opinion the violence of displacement continues through illegal lockouts and invisible evictions

Even amidst a statewide pandemic and eviction moratorium, people throughout Chicago continue to be forced from their homes.

BY BOBBY VANECKO

In a time of economic and public health crisis, when additional tenant protections are desperately needed, it is incredibly frustrating that one of the most essential tenant laws continues to go unenforced. Anti-eviction advocates hope that increased public awareness and pressure around illegal lockouts will force the city’s lawmakers to enforce its municipal code.

In a June interview with the Tribune, Obama CBA Coalition organizing member Ebonée Green discussed how the fight against the “violence of displacement” parallels the fight against police violence, and how both are an integral part of the Movement for Black Lives. In an interview with the Weekly, Javier Ruiz of the Metropolitan Tenants Organization elaborated. In terms of evictions, said Ruiz, the violence of displacement comes in three main forms: standard evictions through the court system, “invisible evictions,” where landlords serve thirty-day notices to force month-to-month tenants out without using the courts, and “illegal lockouts,” in which landlords remove tenants by changing the locks, shutting off utilities, throwing out personal property, or other forceful methods.

Governor Pritzker recently extended the state of Illinois’ moratorium on evictions through August 22, but landlords are challenging it in court. Nevertheless, illegal lockouts continue—Ruiz said that throughout the pandemic, MTO has constantly been getting calls from tenants who were subjected to such tactics. As MTO reported to the Sun Times, from mid-March to mid-June, the organization has received roughly double the normal monthly averages for calls about illegal lockouts. In addition, invisible evictions have continued during the pandemic, and as the Weekly reported in June, even for government-subsidized tenants who were supposed to be protected under the federal CARES Act.

While the legality of invisible evictions has been defended by landlord advocates like Richard Magnone, an attorney whose firm runs the blog ChicagoEviction.com, there is no question that lockouts are illegal. Chicago municipal code § 5-12-160 provides, “It is unlawful for any landlord or any person acting at his direction knowingly to oust or dispossess or threaten or attempt to oust or dispossess any tenant from a dwelling unit without authority of law,” by changing locks, interfering with utilities, removing property, using force, etc. The municipal code tasks the Chicago Police Department with investigating calls about illegal lockouts, and if landlords are found

ILLUSTRATION BY GABY FEBLAND

to have violated the code they are subject to fines ranging from $200-$500 for each day that the tenant is locked out, and possibly even arrest, according to Ruiz.

However, he and MTO’s clients have found that the police have been enabling landlords to conduct lockouts by failing to take action against landlords who violate the municipal code. Ruiz said that police typically don’t take these violations seriously because they are technically a civil matter, which raises the question of why the police are tasked with enforcing this code, and many other civil and criminal matters, in the first place. Demonstrating their true role in upholding whiteness as property, in the words of University of California Los Angeles School of Law Professor Cheryl I. Harris, the CPD had no problem with making an arrest when it came to protestors who were occupying the space outside the Daley Center to demand the cancellation of rent and a stop to all evictions for the duration of the pandemic on August 17.

Ruiz also said that increased public awareness is essential because many tenants just assume that landlords are within their property rights to conduct lockouts and invisible evictions. He said that, “People think, when they get the thirty-day notice, that they are being kicked out the thirtyfirst day,” no matter what, and that most people aren’t aware that the landlord can’t evict them without going through the entire court process. Further, most people do not have the resources to hire an attorney, or they are not aware of the free legal aid that is available.