November 13, 2002

BY FRAN SPIELMAN CITY HALL REPORTER

Mayor Daley demanded Tuesday that Housing Court judges get off the bench and out on the street.

He wants them to get a firsthand look at the deplorable living conditions caused by the seemingly endless number of continuances they grant to slum landlords.

"The judges have to leave the bench and go out there. Talk to the tenants and walk in that building. Walk in the basement. Walk through the hallway. Go into the apartment. See these people. Look at the conditions. Then, go out where the slum landlord is living and look at their house. Look at their car. It's totally different," the mayor said.

"We have sanctions against them all the time. But if they keep continuing these cases, the building does get worse and worse and worse because they're basically sucking all the blood out of it. Courts have to come down on slum landlords. . . . You don't keep continuing a case for a year or two years."

Chicago's Roseland neighborhood, in Ald. Anthony Beale's 9th Ward, includes a slumlord building spotlighted by the Chicago Sun-Times on Sunday for a string of unaddressed violations, including having 5 feet of sewage in the basement for months last summer. Beale said he, too, is tired of showing up in Housing Court only to have judges "slap these guys on the wrist and send them on their way."

"I've been to court numerous times on property that is a direct nuisance to my community. These people show up in court. They say they're gonna do something. The judge gives them nine months to do it, and everything stays the same," Beale said. "Meanwhile, the community is suffering because of these properties. I agree with the mayor. Judges need to come out and look at what we're dealing with."

Jacqueline Cox, presiding judge of Housing Court, said judicial field trips are "very rare" for good reason. "It would have to be an inspection that's part of a litigation with all parties present. Everybody would have to go: the clerk, the court reporter, the judge, jurors and lawyers. Otherwise, it would be improper for a judge to go out," Cox said.

She declined to comment on Daley's attempt to force Housing Court judges to wear the jacket for the freeze-the-ball strategy employed by Chicago's worst slumlords.

"It would be improper for a judge to start commenting on whether his observations are valid. Everybody has free speech rights in America except judges," she said.

Sunday, the Sun-Times launched "Why is He a Landlord?" to highlight the dangerous and rampant problem of bad landlords who take the money and run.

They collect rent from tenants in broken-down buildings and put little or nothing back. They shrug off tenant complaints, ignore every warning from city building inspectors and duck the courts, often for years.

The first story highlighted a building at 12025 S. Indiana owned by Frederick Moore.

Daley unleashed his anger against the judiciary's kid gloves treatment of slumlords as Buildings Commissioner John Roberson called for sharply higher fines and building forfeiture to penalize the "small universe of slumlords who wreak havoc on communities."

Forfeiture is a penalty only for those landlords whose buildings are being used as gang and drug houses. The rest face fines ranging from $200 to $500 a day per violation, nowhere near enough of a deterrent, Roberson said.

"We have to institute fines that are so high they force people to think twice before they decide not to be a good property owner," Roberson said.

-- Anonymous, November 13, 2002

Answers

How about limiting the continuances to 30 days? seems to me that if the landlord was going to do something about it they could at least have started within thirty days, and if it isn't finished the contractor doing the work could come in with an update on when it will be completed. this would have to be repeated every thirty days until the job is done and passed by the inspectors.

Also, the inspectors, that's county or city inspectors, should be in court to speak as to the validity of the claims of the landlords and contractors.

No need to raise the cost of the court system. they already have a full docket, no doubt.

stupid mayor.

another thing the judge could do is have all rent be put in an account, an escrow account, until the work is completed. If nothing id done after the first thirty days, the escrow account will be used to hire and pay a firm to do the work, and the cost will be levied against the landlords assets, which should be seized at that time.

If that could be done, that is. Hard to find assets of the landlords, I'm suppose. But, there is the building. the judge could take it away from the landlord and give it to the tenants. Let them do it themselves.

-- Anonymous, November 13, 2002