There are 2.7 million people in Chicago.
Source: 2018 ACS 1-Year Estimates Data Profiles
There are an average of 23,466 eviction filings each year in Chicago. With rising rents, limited affordable housing supply, and increasing interest in luxury development, there is cause for concern about the instances of eviction in Chicago.
Source: LCBH Eviction Data Portal 
No-fault evictions are commonplace in Chicago​ and have led to housing insecurity, neighborhood instability, and increased displacement and gentrification in many of the city's oldest and established communities.
Source: LCBH Eviction Data Portal 
"When you lose the institutions that cultivate attachment, it makes it a lot easier to pick up and leave."
Northwestern sociology and African American studies Professor Mary Pattillo

A Solution Within Reach 

Just Cause to Evict is a well-tried and tested solution to protecting tenants' right to housing. ​Just Cause for Eviction exists in some form in 11 states and 20 cities, including New Jersey, Massachusetts, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. ​In addition, tens of thousands of Chicago subsidizing housing units have been under Just Cause requirements for decades.
Just Cause requires a landlord to demonstrate one of two reasons for eviction:

1. Tenant fault. Examples include: 

It is a common misconception that landlords are unable to evict "problem tenants" under Just Cause.

2. A reason independent of the tenant.

Examples include:
  • Taking the unit off the market
  • ​Renting to relatives

​The landlord is required pay relocation assistance to the renter when evicting due to an independent reason. If the tenant is at fault, the landlord does not have to pay relocation assistance. 
According to Portland Tenants United, many Portland small landlords have spoken in favor of relocation assistance. They say that landlords agree that stability for renters is a key ingredient to making good tenants. Relocation assistance will give additional stability for tenants, which in turn will benefit landlords, since tenants who feel secure in their homes are more likely to take better care of them. 

​If landlords viewed their tenants as families that fit into a broader community — instead of just ‘a necessary evil’ to profiting off of real estate speculation — then relocation assistance is a common sense solution to a problem that has plagued Portland, and the City of Chicago.