“Illinois Expiring Eviction Moratorium” – KSN attorney Jessica Ryan discusses the ending of the Illinois eviction moratorium. She reviews what this now means for Landlords and Property Managers along with the steps needed to ensure your eviction case does not get dismissed. Note: The episode is from a webinar recorded on 8/18/2021. (48 mins.)
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Episode Transcription
Nikki: You are listening to the KSN podcast and today we’re talking about the expiring eviction moratorium in Illinois. Welcome to the KSN podcast where you’ll hear from KSN attorneys as they share their experience and insight on legal issues surrounding community associations, collections, property tax appeals, and landlord tenant law. I’m Nikki and today we’re joined by KSN attorney Jessica Ryan. Jessie practices landlord tenant law, as well as condominium, townhome and homeowner association law.
Jessica: My name is Jessie Ryan. I am the head of our landlord tenant department. I have been representing landlords and rental property managers for about 20 years and I work with the Chicago land apartment association and some other organizations nationally and locally to try and kind of stay on top and ahead of the issues coming down the pipeline. As we all know, the last 18 months have been absolutely insane. So, keeping up on everything in the last 18 months has been very, very difficult I know for me, and I can’t imagine being on the front lines at your properties trying to keep up on all the changing regulations. So, today we’re going to go through the different regulations as they apply to the eviction moratorium and hopefully this will provide you some guidance. We’ve had a lot of changes just in the last about six weeks, which were actually positive steps for rental properties. So, hopefully this will get everybody up to date on where we are and you’ll feel better moving forward and moving into the fall.
So, let’s talk about the latest order from Governor Pritzker. So, basically governor Pritzker’s latest order allows evictions against covered and non-covered persons on any basis. So, we will talk about covered and non-covered persons in just a moment. It has to do with that IHDA tenant declaration but it’s really important to understand that while a lot of different types of evictions have been restricted over the last 18 months, you can now proceed with termination notices and filing evictions for non-payment, other lease violations like Airbnbs, smoking partying, excessive noise, all of those issues that have really, really been difficult for other tenants and management to live with over the last 18 months, you can now proceed against as well as holdovers and unauthorized occupants. The door is really open to all evictions against all tenants, as far as serving a termination notice and filing the case. The restriction that’s still in place is the execution of evictions by the sheriff against covered persons. Those people who are still protected from eviction, the sheriff cannot perform evictions against those persons, the governor’s current order expires on August 21st.
So, that’s coming up at the end of this week and we expect a new order from the governor. He’s really been quiet on what his intentions are, no press conferences with hints either way and we’re hoping that he just continues the path that he has sat down or started down in peeling back the layers of restrictions so that as of August 22nd, or at least as of September 1st, the restrictions will be lifted and we’ll be able to proceed on all of our cases and have the sheriff performing evictions regularly.
So, on the next slide we’re going to talk about covered persons and what that term means under the governor’s order. We’re going to talk about the CDC moratorium a little bit later this afternoon in our hour and the definition of a covered person under the CDC moratorium is a little bit different. So, if you are receiving an IDA declaration, the Illinois housing development authority declaration form, which is the Illinois form signed by a tenant, that tenant is most likely a covered person. If you don’t believe that it is truthful, if you don’t believe that the tenant meets the criteria we’re about to talk about, we can challenge the truthfulness of that declaration but I just want you to be aware and think about these criteria are the criteria that make a person a covered person under the governor’s order. So, right now the sheriff cannot evict against covered persons as defined in Illinois and that definition is these four criteria, it includes these four criteria. So, they can’t make more than 99,000 for the calendar year 2020, they have a substantial loss of income or an increase of an out-of-pocket expenses due to COVID 19. So, we’re talking about if they lost their job, their hours were cut, their pay was cut, or they have extensive medical bills that they now have to pay related to COVID 19. So, that’s our COVID related hardship.
