Everyone has needed some minor work done in their apartment. Many have had to make do without hot water. Several have known the frustration of having a loud neighbor, and a few unfortunate ones have found themselves in unlivable conditions.
And when a landlord fails to rectify any of these situations, all renters can turn to the Citywide Tenant Rights Hotline to find out what to do next.
“All we’re doing is telling tenants what the laws are,” said Pam Alfonso, executive director of the Metropolitan Tenants Organization (MTO), the non-profit group that administers the Tenant Rights Hotline and other programs for renters.
Phone operators at the hot line, a free service available to Chicago residents, listen to callers’ complaints and answer them in even, informative tones.
The laws to which Alfonso referred are almost always found in the Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, known to some as the “Tenant Bill of Rights” and known to the hot-line operators simply as “the ordinance.”
The law is also the crux of any response to callers. Although the volunteers who work the phones are required to complete a 10-hour legal training program before working the hot line, they are not there to give out legal advice. Callers can expect to hear what the law requires of renters and landlords, and what their options are.
“Sometimes people get mad at us when we tell them what the law is because they’re not following it,” Alfonso said. “But we’re not a proponent of bad tenants. We promote tenants who know their rights and responsibilities.”
She said the hot line is intended to help renters early on, before their living conditions–or their relationship with their landlord–deteriorate to a point where they can’t be saved. “If they can get the information on the front end, that’s the most helpful,” she said.
Calls can involve noise complaints or questions about security deposits; on one recent Monday evening, a tenant called about a dispute over access to a fuse box. Calls can also be about something as dire as an eviction or a lockout–when tenants come home to find their locks have been changed and they’re left out on the street.
But most calls, organizers say, involve rent increases, an issue in which MTO can do very little, and maintenance, in which the group can do quite a lot.
“If tenants call us soon enough, we can walk them through the process of requesting repair,” Alfonso said. The process usually starts out with a “14-day letter” sent to a landlord, in which a tenant outlines what repairs need to be done. The landlord then has 14 days to comply, after which the tenant can choose to deduct rent to reflect the decreased value of the apartment, or have repairs done professionally and deduct a portion of rent to help pay for it.
“A lot of times we find that tenants write the landlords, and shortly thereafter the landlord is making repairs. And that’s what we want,” said John Bartlett, MTO program director, who coordinates the hot line.
Hot-line operators can also send out sample letters, about repair requests or other issues, and brochures of information to callers. Last year, the group sent out some form of literature to 2,786 of the 10,743 callers using the hot line.
Calls represent all demographics and geographic areas of the city, but the heaviest usage is on the North Side along the lakefront, which has a high density of rental housing. Women account for 74 percent of calls, a figure that has been roughly constant since the hot line’s inception in 1994. Bartlett said there could be many reasons for the disparity, but one is that some landlords assume women are easier to take advantage of.
Bartlett said the hot line has also gotten calls from aldermen seeking to help a constituent, and from police and landlords trying to clarify the law before making their next move.
Volunteer hot-line operator Andy Davies remembered one particularly gripping call from a renter.
“She went away for the holidays, and the landlord turned off her heat while she was gone. The pipes froze,” he said. With no heat, her plants died and artwork in the apartment was ruined.
In that case, the damages were greater than the woman’s rent, and she sought to sue the landlord. The hot line referred her to a lawyer, although tenant organization workers say that’s a rare outcome.
“It’s better to establish communication between the tenant and the landlord and let them work it out,” said Dalila Torres, MTO’s volunteer coordinator.
The hot line itself is a bank of four phones, two each on two small wooden desks on either side of a cubicle partition. It operates out of the MTO’s Near West Side office, a narrow but tidy room that stretches far back from its Milwaukee Avenue storefront. Decor in the brightly lit office is dominated by posters and fliers with referential information, although the plaster wall opposite the front door boasts a collection of framed awards and certificates.
Volunteers pick up 60 percent of calls to the hot line; various staff members and an intern answer the rest. The hot line is open from 4 to 8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday; from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday; and from 3 to 6 p.m. Friday.
“[Volunteers] have to be willing to give six hours a week. But most of them give a lot more than that,” said Torres.
Though the volunteer nature of the hot line can make its staffing transitory, Bartlett said this ensures that phone operators will always be fresh and eager to help the public.
“It’s good to have continual people coming in who don’t have to hear it day in and day out,” he said.
Torres and Alfonso said the volunteers comprise diverse demographics: college students, retirees, workers, community activists. But Torres said the biggest chunk is people who have used the hot line’s free service and decided to return the favor.
One such volunteer is Davies, who has worked phone lines at the hot line since the fall.
“I’ve had my share of deadbeat landlords. That’s why I’m here,” he said. Davies said he found it rewarding to give people information that will improve their living conditions.
“One lady had no heat for 25 days. The city actually had fined her landlord thousands of dollars. She wanted to know if she could deduct some of her rent,” he said. He was glad to be able to tell her “yes.”
Sylvia Melecio, a former Public Aid recipient, came to the MTO last summer through the federal Welfare to Work program, which requires volunteer work. But her first contact with the organization was under trying circumstances.
“I was getting evicted. I was having a nervous breakdown,” Melecio said. But difficulty paying rent wasn’t her only problem; she also had mice and roaches in her apartment and a landlord who entered her unit whenever he pleased.
Local housing officials advised her to call the hot line, where she found understanding people and information that helped her force the landlord to clean up her place.
“I listened to them. I cried. They told me how to write a 14-day letter. … I went to court and I won.”
Now, she talks to other renters with a cheery tone, seeking to calm down people in their own tense situations. And the bilingual Melecio is able to do that across cultural boundaries. Many callers prefer to speak Spanish, and last year, 395 callers spoke only Spanish.
“They seem really relieved when they know somebody can speak their language,” she said. “That’s the first thing they ask.”
In any call, Melecio’s priority is to solve problems rather than fight landlords. Still, two of her general pieces of advice to anyone with a problem: “Don’t let them intimidate you” and “always leave a paper trail.”
Standing up for one’s self is a constant credo throughout the hot line’s efforts.
“Something that tenants often forget is that [a lease] is a contract,” Bartlett said. “You can negotiate; you don’t have to just do what the landlord says.”
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Contact the hot line at 773-292-4988. To volunteer, call Dalila Torres at 773-292-4980, ext. 223.
