More than 17,000 Chicago renters wound up in eviction court last year according to 2019 court data obtained by the Reader from the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County. The number of cases filed remains on par with city eviction filings since 2016, though the data provided by the clerk excludes sealed eviction cases. Pangea Real Estate remains Chicago’s most prolific filer of eviction cases, as the company has been since 2012.
In response to a request for comment, Pangea’s CEO Pete Martay wrote in an e-mail that as the “largest owner of privately funded market rate apartments in Chicago . . . it is unfortunately unavoidable that our total eviction filings are higher than all of the other large operators.” Martay underscored Pangea’s singularity in providing unsubsidized housing in working-class neighborhoods, though about 20 percent of the company’s units are rented to tenants with Section 8 vouchers.
No-cause evictions often take place in gentrifying neighborhoods, when developers and landlords serve 30-day notices to existing tenants in order to rehab buildings and rent out units at higher prices. “Just cause” eviction laws as they exist elsewhere in the country aren’t just designed to give people more time to move if they’re being evicted simply because the landlord wants them gone. These laws typically make it so that landlords cannot evict tenants unless they have a good reason, such as nonpayment of rent, chronically late rent, lease violations, etc. The Reader asked the mayor’s office to elaborate whether Lightfoot’s proposal would actually establish protections against no-cause evictions or only focus on extending the time people had to move.