The third criteria are that the tenant is making their best efforts to make timely partial payments that are as close to the full payment as possible and that takes into account what the governor’s order calls non-discretionary expenses. So, this one is really hard if we’re going to challenge on this basis because obviously if the tenant hasn’t paid anything at all in 10 months, we can make a pretty strong argument that they have not made their best efforts to make some type of partial payment. Couldn’t they afford $20 a month toward rent and those are the arguments we’re making to the judges. The unknown is what the tenants might present to the court as their non-discretionary expenses. So, if they’re still working, but they’ve taken in an aunt that was sick with COVID and now has some side effects from COVID and this tenant is taking over the medical bills and they’re in the red every month, so that they really can’t afford any payment at all. Obviously, if we’re challenging the declaration and the tenant brings in that type of information to the court, we’re not going to win our challenge and the case would be dismissed. So, that’s the one that’s really a gray area. There’s no bright line there that we’re going to be able to tell you yes, absolutely, the tenant qualifies or does not qualify based on their payment history because we just don’t know what their quote non-discretionary expenses might be.
The last criteria that would make them a covered person in Illinois under the governor’s order is that if they were evicted, they will become homeless or forced to live in some type of shared living setting. So, obviously if you have a case where the leaseholder is living somewhere off site and let a cousin move in and the leaseholder signs this declaration, they don’t qualify because if there’s an eviction against that unit, that lease holder’s not going to become homeless because they already are living offsite. They have another place to live. So, that’s an example that comes up very, very often where they don’t meet the criteria. One last thing that’s really important to point out here is that the tenant has to meet all four of these criteria to be a covered person. The word is stuck in the governor’s order after the third criteria, which means all of these factors must be met for the tenant to meet the criteria and be considered a covered person. Meeting just one or two does not qualify them as a covered person. So really, really important.
We are going to talk about what you have to do with the declaration. So, even though right now we can file against covered or non-covered persons. We still have to personally serve this IDA declaration on the tenant or any occupant of the unit who’s 13 years or older. We’re going to talk about the Supreme court order, I think in our next slide and that’s when we go over the Supreme court order. It explains why we still have to serve this tenant declaration on all tenants. So, after you personally serve the tenant declaration, you have to wait a full five days and on the sixth day, you can start serving your termination notice whether it be your five days, your 10-day, 30-day notice for a holdover on month to month. So, just make sure that you serve the tenant declaration first and you wait the full five days and on the sixth day start serving your termination notice. If you serve it on the fourth day and you send it over to us, we’re going to have to start over with serving that termination notice. I talked a little bit about the submission of an executed declaration. That means if the tenant submits to you a signed declaration, then they are a covered person and all that happens, we can still file against them now. The governor’s order lets us file against them now and it’s that Supreme court order that just puts a few restrictions that we’ll talk about in just a minute, if they are a covered person in Illinois.
Like I said, if you have some evidence and strongly believe that they do not meet one or more of the criteria on the tenant declaration, we can challenge the declaration in court. The Supreme court has outlined a process to do so. We simply bring a motion in the court. We file our case, bring a motion in the court to challenge the declaration and the judge will hear evidence both ways, whether the tenant meets that criteria and then make a decision whether the tenant is in fact a covered person in which case our eviction would be dismissed or if the tenant does not meet the criteria and therefore is not a covered person and then we can proceed with the eviction. So, it is really important. I didn’t realize I have two times on here, the five-day waiting period but I guess I cannot say that enough. You really need to wait a full five days before issuing the termination notice.
All right, we can move on. The FDCPA order. This goes along with the five-day notice. So, the fair debt collection practices act issued– there’s a new amendment to it with an order, a temporary order that requires certain language to be added to any termination notice for nonpayment. So, generally in Illinois and residential property, that’s your five-day notice. Some commercial properties might require a 10 day or a 14-day notice but you really don’t have to worry about that because the FDCPA order is for residential only. So, you would really have to have some kind of lease off the internet that requires seven days or something. This is generally an Illinois for your five-day notice. When you issue a five day notice you have to include a little blurb. Either it can be a separate notification stapled on it or we’ve created a form where you have the five-day notice and then I’ve put the language required at the very bottom of the notice.
So, if you need that form, don’t hesitate to email me and I can send it over to you. This FDCPA order includes very, very steep penalties if we as attorneys file an eviction that’s predicated on a termination notice that doesn’t have this language. So, I can tell you, and it’s not only the landlord who has to pay the penalties, but it’s also our office that has to pay the penalties. So, we are being very, very careful and I’m really trying to get the word out to all of my clients before they’re serving their five-day notices that this form must be used cause if my clients don’t use that form, if you’re using the old five day, notice that doesn’t have this language, we absolutely cannot file this case. You’ll get penalized and our office will get penalized. So very, very important under the FDCPA that you are using the five-day notice when you’re serving your five-day notices on tenants.
