Q. After a major storm, there was a leak in our Chicago apartment that ruined the carpeting. Our owner moved and left a management company in charge. That company is nowhere near as responsive to our needs and requests as the owner was.
The management company removed the carpeting, leaving the carpet strips and exposed carpeting tacks. It’s been months and the carpeting has not been replaced.
A city inspector came out and wrote up that violation. The inspector also asked me if there was anything else wrong with the apartment, and I pointed out the missing screens.
The building manager accompanied the inspector during the inspection, and on the way out, said that when our lease is up, we are out as tenants.
Can the landlord really get us out of the apartment due to our complaints?
A. There is little chance that the landlord will be able to refuse to renew your lease because of your complaints to the building inspector.
Your apartment is governed by the City of Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance because the building is not owner-occupied. That ordinance prevents a landlord from retaliating against a tenant for the tenant’s exercise of rights. That retaliation includes actions such as failing to renew the lease, unreasonably increasing the rent or revoking other privileges and rights that may come with the rental. Under the ordinance, if you have exercised rights such as complaining to a building inspector within 12 months prior to the failure to renew the lease, there is a rebuttable presumption that the landlord’s action was occasioned by your complaint. The landlord then has to show that the failure to renew the lease had nothing to do with the exercise of your rights, and that there was an unrelated business-related reason.
While the landlord does have the right to provide testimony that the failure to renew the lease was not caused by your conversation with the inspector, the judge would have to find the existence of valid, business-related and reasonable grounds for failure to renew. The fact that the landlord’s agent told you, at the time of the inspection, that your lease would not be renewed as a result of your complaints to the inspector may well be too much for your landlord to get around. Most likely a judge would find that the manager’s threat was most probably the cause for the unwillingness to renew the lease and that the failure to renew was retaliatory in nature.
Under the circumstances, a direct conversation with the owner, with whom you apparently had a good relationship, is probably in order.
Q. I have a six-month lease for an apartment in Chicago that expires at the end of July. I do not plan to renew the lease and informed the landlord. The landlord pointed out that the lease says if I am not going to be renewing the lease, I have to give 60 days notice. Because I didn’t, the landlord is saying that I have to pay rent for 60 days after I gave notice, even though that time extends beyond the lease.
Can I be held to that provision, and isn’t 60 days a long time for notice, especially on a six-month lease?
A. From a contractual point of view, it is possible that you could be held responsible for the obligation, but it is unlikely that a judge would enforce that provision.
The fact that the lease had a definite termination date indicates that neither party has an obligation to the other after the date of that lease termination. Having a 60-day notice and rent requirement and requiring the payment of rent for time beyond the expiration conflicts with the termination date. The conflict would probably be construed against the landlord who drafted the lease containing the inherent conflict.
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Questions for Chicago attorney Robert A. Boron may be sent to rabltd@aol.com. Sorry, but he cannot make personal replies.
