Housing

Oliver v. Chicago Housing Authority, 22-cv-03786 

This was our first federal class action lawsuit, and it challenged CHA’s failure to adequately inform its lowest-income public housing residents of their right to request a “hardship exemption’ to the federal minimum rent requirement—a failure that affected more than 1,400 families every year. (We negotiated with CHA for more than a year before filing suit, and we filed primarily so we would have an enforcement mechanism for ensuring compliance with the terms of our negotiated agreement.)  

On April 12, 2023, the court approved a landmark settlement that required CHA to amend its notice procedures, remove from every tenant’s rent ledger all unpaid minimum rent charges that had accrued since February 2016, and provide every qualifying public housing resident a rent credit equal to the minimum rent charges they had paid since April 2020. CHA also agreed to pay $75,000 in attorneys’ fees. 

We co-counseled this lawsuit, which has served as a model for similar litigation across the country, with the National Housing Law Project and McDermott Will & Emery. For its work on Oliver, McDermott received a nomination from the Financial Times for its Innovation in Access to Justice Award.  

Public Act 104-0317—Eviction of Minors 

Tenants’ advocates have long complained about landlords who name minors as defendants in eviction actions. It’s a pervasive problem with potentially serious consequences, so we helped lead a legislative initiative to address it. 

Because a minor may not enter into a contract, they may not be a party to a lease agreement—they may only be identified as an authorized household member—and that means they should not be named as a defendant in an eviction action, which is a matter of public record. Prospective landlords often check court websites to see if an applicant has been named in a prior eviction action, and they are reluctant to rent a unit to someone another landlord tried to evict (even if the eviction action was dismissed). Getting named as a defendant in an eviction action also harms the defendant’s credit score.  

On August 15, 2025, Governor Pritzker signed into law a bill that protects minors from the long-term consequences of being named as defendants in eviction actions. It provides for the dismissal of any eviction action that names a minor as a defendant, and for the sealing of the court file. The dismissals are granted without prejudice, so the landlord may re-file the eviction action against just the adult household members.  

This long overdue legislation, sponsored by Representative Dagmara Avelar and Senator Karina Villa, became law in August 2025. 

A Rare Individual Case 

We do the class action litigation and legislative advocacy that Legal Aid Chicago cannot do because of federal funding restrictions, so we rarely take individual eviction cases. Sometimes, however, extraordinary circumstances warrant our involvement. Here’s one example:  

The Director of HUD’s Multifamily Midwest Region asked us to consider, on an emergency basis, representing a tenant who was facing eviction from subsidized housing for an altercation that had been captured on the building’s security footage. The case was headed to trial in three days, so there was no time to file a jury demand or seek discovery.     

On the trial date, Plaintiff appeared in court with an attorney and six witnesses. They testified that our client assaulted and threatened another resident, and they denied that anyone had done anything to provoke our client. The judge, however, found that these eyewitnesses were not credible, that the property manager’s testimony supported our client’s contention that she had been provoked, and that our client’s testimony was entirely credible and supported by the security footage. Accordingly, the judge ruled in her favor.

Henry Horner Mothers Guild v. Chicago Housing Authority, 91-cv-03316 

Henry Horner Homes was one of the most notorious public housing developments in the country. It was the setting for Alex Kotlowitz’s 1991 bestseller “There Are No Children Here,” which documented the lives of two brothers living in one of the crumbling mid-rise buildings. The same year Kotlowitz’s book was published, the vacancy rate at Horner was almost 50%.  

The Horner Mothers Guild sued HUD and CHA, claiming that the agencies were effectively demolishing public housing units by failing to repair and lease out the apartments. This de facto demolition, the plaintiffs claimed, violated a federal “one-for-one” statute that required public housing authorities to replace every unit that is demolished. 

The lawsuit was settled in 1995 through the entry of a consent decree that required CHA and a developer to reach an agreement on each stage of development with a new body called the Horner Resident Committee. 

In 2024, CHA filed a motion to terminate the consent decree on the grounds that it had largely fulfilled its obligation to redevelop the Henry Horner Homes site into the Westhaven Park mixed-income community. Legal Action Chicago, together with attorneys from the Shriver Center and Northwestern University’s Bluhm Legal Clinic, successfully opposed this motion by demonstrating that CHA was failing to comply with its obligations under the decree to properly maintain and repair the public housing units. The parties are now in the process of trying to agree on the terms of an amended consent decree. 

2471 Tenants’ Assoc. v. Feeney, 26 CH 06355 

There is currently no statewide statutory provision that gives tenants a “right of first refusal” that gives them a chance to purchase a building when their landlord plans to sell. The Northwest Side Preservation Ordinance, however, created the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (606) Block Pilot Program (TOPA), which provides tenants the right of first refusal when landlords plan to sell residential properties within the 606 Predominance of the Block District boundaries (which encompass certain blocks in Avondale, Hermosa, Humboldt Park, Logan Square, and West Town).  

This pilot program, which went into effect on March 1, 2025, is designed to preserve affordable housing and curb displacement in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, but it works only if owners abide by its provisions. On behalf of residents living in a building within the relevant boundaries, we sued their landlord for trying to sell the building without following the requisite notice provisions and giving his tenants an opportunity to purchase the property. 

Our lawsuit is the first that has been brought to enforce tenants’ rights under TOPA.