All right, here’s the Supreme court order. The reason we still have to serve the IDA tenant declaration and determine whether the tenant is a covered person or a non-covered person is because there is a Supreme court order in effect through August 31st that prohibits the judge from entering any dispositive motions, having any trials, any hearings of substance and entering any judgements against covered persons. Now, that’s through August 31st. Practically, I don’t think this is going to affect most of us. What we have been doing for clients who have served their tenant declaration, waited five days, served their five-day notice and we file the case then after the five-day notice has expired and we file it against a covered person, we are getting those on file now and in the next week, because the governor’s ban wasn’t really lifted till August 1st to file and serve notices against covered persons. So, we’re just starting the five days against covered persons now in August.
So, by the time we get a court date, we should be in September anyway and then you won’t have to worry about the judge refusing to enter an eviction order and forcing us to have another court date. For clients that were really on top of it and served their five-day notices on August 1st and they have already expired and they’ve been turned over to us for eviction, we are actually on those, we set our first court date the first week of September because we don’t want to waste anybody’s money going into court for a date when the judge can’t do anything. So, we knew this order was out there and we knew that we could not get an eviction order until September 1st or after. So, on those cases, we went into September for the first court date and like I said, for most of you who are still serving your five-day notices against covered persons, by the time they expire and we file our cases, we’re going to get dates in September anyway. So, hopefully this Supreme court restriction won’t have that great of an effect on you.
One of the interesting things in the order is that if we have a first court date where we’ve served the tenant in the month of August while the Supreme court orders in effect and the tenant fails to appear, which would generally result in a default eviction order, the Supreme court order says that judges can’t even enter a default order. So, really there’s nothing of substance there because there’s no dispute, there’s no hearing, there’s no challenge of the eviction, but the Supreme court order still says you have to set a second hearing date and give the tenant additional notice to appear in court even before a default judgment can be entered. So, that’s why we’re not wasting time, not wasting clients’ money with additional court appearances, trying to get a court appearance in August against covered persons, we’re just waiting till September because it would be a waste to go to court and spend the money and the time. So, we’re trying to be as efficient as possible without wasting anybody’s money because we know everybody has been hit really, really hard in the last 18 months. So, that’s why we are still serving the tenant declarations.
So, let’s talk about the CDC eviction moratorium. This was big news. I’m sure everybody is aware that the CDC extended the moratorium through October 3rd, 2021. The CDC eviction moratorium prohibits evicting a tenant based on nonpayment of rent if the tenant is a covered person and like I said, there’s a little bit different definition of a covered person under the CDCs order and we’re going to go into detail on that in the next slide or two. The CDC eviction moratorium only applies to residential properties in any location that is in the high or substantial risk category. What does that mean? All that means is the CDC has a map that says who’s in high levels and substantial levels of COVID right now and it gets updated, I think, daily, weekly, so that you can see if you are in a high or substantial risk category. I will tell you if you are listening to this webinar, you are in a high or substantial risk category. 95% of Illinois is in one of those categories. So, there’s really no need to go check that map. We’re in it. We are subject to the CDC eviction moratorium.
There are some entities that are challenging this order. So, the national apartment association has filed suit against CDC regarding the constitutionality and their authority to pass such an order. There is another national organization that has been facilitating small groups in each state to file suit and that organization is working with IRPOA, which is the Illinois rental property owner’s association and they just filed suit at the end of last week against the CDC. I think we’ve got one going in Atlanta. There’s a few out there challenging the CDCs authority. So, we’re watching those very, very carefully and the order may be struck down. We just don’t know at this point but whether they have the authority to do that is really a gray area. So obviously we’re watching that carefully and if it’s struck down, we would let you guys know in one of our client blasts immediately. So, let’s get into some of the details about the CDC eviction moratorium.
So, like I said, the criteria for the CDC tenant declaration are somewhat different than the Illinois tenant declaration. There are some different financial criteria that a tenant must meet. The CDC declaration actually has two columns to determine whether the tenant qualifies and they have to at least check one box in each column. And so first, if they meet one of these, they can move on to the second step. So, either they received a stimulus check in 2020 or 2021, they’re not required to report any income to the IRS in 2020, receiving any of the following benefits, supplemental nutrition assistance, temporary assistance for needy families, supplemental security income, supplemental security disability income and in 2020 or 2021 earned less than 99,000 as an individual or 198 as joint. So, if the tenant meets just one of those financial criteria, then they go over to the next column and they have to meet one of these criteria that the household income has gone down substantially, laid off from work hours or wages have been cut or extraordinary out of pocket medical expenses.
