential Landlord-Tenant Ordinance.

We will be looking at San Francisco and New York City, which both have RLTOs but also have rent control. Yes, I could have also included Los Angeles and DC. I could have included a lot of cities. I am one person and this article is already long enough as it is. If you want to take this data and run with an expansion that's totally fine with me. Continue reading Chicago Deserves Better Than Rent Control.

Published by

Kay Cleaves

New Laws for 2019 Affecting Chicago Renters

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At the beginning of 2018 our monthly newsletter contained a list of all new state and city laws that took effect on the first of the year and had a chance to affect the Chicago rental market. We included a copy of that newsletter in our first blog post of 2018. It's now 2019 and we are doing it again. As we stated last year, we normally don't duplicate content between the newsletter and the blog, but they do have different audiences that don't overlap and this is pretty important stuff.

Illinois

This is a partial list, only including the new laws that are most likely to affect landlords, renters and real estate professionals. As always we've tried to be accurate with our summaries but you should check the actual law and probably contact an attorney before acting on any changes. You can find the full list of Illinois laws effective January 1 2019 at the General Assembly's data archive.

Continue reading New Laws for 2019 Affecting Chicago Renters

Published by

Kay Cleaves

RentConfident’s Top Content of 2018

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It's that time of year again when bloggers engage in a bit of navel gazing. We jumped on the year-end bandwagon last year and we're going to do it again this year. You know the drill. We're going to list the 10 most popular posts in this blog from the past 12 months based on traffic, and then we're going to throw in a few which we really enjoyed in-house but the rest of the world slept on.

To all of you who have supported us through the year by reading our articles, sharing them, subscribing to our newsletter or, of course, by buying an apartment safety report, thank you! We hope this retrospective is a fun walk down memory lane for you. Let us know your favorites in the comments!

Your Favorites

We track our stats using Matomo, which is similar to Google Analytics but it lives entirely on our own servers. We do this because we don't like sharing our own data with Google and we figure you don't either. The articles in this list were the ones we published last year that saw the most traffic. They are not the absolute top performers, as those are all from previous years. (If you're curious, our top two articles are "How to Rat out a Bad Landlord in the City of Chicago" and "Is Your Grill Legal?", which doesn't surprise us at all.) Continue reading RentConfident’s Top Content of 2018

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Kay Cleaves

An Open Letter to House Guests in Chicago Apartments

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Two years ago we ran an article for renters called "Is Your Apartment Suitable for Hosting Guests?" which uses the same artwork as this one because it's my birthday this weekend and I didn't feel like drawing anything new. But there are two sides to a host/guest situation. This is for the other half of the equation.

Before we begin, take this grain of salt and hold it in your hand for the duration. Got it? Good. Let's go.

Dear House Guests,

So you will be spending a few days living in someone else's apartment. Maybe you're visiting family for the holidays. Maybe you're a tourist staying in an AirBNB. Either way, you are visiting the very small home of someone else who may or may not be present and you have never been in a similar environment before. Your host might be too polite to comment when you're doing something cringy. Or they might get so annoyed that you never get a second invitation to visit them. So from all of us who live in high density buildings year-round to all of you who do not, here are some pointers to bear in mind so that your host does not earn the wrath of their neighbors and/or landlord. Continue reading An Open Letter to House Guests in Chicago Apartments

Published by

Kay Cleaves