In its zeal to rid its developments of crime and bad tenants, the Chicago Housing Authority used questionable, even illegal, means to evict people, a suit filed Friday contends.
The device for bringing about those evictions is a new lease that the class-action suit alleges is unconstitutional and a violation of state and federal law.
The complaint, filed on behalf of some 7,000 residents of the Cabrini-Green housing complex, charges that as a result of that lease, the CHA can move residents from one complex to another without reason and can evict tenants for crimes committed by their guests.
For example, Richard Wheelock, an attorney for the residents, said the housing agency is trying to evict a woman because police searching her apartment after the arrest of her son found a packet of cocaine in her son’s jacket. Wheelock said the son didn’t live with the woman at the time.
“They are allowing evictions merely based on who one is associating with,” Wheelock said, adding that he has no problem with evictions resulting from actual tenant misconduct.
The suit could affect CHA residents citywide, all of whom had to sign the new leases beginning last summer.
The complaint, which was filed in Cook County Circuit Court, seeks an injunction that would prevent the CHA from enforcing the existing leases and would require it to draft a new standard lease.
“We are confident that the lease will withstand any constitutional test,” Wilbert Allen, the agency’s first deputy general counsel, said Friday. “This is needed for the authority to fulfill its duty to provide decent, safe and sanitary housing.”
For example, Allen said, the provision allowing the CHA to move tenants to other units is needed so the agency can get into apartments to make repairs.
The Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, which brought the case, also is locked in a court fight with the CHA over the agency’s attempts to evict Annette Freeman, whose 7-year-old son, Dantrell Davis, was shot to death last October near Cabrini-Green. The CHA has accused Freeman of drug possession and alleged that last year, a police officer saw her dropping bags of cocaine from the window of her Cabrini-Green apartment.