So, if the tenant can check one box in column A, which is those financial and one box in column B, which is the hardship factors, then they qualify to move on. That’s their financial qualification to move on in the declaration. So, they have a lot more options to qualify under the CDC. However, then they have to sign a declaration that says they meet those financial standards that we just talked about, and they have made their best efforts to make timely partial payments as close to full payment as possible. That’s the same as Illinois and the tenant has to swear under oath that they have attempted to get government assistance to help make the rent or housing payments. So, if you have a tenant who has not filled out their portion of the paperwork for rental assistance programs, and they send you a CDC declaration they do not meet those criteria because they have not attempted to get rental assistance and then the last criteria are that if they’re evicted, they could be homeless or forced to live in a shared living setting. So again, the tenant has to meet all of these criteria, the financial criteria, best efforts to make partial payments, apply for government assistance for rent, and if evicted homeless, or a shared living setting.
Let me just tell you too, I’ll go to the second bullet point, the tenant also has to invoke the CDC order by giving the tenant this tenant declaration. There is no duty on the landlord to serve the CDC declaration on the tenant like there is in Illinois. So, in Illinois, we still have to serve that IDA tenant declaration. You do not also have to serve the CDC declaration. That burden is on the tenant to give it to you. What I did want to talk about a little bit in about the CDC declaration is we have the governor’s order in place, which says that the sheriff cannot perform evictions against a covered person, but that’s under the Illinois statute, under the Illinois order. So, if we have someone who’s turned in a CDC declaration, but not the Illinois one, the question becomes, do they meet the criteria? In this case, the answer is yes because the CDC declaration contains all of the Illinoi’s criteria as well as some others. So, the sheriff will be prohibited from performing evictions on tenants who have either submitted the Illinois declaration or the CDC declaration through August 31st, as of now, unless the governor changes his order.
On the flip side, the CDC order prohibits the sheriff from performing evictions against a CDC covered person through October 3rd. So, from that September 1st to October 3rd window, only those people who meet the CDC criteria are protected from eviction. Now, can you imagine us making this argument to the clerk at the Sheriff’s office. It’s going to be an uphill battle to convince them that a tenant who is covered under Illinois and has submitted an Illinois declaration is not protected under the CDC order, because if they’ve only submitted that Illinois declaration, they have not sworn that they have tried to get government assistance. So, the Illinois declaration does not make them a covered person under the CDC order. So, this is going to be an argument. I know this is going to be an argument, and I’m kind of just crossing my fingers that the whole CDC order gets stricken and we don’t have to worry about it comes September 1st, but I know that this will be an issue that the sheriff is not going to want to perform evictions against what they think is a covered person who signed the Illinois declaration, even though that person really, technically is not covered as a covered person under the CDC order.
So, I hope that distinction makes sense. This is an argument we are obviously going to make on behalf of our clients to get some of these evictions going through and pushed forward but I just want to warn you, I want to make sure everybody’s educated on this issue, that it is probably going to be an uphill battle with the sheriff to get them to perform evictions against some of these Illinois covered persons when we are just in that CDC protection window. So, alright. I hope that wasn’t too technical. I just think it’s a really interesting issue and a really interesting distinction and I’m a lawyer, so this kind of stuff makes me excited.
So, alright. Other important thing under the CDC eviction moratorium, there is no prohibition on evicting tenants who engage in criminal activity, threaten the health or safety of other tenants, cause property damage, or are an immediate and significant risk of causing property damage, if they violate a building code, health ordinance or similar regulation, or, and five is our big catchall, if they violate any other lease provision other than payment of rent. So, the CDC eviction moratorium does not apply to any lease violation case. Really, it’s narrow, it only applies to the nonpayment of rent cases. So, you can proceed with 10 days. If we get an eviction order on a lease violation like smoking or unauthorized occupants, Airbnb, something like that and we want the sheriff to perform that eviction between September 1st and October 3rd, that sheriff is required to perform that eviction because that tenant falls within an exception to the CDC eviction moratorium. So really, we’re only looking at non-payment of rent cases for those covered tenants who meet the CDC definition of a covered person. That’s the little narrow category that we have to worry about between September 1st and October 3rd.
