CHA residents getting rent reprieve until end of month

Chicago Housing Authority tenants will get a reprieve from paying rent through the end of the month, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday, urging private landlords to do the same during the statewide stayat-home order.

The mayor issued her plea when asked two difficult questions: What about laid-off tenants who can’t afford to pay rent due Wednesday? And what more can be done to help landlords who need that money to pay property taxes, mortgages and utilities and don’t want their tenants to become homeless?

“My hope is that we will give each other grace. I understand that landlords have mortgages and they have other bills to pay. But in this time where a lot of renters are really being pressed, I would absolutely urge, if it all possible, to forgo this month’s payment, just to give people a little bit of peace of mind and a cushion in really, really tight financial circumstances,” the mayor said.

Just hours after the mayor’s comments, the Autonomous Tenants Union, a grass-roots housing rights organization based in Albany Park, held a virtual town hall.

Tenants from across the city were able to voice grievances against their landlords who came to collect rents this week.

Most attendees said they had been recently laid off or furloughed from their jobs and were quickly running out of money. Others said their landlords either didn’t address the crisis with them at all or sent them a list of job openings so they could pay the full month’s rent.

“My landlord sent me a job application for Jewel’s,” said Kaylie Engel, a restaurant server who lives in Logan Square and hasn’t worked for the last two weeks. It seemed, she said, that her landlord wasn’t really trying to get any mortgage relief.