Stop paying rent – or fail to meet other requirements of tenancy, such as properly maintaining the property – and you could be evicted. The landlord may have to serve notice on you first and give you time to respond, and you may be able to challenge the eviction in court, but, if you can’t rectify the problem or show that you’re not to blame for it, you’re going to have to move out and find some place else to live.
Fair enough. But suppose you’ve always paid your rent on time and fulfilled all your other obligations as a tenant and find out you’re going to be evicted anyway? Suppose your landlord doesn’t even want to evict you, but he’s being compelled to do so by police officers enforcing a draconian city ordinance that holds you responsible for someone else’s folly?
That doesn’t seem fair at all. But more than 50 municipalities in Illinois have such laws, and Granite City is one of them.
“Under Granite City’s so-called ‘crime-free housing’ ordinance, private landlords are required (on pain of fines or revocation of their rental license) to evict an entire household of tenants if police believe any member – even a house guest – committed a crime,” explains Justin Wilson of the Institute for Justice (IJ). “There is no requirement that the tenants participated in or even knew about the crime.”
That’s exactly what happened to Jessica Barron and Kenny Wylie when a friend of their teenage son, who slept over at their house occasionally, was convicted of burglary.
But Jessica and Kenny – and their landlord, Bill Campbell – are fighting back. Together with IJ, they filed a federal lawsuit challenging the compulsory-eviction ordinance.
“What Granite City is doing is not just wrong, it is plainly unconstitutional,” says IJ attorney Sam Gedge. “The government cannot take away your home – whether you own it or rent it – because of something someone else did somewhere else.”
For Jessica and Kenny’s sake, and for the sake of tenants and landlords everywhere, we hope the suit succeeds.