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Volume #103 | Issue #21 | April 15, 2019 | depauliaonline.com
Fire, ice and negligence
XAVIER ORTEGA | THE DEPAULIA
Many DePaul students live in apartments off campus in Chicago’s North Side neighborhoods, getting their first taste of life as an independent. For some, that experience can be a nightmare.
Living off campus can mean contending with faulty heaters, carbon monoxide leaks and bad landlords
L
iving off campus signals a new phase of adulthood for many students. That idyllic Lakeview four-bedroom, fiveroommate unit with “vintage charm” now has your name to add to the lease. It’s as if nothing can go wrong — that is, until something does, serving you, the tenant, with a stark reminder that living off campus can come at a cost. Some DePaul students live in apartments with on-and-off heating, torn-down fences, carbon monoxide leaks and electrical fires, managed by landlords who do not respond quickly or thoroughly. This breakdown in communication can lead to hazardous violations of city ordinances and tenant rights. Twenty-year-old DePaul student Emma Scott had been living in a Lakeview garden unit apartment for a few months with her two roommates when their neighbor reported seeing a man peeking into their property after a storm in October had blown down their fence. “I reached out to my landlord and they said the fence wasn’t on their property line, so I reached out to my neighbors to ask them to fix it,” Scott said. “After receiving proof from my neighbors that the fence was in fact on my landlord’s property line, I reached out to the alderman to get help.” Cagan Management Group, the property group that owns Scott’s building, also maintains
By Meredith Melland, Dylan Van Sickle, Mikayla Rose Price and Maria Barragan Contributing Writers
rentals and condos in Indiana, Louisiana and Florida. They have been involved in at least 33 lawsuits within Cook County in the last 20 years, three of which they initiated, according to circuit court records. Scott’s building fence is supposed to be maintained according to the Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance, or RLTO, which outlines the conditions tenants can expect to be kept up by landlords in Chicago’s municipal code. The RLTO does not apply if the building has less than six units and the owner or landlord lives in it. “Complaints regarding units related to RLTO are handled in within 24 hours typically,” Cagan Management Group representative Monica Kristaly said. During long Chicago winters, a pressing and frequent concern for tenants is inconsistent heating. After this year’s polar vortex, with temperatures plunging to 23 below zero, one DePaul student talked about past problems with heat. “I had to sleep with a hat on and wake up with a cold nose,” DePaul student Jenni Holtz said. The heat would intermittently go out in
Holtz’s former Lincoln Park apartment from November to January last winter. “I would turn the oven on to stay warm,” Holtz said. “Some nights I would crash at a friend’s place. I also got sick a lot.” The city’s Department of Buildings enforces the Chicago Building Code, which dictates city expectations for buildings and property. From Sept. 15 to June 15, the Chicago Heat Ordinance requires the indoor temperature be at least 68 degrees from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m if residents cannot control their own heat within the apartment. Overnight, it must be at least 66 degrees. Holtz’s roommates simultaneously sent text messages to their landlord about the issue, she said. “Our landlord would make it appear to be our fault, though we couldn’t control our heating because it was central heating,” Holtz said. “If she was home, she would come down; if she wasn’t home, she wouldn’t respond. It was never fixed immediately.” The Chicago Heat Ordinance states that landlords can be fined for every day apartment heating drops below the outlined threshold. Holtz said they all knew the heating outages were illegal, but would have done more if they knew they could have taken legal action. “If I knew she could be fined every single day the heat was out, I would have recorded it,” Holtz said.
See LANDLORDS, page 6