The NYT article is title is “Lori Lightfoot, mayor of Chicago, on who’s hurt by defunding police.” But it has a lot to do with rentals from what I perceive as a very liberal politician’s view.
I would take the Chicago Housing Solidarity Pledge as it is what my company is already trying to do.
From the NYT’s article interview with the Chicago Mayor:
As a result of what we’ve all been going through, a lot of us, I think, have been reconsidering some of the fundamental assumptions we had about our government and economic system. Have you? Are you thinking differently now about things like rent control? [6]
When I think about rent, I think about it in the context of the entire ecosystem. The problem is mortgages that have to be paid and the banks that hold those mortgages and whether they’re going to give any forbearance. I think about landlords who are under pressure to pay their mortgage, their utilities, their property taxes. I think about renters and how stressed they are, worrying about being able to pay but also about possible evictions and what impact that is going to have on their credit rating. So the way I think about public policy is not individual levers and solutions in isolation. I try to look for the balance. Many times, there’s a solution lurking in the center.
So where might there be a solution for helping people who are struggling to pay rent because the economy cratered?
One thing that we did here is we brought together banks, landlords and people representing renters into what we called a solidarity pledge.[7] It’s voluntary; it’s not mandatory. But we put a lot of emphasis on saying: “Be good neighbors. Give each other grace and space in this difficult time.” That means not filing evictions. Not penalizing people because they can’t pay their mortgages or their rent. Be engaged in conversation to find common ground. We heard from all the actors that they were engaged in a lot of these conversations already. But by me, as mayor, publicly challenging them, it moved a conversation that was in the backroom to a more public reckoning.
Don’t you think that a voluntary “solidarity pledge” could just give landlords the cover of paying lip service?
You’re underestimating the level of activism here in Chicago. Any instance in which people feel there’s been a deviation, they are not hesitating to call it out. But of course, not everybody’s taking the pledge.
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6 Rent control has been banned in Illinois since 1997.
7 In addition to the solidarity pledge, Lightfoot recently proposed a prohibition on landlords’ eviction of a tenant without first allowing the tenant five days to deliver a “notice of Covid-19 impact” outlining financial hardship brought on by the pandemic. Delivery of the notice would then earn tenants an additional week for negotiation.