In an Evanston City Council meeting marked by prolonged debate, Council members did succeed in reaching enough of a consensus to adopt one key housing initiative: new fines for landlords who violate city code.
After the proposal received preliminary approval at the March 23 council meeting, pending a new amendment suggested by Ald. Jonathan Nieuwsma, 4th, to limit new fines only to acts of retaliation by landlords, Nieuwsma reversed course on Monday, voting alongside five other Council members to adopt the original plan of fines applying to violations for any part of the Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance (RLTO).
“Having given this some more thought and evaluation since our last meeting, I do think it is appropriate that penalties under this ordinance should apply to the entire chapter, and not just to the retaliatory conduct section,” Nieuwsma said at the April 13 meeting.
After approving the amended ordinance back to its original format in a 7-2 vote, council members adopted the new fines of up to $1,000 per violation for offending landlords, voting 6-3, with Ald. Clare Kelly, 1st, Ald. Thomas Suffredin, 6th, and Ald. Matt Rodgers, 8th, voting against.
The new fines will range from $100 up to $1,000 for each offense, including increasing rent, decreasing services or refusing to renew a rental agreement because the tenant has complained about a housing violation in good faith.
Per the new penalties, every day a violation continues may be considered a separate offense, for an additional fine of up to $1,000.
While Section 1-4-1 of Evanston’s city code already includes a general penalty provision for the city to issue fines for violations of any ordinance – with fines ranging from $20 to $750 per day, per violation – that authority hasn’t been traditionally used to enforce Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance violations.
Which is why, supporters of the new fines argue, adding penalty language directly into the ordinance would further clarify municipal policy.
“I think it makes sense to have a minimum fine of $100, rather than $20; I think that’ll act more as a deterrent,” said Jonah Karsh, an organizer from the Metropolitan Tenants Organization.
“The intention behind this ordinance, inspired by the experience of the Quadrel tenants, is that the worst actors are running the gamut, and the most consequential violations are not necessarily retaliation.”
For the past year, Karsh has been providing assistance to the Quadrel Evanston Tenants Union, which represents the tenants of three southeast Evanston properties owned by Quadrel Realty Group, a Chicago-based private equity real estate company.
Quadrel has sparred over the past year with several tenants who claim the company has continued to violate city code by increasing rental fees for services that far exceed what the building is actually paying.
Karsh previously told the Pioneer Press that tenant complaints against Quadrel began last year, when renters from one of their residential properties, located at 929-935 Michigan Avenue, noticed drastic increases in rent after receiving their lease renewal notices.
“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.”
The Quadrel Tenants Union represents the tenants of three of the Quadrel-owned properties in southeast Evanston (the company owns six total rental properties in the city): 929-935 Michigan Avenue, 605-617 Hinman and 910-916 Judson Avenue.
Quadrel Realty Group did not immediately respond to a Pioneer Press request for comment regarding the tenants union or current negotiations underway to resolve these lease renewal discrepancies.
“Probably the thing that frustrated me the most in my time [as a City Council member] so far, was not being able to adequately represent the tenants that are dealing with Quadrel,” said Ald. Shawn Iles, 3rd, who has been the primary driver on introducing new fines into the existing ordinance.
“This is not aimed at one bad actor, but one bad actor has shown us the need for change. The RLTO must be enforceable to be effective, and civil actions are not realistic for most tenants, so the addition of fines provides a powerful path to redress in extreme cases like this,” he added.
But Council members who voted against adopting the fines said that the problem doesn’t lie in having a lack of protection against code violations, but rather, an inability to enforce them.
“We have serious enforcement issues at this city, and by passing this, I’m concerned that we think we’re doing something, but in fact, we’re not,” said Kelly, who ultimately voted against the measure.
“Until we address the very, very serious issues that we’re having with failures to enforce, we’re not going to get anywhere.”
While Kelly said she agreed introducing fines as a solution would be much better than taking these issues into civil court, her main concern was that the fines felt “performative” because the issues of enforcement weren’t being acknowledged.
Rodgers echoed Kelly’s trepidations by arguing that the city should take more explicit actions under code that already exists to protect against ordinance violations.
“Again, it is the enforcement of it, not the rules that are written on the book, that’s the problem,” Rodgers said.
“We’ve run into this with other ordinances as well, where there just aren’t remedies written in place, and we expect residents to just kind of magically go out on their own and become their own attorneys.”
Public supporters of the fines agreed that civil procedures against offending landlords were more expensive and time consuming than introducing higher fees.
While it should still be an option, Katie MacDonald, a member of the Quadrel Tenants Union said during the public comment portion of the meeting, there have to be other ways for Evanston to enforce its laws against “bad actors.”
“For me personally, each time I’ve spoken out publicly against Quadrel, I worry about the consequences,” MacDonald said.
“While retaliation is prohibited under the RLTO, it is very hard to prove, and since landlords don’t have to have a reason for not renewing, they can just easily use this loophole to conceal retaliation.”
“Just cause would help give tenants like me protections,” she concluded.
