Your Right to Habitable Housing in Illinois

Every residential lease in Illinois, written or oral, carries an implied warranty of habitability: your landlord must keep the unit fit to live in, and while a serious defect goes unrepaired after notice, a court can cut your rent to reflect the unit's lower value. The Illinois Supreme Court created the warranty in Jack Spring, Inc. v. Little (1972) and applied it to all residential leases in Glasoe v. Trinkle (1985). Chicago renters also have the Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance (RLTO), with written-notice remedies on fixed deadlines. Statewide, tenants can also use a repair-and-deduct law capped at $500 or half a month's rent, whichever is less, and suburban Cook County has its own ordinance.

What the warranty requires

The warranty covers oral and written leases of every kind of residential property, whether or not your town has a housing or building code. Where a code applies, as in Chicago, the landlord meets the warranty by substantially complying with it. Like the other basic rights every tenant has, it applies even if your lease says nothing about repairs.

A breach requires a defect serious enough to make the unit unsafe or unsanitary, and so unfit to live in. The landlord does not have to keep the unit in perfect or attractive condition. Courts decide each case on its facts, weighing how serious the defect is, its effect on habitability, how long it lasted, the age of the building, the rent, the area, whether you waived the defect, and whether your own unusual use caused it.

You must tell the landlord about the defect and allow a reasonable time to repair it. If the landlord does not:

• Rent reduction: courts usually reduce the rent by the difference between what the unit would be worth in the promised condition and what it was worth with the defect. The agreed rent is evidence of the first number. If you already paid full rent, you can recover the reduction as damages.
• Defense to eviction: if the landlord sues to evict you for unpaid rent, you can raise the breach, because Jack Spring held it bears directly on how much rent you owe.

Example: rent is $1,200 a month, and a court finds the unit was worth that much as promised but only $700 a month for two months with a broken furnace. You owe $1,400 for those months instead of $2,400, and if you already paid $2,400, you can recover $1,000.

The court, not you, sets the reduced value. If you withhold more than the court later allows, you owe the difference, so keep withheld rent in savings until the dispute ends. Your right to a habitable home explains how the warranty works in other states.

Chicago: RLTO remedies, notice periods, and dollar caps

The RLTO, Chapter 5-12 of the Chicago Municipal Code, covers most Chicago rentals. It does not cover units in owner-occupied buildings with six or fewer units; hotel, motel, and rooming-house units, unless rent is paid monthly and you have lived there more than 32 continuous days; dorms, hospitals, shelters, and employee housing; or owner-occupied co-ops and condos. The remedies in section 5-12-110 below start with a written notice to the landlord. Repair-and-deduct, rent withholding, and the heat-and-utility remedies are not available if you, your family, or your guests caused the problem.

With $1,600 rent, the repair-and-deduct cap is $800, because half the rent is more than $500. With $900 rent, the cap is $500. When a lease ends under the 14-day or 72-hour notice, the landlord must return your prepaid rent, security deposit, and interest.

For a heat or utility failure, send the notice to the address your landlord gave for notices, or by mail to the landlord's last known address if you were never given one. If you use the heat-and-utility remedies for a problem, you cannot also use repair-and-deduct or the 14-day withholding remedy for it. The 24-hour withholding and 72-hour termination options do not apply when the outage comes from the utility company's inability to provide service. For any material violation, you can also sue for damages or a court order (an injunction).

If you sue under the RLTO and win, outside an eviction case, you recover your court costs and reasonable attorney's fees. The ordinance also bars a landlord from raising rent, cutting services, refusing to renew, or threatening or filing an eviction because you complained in good faith to the landlord or a government agency. Requesting repairs in Illinois covers how to write the first request.

State law and suburban Cook County

The Residential Tenants' Right to Repair Act (765 ILCS 742), in effect since January 1, 2005, lets tenants anywhere in Illinois fix small problems and deduct the cost:

1. The repair must be required by your lease or by a law or local code, and its reasonable cost cannot exceed $500 or half a month's rent, whichever is less.
2. Send written notice that you intend to have the repair made at the landlord's expense by registered or certified mail or another restricted delivery service, to the landlord's address on the lease, or to the last known address if none is listed.
3. Wait 14 days, or less in an emergency, meaning a condition that will cause irreparable harm to the unit if not fixed immediately or that poses an immediate threat to health or safety.
4. Hire a tradesperson who is not related to you, holds any license the work requires, and is adequately insured, and have the work done to code.
5. Give the landlord the paid bill, with the contractor's name, address, and phone number if the bill does not show them, then deduct it from rent.

With $1,400 rent, the state cap is $500; with $800 rent, it is $400. You cannot use the Act for a condition that you, your family, or your guests caused through a deliberate or negligent act. You are responsible for any damage the contractor causes, and you lose the Act's remedies if you skip the licensing, insurance, or workmanship requirements. The Act does not cover public housing, condominiums, housing co-ops, owner-occupied buildings with six or fewer units, or mobile homes covered by the Mobile Home Landlord and Tenant Rights Act. How repair and deduct works compares it with other states.

In suburban Cook County, the county's Residential Tenant Landlord Ordinance (RTLO) gives remedies close to Chicago's. Send a written notice that lists the problems and states what you will do if they are not fixed within 14 days after the landlord receives it:

• Withhold rent on the next rent date, in an amount that reflects the unit's reduced value.
• Repair and deduct when the repair costs no more than $500 or half a month's rent, whichever is greater, giving the landlord the paid bill when you deduct.
• End the lease and move out within one month after the 14 days run out or by the end of the next rental period, whichever is later; if you stay past that, your notice is withdrawn.

You can also sue for damages and an injunction. If heat, running or hot water, electricity, gas, or plumbing that the lease requires the landlord to provide fails, written notice makes faster remedies available: after 24 hours, withhold the reduced value, buy the service and deduct it, sue for damages, or move to substitute housing; after 72 hours, end the lease by written notice and move out within 30 days or by the end of the next rental period, whichever is later. None of these remedies applies to a condition you, your family, or a guest caused, and the heat-and-utility remedies do not apply to a utility outage the landlord did not cause.

The RTLO does not apply in towns with their own full landlord-tenant ordinances, which include Evanston, Mount Prospect, and Oak Park; Urbana and DeKalb also have local rules. It also excludes owner-occupied buildings with six or fewer units. A single-family home or condo is exempt only if it is the owner's only rental, the owner or an immediate family member lived there at least one month in the 12 months before it was marketed, and the owner, not a corporation or management company, manages it personally.

Illinois eviction protections covers what happens once a landlord files an eviction case.

Heat rules come from local ordinance

The indoor temperature your landlord must maintain is set by local code. Chicago's Heat Ordinance applies from September 15 to June 1:

• Central heat: at least 68°F from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and at least 66°F from 10:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m.
• One system for both heat and air conditioning ("two-pipe" buildings): the same minimums for most of the season, with a lower 64°F minimum during set transition periods at the start and end of the season.
• Heating equipment inside your unit: it must be able to keep the unit at 68°F in expected Chicago winter weather. The landlord keeps it working, and your lease can make you pay the gas or electric bill.

Chicago fines landlords $500 to $1,000 per day, per violation, for inadequate heat, and you can report low or no heat through 311. Write down indoor temperatures with the date and time before you call. Under the RLTO, a heat failure also qualifies for the 24-hour and 72-hour remedies in the table above.

In suburban Cook County, the RTLO sets the same 68°F and 66°F minimums from September 15 through June 1, and a heat failure qualifies for its 24-hour remedies. Elsewhere, your city or village property maintenance code sets the required temperature. Where no local code sets a number, a lack of heat is judged under the warranty, case by case.