ARO Revised Again

It’s not the disaster it might have been had the Democratic Socialists gotten what they wanted. But the newly revised ARO, which was passed into law by the Chicago City Council on April 21, will make a number of changes that will have the cumulative effect of making new multifamily development more expensive to build.

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Roger Valdez – A National Perspective on Housing Activism

You can’t really blame housing providers in Chicago for feeling like we are uniquely under siege. For years, tenant activists and their political allies have been dreaming up new ways to make our lives more difficult. And, more and more, they have been successful in setting the agenda and scoring political victories at our expense.

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Mike Glasser on WTTW

WTTW airs Mike Glasser and Byron Sigcho-Lopez as they face off on the subject of rent control.

Mike Glasser has seen his role as spokesperson for small property owners grow over the past year. Mike is not only President of RPBG. He is also President of the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance (NBOA), a consortium of neighborhood housing provider groups that have banded together to counter the growing calls from the Democratic Socialists and Progressives at all levels of state and local government to expand regulation of the housing industry.

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Bookkeeping for Small Property Owners

By:

Carl Kettler
CSA and RPBG Director

Bookkeeping and accounting is an important task for any business. Property management is a vertical market served by numerous computer software vendors to make the task of tracking income, expenses, security deposits and depreciation easier. This article is not intended to be a comprehensive review of options, but rather to give a high level view of how a smaller landlord might choose the best option for their needs.

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Legal Challenge to Constitutionality of Eviction Moratorium Fails

Despite making a number of very strong arguments, and despite filing the suit far from Chicago and Cook County, the law firms challenging the constitutionality of Governor Pritzker’s eviction moratorium were told to go back to the Will County Circuit Court for a final ruling on the case.

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Chicago’s Housing Providers Scream “UNCLE!”

By:

Doug Imber
President, Essex Realty Group and RPBG Director

The struggles across our economy have been sadly documented these past 14 months. But rental housing providers have endured not only the economic challenges from the pandemic, but also an onslaught of ill-conceived legislation that is causing a crippling effect on the Chicago metropolitan area’s housing industry. Left on its current course, these policies will have disastrous consequences.

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RoPa Cabana Coming Soon

Tobias Bechloff and Heather Miller just signed a three-year contract with the Park District to operate The Loyola Beach House at 1230 W Greenleaf. The process was neither quick nor easy. But, now that the contract is signed, the couple is working hard to transform the building from its current ramshackle condition into the showplace they both know it can be. They are going to call their new restaurant the Ropa Cabana (short for ROgers PArk). It’s easy to find at the end of Greenleaf, right next to the Loyola Beach Playground.

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Ups and Downs - Spring 2021

By:

Steve Cain
Spring, 2021

Five months into 2021, I think we can all agree that things are looking a lot better for the city, the country and the economy than they did this time a year ago. Of course, there is one big reason for this. After a somewhat rocky start, the COVID-19 vaccination program is progressing across the country. As I write this article, more than 50% of all Americans have now received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. This number continues to rise with every passing day. The expanding vaccination program is having a measurable, beneficial effect on transmissions and hospitalizations. Equally importantly, it is helping people feel more optimistic again about the future.

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RTLO Approved by Cook County Board

Cook County Commissioner, Scott Britton

After months of intense negotiations with tenant advocacy groups and the housing industry, the Cook County Board last month enacted the Residential Tenant and Landlord Ordinance (RTLO), which imposes scores of new regulations affecting the relationship between housing providers and tenants in suburban Cook County. The new ordinance takes effect June 1st and draws its inspiration from Chicago’s Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, which has been in effect since 1986. As the reversal of the terms “Landlord” and “Tenant” suggests, the two ordinances are similar, but not identical.

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“Development for All” Ordinance to be Introduced in City Council

The Fall 2020 Newsletter provided an overview of the Development For All Ordinance, 25th Ward Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez’s road map to “fixing” the current Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO).

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