All right. Let’s talk about Chicago for those of you with properties in Chicago, we are still dealing with the city of Chicago. COVID eviction protection ordinance, I think the word tenant is in there somewhere too. City of Chicago COVID– tenant COVID protection ordinance. It’s a really, really long name. They should have come up with some nice little acronym for it, but they didn’t but this is an ordinance that actually was entered last summer that is in effect through whatever date is 60 days after governor Pritzker’s last eviction moratorium expires. There really isn’t a definition in the Chicago ordinance as to what is governor Pritzker’s last eviction moratorium. I assume if he says on August 21st when this current order expires that as of September 1st, there’s no restrictions anymore that will start the clock tolling for these 60 days in Chicago. What the ordinance requires is that with your notice of termination of tenancy for nonpayment, which is generally your five days, you must have a special tenant COVID 19 impact notice attached. We have been giving this notice out since last summer. All five days in Chicago have required this special notice attached to your five-day notice since last summer. However, Chicago has issued a new form because there is an amendment to the ordinance that just came out about a month ago.
So, if I have previously given you a Chicago five-day notice form that has the one-page tenant impact notice attached to it, please email me for the updated form. The tenant impact notice is now two pages long and has additional information. You can also find it on Chicago’s website. If you just Google Chicago COVID impact notice it’ll come up right away but just make sure you are serving a five-day notice with the updated form of this impact notice. The amendment to the ordinance only really added one factor and one requirement and that is for landlords who have not applied for rental assistance, they are now required to register with the city within five days of serving a five-day notice. So, there was a landlord initiation period for the IDA rental assistance program. If you did not initiate the rental assistance on behalf of your tenant at that time, or if the tenant initiated it during the tenant initiation period, and you chose not to fill out your portion of the paperwork because really you would just rather have this tenant out for whatever reason it may be and you want to serve a five day notice on that tenant, you can do so, but you have to register with the city that you have served a five day notice without applying for rental assistance.
The ordinance says that the purpose is only so that the city can then advise you as a landlord of all of the different options for rental assistance so that you can try to get some help for this tenant and get some money back on behalf of the tenant. So, it’s a requirement. You have to do it if you are not applying for rental assistance and you have a property in Chicago and you want to serve a five day but I really hope that that list does not get in the hands of tenants’ rights groups, because I think it’s a very scary path to go down for Chicago to have a list like that that could get leaked because there are many, many different reasons that a landlord may choose not to get rental assistance and it is not simply for the evil landlord reasons that landlords have been portrayed as over the last 18 months and I think it would come out and look like it is just that tons of landlords aren’t trying to help their tenants. So, I don’t really agree with this registration, but I do not have a choice. I’m not on the city council and it is my duty to counsel you of what the ordinance says. So just make sure you are following that process if you serve a five day and you have not applied for rental assistance.
So, after you serve your five day notice with the tenant impact notice attached, in that first five days, which is the five day notice period, five days after you serve the notice, if the tenant communicates some type of COVID related hardship, could be by phone, by text, in an email, then you have to wait an additional seven days after the five day notice period to try to negotiate reach out to the tenant and ask them to propose some type of payment terms and it’s really your duty as the landlord, the way the ordinance is written to initiate communications and initiate negotiations for repayment. If the tenant does not respond on the first try, keep trying two or three times during that seven-day negotiation period, because if the tenant doesn’t respond or never proposes any type of repayment terms, and then we file the case, the judge is going to ask, okay, the tenant communicated a COVID hardship, what did you do to try to initiate negotiations? So, my advice is one communication to the tenant probably is not enough to send two or three communications. Haven’t heard from you yet, would you like to propose some repayment terms?
If you do enter into negotiations and some type of repayment options, the ordinance gives recommendations, and I think they are strong recommendations for what the payment plan should look like. They want the repayment over not less than 60 days, so you have to give the tenant at least 60 days to repay the balance unless the tenant proposes that they can pay it off in 30 days, that’s different but if they say they need six months and you say, no, I won’t go longer than 30 days the judge will not look kindly on that if we get to court. Try mediation or binding arbitration to apply the security deposit toward the unpaid rent. An interesting caveat to that later in the ordinance, it says that if the agreement includes applying the security deposit to the unpaid rent, then the tenant waives all rights under the RLTO for security deposit violations. So, that might be a good one. If you know that you forgot to pay interest on the security deposit one year, or didn’t give a security deposit receipt one year when you took the security deposit, if you apply some of the security deposit toward the balance due any violations under the RLTO related to the security deposit are waived so keep that in mind.
