What began as a standoff between tenants and their landlord is now prompting action at Evanston City Hall.
Following a dispute between Quadrel Realty Group, a Chicago-based private equity real estate company and several unionized southeast Evanston tenants, City Council is moving to toughen penalties for landlords who run afoul of tenant protection laws.
Council members at the March 23 meeting may have disagreed over whether new fines in the city’s Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance (RLTO) are necessary, but ultimately concurred that current rental laws needed to be better upheld.
Regardless, a unanimous vote to add new fines ranging from $100 to $1,000 per violation, per day, was advanced by the City Council. The ordinance will be presented for final adoption on April 13.
“I want to be clear, I put forward this ordinance not as a change for one bad actor, but one bad actor has shown us that there’s a need for change,” said Ald. Shawn Iles, 3rd, who moved to suspend City Council rules and adopt the ordinance on the night of introduction, a motion that failed to pass.
“The ordinance is not worth the paper it’s printed on if we can’t or won’t enforce it. Civil actions is the current remedy, but it’s not realistically available to most tenants, and I sincerely hope that the city never collects a single fine,” Iles said.
“Enforcement should be discretionary. I expect the city to go after egregious, flagrant repeat offenders, not first-time offenders, and not small landlords.”
Section 1-4-1 of Evanston’s city code currently includes a general penalty provision, which allows the city to issue fines for violations of any ordinance, including the Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance, with fines imposed between $20 to $750 per day, per violation.
But that authority has not been used to enforce against offending landlords in the past, which is why adding fines directly into the ordinance, rather than just the general penalty provision, would work to “clarify and to make clear what the city’s policy is on this,” said Jonah Karsh, an organizer from the Metropolitan Tenants Organization.
Over the past year, Karsh has been providing support to the Quadrel Evanston Tenants Union, which represents the tenants of three southeast Evanston properties owned by Quadrel Realty Group.
Karsh told the Pioneer Press that tenant complaints against Quadrel began last March when renters from one of their residential properties, located at 929-935 Michigan Avenue, noticed a drastic increase in rent following their lease renewal offer.
“For the third year in a row, the cost per month was going up [by] 300 bucks, 400 bucks, 500 bucks. People were seeing $1,000 increases over the course of three years,” Karsh said.
“As we dug under the hood a little bit, we noticed that a huge amount of the increase was attributed to fees, and in Evanston, as of Jan. 1, 2025, there’s a law that says that a fee that a landlord charges cannot exceed the reasonable cost of the associated expense.”
Karsh said tenants were noticing “mandatory charges” added to their rent for services like internet that far exceeded what those services were actually costing the building.
Tenants from 929-935 Michigan Avenue reached out to additional Quadrel building tenants in the area (the company owns six rental properties in Evanston) and formed the Quadrel Evanston Tenants Union, which represents the tenants of three of the Quadrel-owned properties in southeast Evanston: 929-935 Michigan Avenue, 605-617 Hinman and 910-916 Judson Avenue.
Karsh said negotiations are currently underway between Quadrel and the union to resolve lease renewal discrepancies, but have been stalled in recent weeks following a delay in responses from the real estate group.
“People were being asked to sign leases with a whole bunch of illegal provisions in them on deadline, and so, we said to the city, ‘can you help us out here? That was what spurred the fines,” he said.
Karsh added that Quadrel did agree to pause some of their lease renewal deadlines and make contract revisions based on community feedback provided to them, but “that was two Tuesdays ago now, so it’s been over two weeks since we had that conversation with them.”
Quadrel Realty Group did not respond to a Pioneer Press request for comment.
“Almost half of Evanston residents are renters and except for securing their own legal counsel, they have no recourse against illegal landlord retaliation, nor does the city,” said Kristen White, a 23-year Evanston resident and renter living in the 2nd Ward, to Council members at the Monday, March 23 meeting.
“The financial penalties presented in the ordinance are reasonable and will incentivize increased housing stability for your constituents,” White added. “Do the right things and stand for the interests of renters, which for almost half of Council is the majority of your voters.”
But several Council members expressed the need for more stakeholder feedback before reaching a decision, in addition to clarity around which sections of city code the penalties would directly apply to.
“What I think we want to do is address the retaliatory conduct; I think it’s appropriate to, at least for now, target the penalties directly towards that behavior,” said Ald. Jonathan Nieuwsma, 4th.
“’I’m all in favor of going after Quadrel, but I want to make sure we’re not doing anything contrary to the smaller moms and pops,” Nieuwsma added, suggesting an amendment to the ordinance.
“But if a small landlord is engaging in retaliatory conduct, I don’t think that is any less unacceptable.”
Council members later voted 5-4 on Nieuwsma’s amended proposal to apply the new fines only on acts of retaliation, rather than any violation of the Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance.
“I want to make sure that anything that we’re doing, we are doing correctly,” said Ald. Matt Rodgers, 8th, following Council members’ vote.
“I do think it’s something we do need to look into, but we need to do it in a measured approach, so that we make sure that we are accomplishing what we want to accomplish, and that it is being fair for all parties involved.”
Following the amendment, the penalty ordinance passed unanimously for introduction. It is expected to go back in front of the City Council on April 13 for a final vote.
In a statement to the Pioneer Press, Quadrel Evanston Tenants Union said, “North Park Ventures and its property management arm Quadrel Realty Group have been flagrantly violating Evanston’s RLTO and making only minimal efforts to come into compliance.”
“The Union supports any effort on the part of the City of Evanston to pursue fines against North Park for RLTO violations, whether by using existing authorities or creating new ones,” the statement continued. “What matters is that there be a fine mechanism to hold landlords accountable for all violations of the RLTO, not just retaliation.”