Another option or recommendation they give is the option for the tenant to move out in exchange for a partial or full waiver of the rent balance or it says enter into a lawful agreement containing other mutually acceptable terms and conditions. So that is the catch-all for any valid written settlement agreement. It does say that the agreement must be written. The landlord cannot deny an agreement because the repayment relies on third party funding. So, that’s our rental assistance. If the tenant is saying, hey, I’ve been approved, you’re getting a check for 15,000, you cannot deny it and say, no, we’re not waiting for the check. Now, my advice on that is if you have an application pending that has not been approved yet, then the tenant cannot argue that they are getting this money to apply toward repayment because they don’t know. So, you could deny a settlement agreement for repayment. If that application for rental assistance has not yet been approved, but if it’s been approved and you can see on the IDA website that it’s been approved, then you should apply those funds to whatever settlement agreement you come up with.
Another restriction for these settlement agreements is that you cannot have a confidentiality or non-disclosure clause in the agreement. So, because you can’t have that, the tenant can go to every other tenant in the building and tell them the deal they got, which is quite unfortunate, I think but that’s part of the ordinance. So, once you get past this seven-day negotiation period; so, the tenant has communicated COVID hardship in those first five days, either you’ve reached out to the tenant numerous times and they never responded again, or you’ve worked with them for seven days and they keep saying, I can pay $20 a month for the next 15 years, which is obviously absolutely unreasonable and you’re unable to come to a reasonable agreement then we can proceed with eviction after the seven-day negotiation period. So, that would actually be 12 days after you serve the five-day notice. So, we’ve got the first five-day notice period, and then the additional seven-day negotiation period. So, on that 13th day, we could proceed with eviction if you’re unable to work out a payment arrangement.
One thing I did want to talk about really quickly is the rental assistance. I forgot to throw a slide in about it. So, if you have accepted rental assistance from IDA, the landlord’s agreement restricts you from serving a termination notice or filing an eviction through August 31st. So, what IDA is doling out does not always cover the balances. I have a lot of clients with balances in the 20 and $30,000 mark, because it’s been 14 months since the tenant has made a payment. So, obviously the rental assistance that you’re getting from IDA probably won’t cover the entire balance. However, for the remaining balance, you cannot serve a five-day notice or file an eviction until after August 31st. So that’s really important. A question I get a lot is what about a pending application; can we serve a five-day notice on the tenant if the IDA rental assistance application is still pending and technically you can. You have not received the funds, which will bind you under the landlord’s agreement. So, the restriction really is not placed on you until you receive the funds. However, my warning would be if you serve the five-day notice and the tenant talks to IDA and says, hey, I got served with a five-day notice, it’s unclear whether IDA might choose not to approve it believing that the landlord did not comply with the terms of the landlord’s agreement.
In my opinion, and from conversations I’ve had with different IDA officials, I don’t believe that would be the case. I think that you would still be safe if you serve the five-day notice. However, if you file the eviction prior to August 31st on someone whose application is pending and you end up getting the funds, we would have to dismiss the case and you would be out the costs for filing the case and the fees for preparing the lawsuit. And in my opinion, what do we have two weeks left until this restriction is lifted. And so, it just doesn’t make sense to me for clients to spend the money to file suit when an application is pending when you could lose out on that money. So, my recommendation to my clients is hold off. If you’ve got an application pending, serve the tenant declaration. You got to serve the tenant declaration personally. So, you got to make contact with them. That might take a few days, then you have to wait five days after serving the tenant declaration before you can serve the five days. Let’s have a quick conversation. If it’s August 27th when you finally can start serving the five days, I might counsel you to just wait four days so you don’t mess anything up with the rental assistance application because if there’s a chance you can get $15,000 from the rental assistance program, you really don’t want to take any chances messing that up if you can get some money out of it.
So, that’s my few words on the IDA rental assistance, let’s talk about how we tie this all together, all of these different orders out there. It’s very confusing. I just went through all of this for 45 minutes and I can’t see any of you, but I just feel the daring headlights look like, oh my gosh, now, how do we do all of this? So, let’s talk it through, let’s see how it all works together. So, the first thing you’re going to do, if you have a let’s talk about a non-payment case. So, if you have a non-payment case, you’re going to personally serve that IDA declaration, that’s the Illinois tenant declaration. You have to personally hand it to a tenant or an occupant of the unit who’s 13 years or older. After you have personally served that declaration, then you wait five days and on the sixth day, you can start serving the termination notice. That’s going to be your five-day notice for nonpayment. Once you serve that, or possibly even before you serve in that five-day window, you might receive a tenant declaration that’s signed by the tenant, either the IDA one, which is the Illinois one, or the CDC one.
Currently under the orders, we can still proceed. Whether or not the tenant signed that declaration, we can still file a case. So don’t let that stop you anymore. It used to stop the process; it does not stop the process anymore. So even if you receive a signed tenant declaration, you can still start serving the five-day notice on day six. Just make sure your five-day notice has that blurb from the FDCPA and if you’re in Chicago, it has that extra tenant impact notice. Again, have all the forms. If you need something, send me an email. Then you wait for what we call the cure period to expire. So, if you’ve got a five-day notice, you’re waiting for the five days to expire to see if they make payment in full. In Chicago, if they send you some type of communication that they’ve had a COVID related hardship, then you’re required to enter into that seven-day negotiation period. After that five-day notice has expired or after the seven-day negotiation period has expired, then your case is ready to file. That doesn’t seem so bad when we tie it all together there, it doesn’t seem as overwhelming as the last 45 minutes has seemed. And so, we can file the case then.
Generally, like I’m saying, we’re getting our first court dates in September, so that Supreme court restriction on entering eviction orders during the month of August really won’t apply. Real quickly, it’s almost the same process for other types of evictions. So, if you have a conduct eviction, which is some type of lease violation, we’ve got smoking in Airbnbs, unauthorized occupants, things like that, you will have a 10-day notice, which you have to serve. So, now you still have to start with that IDA tenant declaration, personally serve that, wait the five days, and then you serve your termination notice, which is a 10-day notice if it’s a lease violation or it might be a 30-day notice, or even in Chicago a 60 day or 120-day notice of termination if they’re a holdover, if they’re now on a month-to-month lease. For those types of cases, you might have 30, 60, 120-day termination notices.
Again, even in these cases, if they sign the tenant declaration, we are still moving forward and you then wait for the cure period, the 10 days, 30 days, 60 days to expire, no obligation in these cases to negotiate repayment, because you’re not evicting for nonpayment, you’re evicting for their conduct or for their holdover. And as soon as that cure period expires, the 10 days, the 30 days, then we can file the eviction and proceed. So not as bad as you might think. The scariest part, I think, of all of this is just making sure you have the right forms in place and the right time frames to do each step and I’m happy to help everybody through that. I can give you a step-by-step email that you can follow with all of the forms so that you can get going.
Nikki: Please note that this webinar was recorded on August 18th, 2021. That was KSN attorney, Jessica Ryan. She practices landlord tenant law, as well as condominium, townhome and homeowner association law in the city of Chicago and surrounding suburbs. KSN is an experienced legal resource, ready to provide you with quality advice and exceptional service. We look forward to demonstrating how we have earned the trust of thousands of clients over the past 35 years. If you’d like to reach Jessie or anyone of KSN’s experience attorneys, please call 855-537-0500. You can also visit ksnlaw.com and complete the contact form to send us a message. Thanks for listening.
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Please note the material contained on the KSN Podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is established by your review or receipt of the information contained on the KSN Podcast. You should not act on the information discussed on the KSN Podcast without first obtaining legal advice from an attorney duly licensed to practice law in your State. While KSN has made every effort to include up-to-date information on The KSN podcast, the law can change quickly. Accordingly, please understand that information discussed on the podcast may not yet reflect the most recent legal developments. Material is not guaranteed to be correct, complete, or up to date. KSN reserves the right to revise or update the information and statements of law discussed on the podcast at any time, without notice, and disclaims any liability for your use of information or statements of law discussed on the podcast, or the performance of the podcast generally. The KSN Podcast may be considered advertising in some jurisdictions under applicable law/s and/or ethical rules/regulations. © 2021 Kovitz Shifrin Nesbit, A Professional Corporation.