A North Side alderman wants to give renters who are struggling because of fallout from the coronavirus a year to pay back rent.
Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, said he will introduce an ordinance to the City Council this week that would provide renters who have lost income due to COVID-19 and who are unable to pay rent during the stay-at-home order with up to 12 months to pay that rent.
The ordinance also would allow renters to prevent landlords and prospective tenants from entering their homes without prior consent, in order to minimize the spread of COVID-19, Martin said in a news release.
It’s unclear whether such city-enforced rent forbearance would be legal. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has in recent weeks said other rent-reduction proposals would require state action to do away with a statewide prohibition on rent control.
Martin also wants to pass a nonbinding resolution calling on Gov. J.B. Pritzker to help secure a commitment from mortgage lenders to offer at least 90 days of mortgage forbearance to borrowers who have lost income due to COVID-19. The resolution further calls upon these lenders to waive or refund mortgage-related late fees, as well as to forgo reporting the occurrence of late payments to credit reporting agencies, Martin said.
At an unrelated news conference, Lightfoot said that the issue was “a challenge for a lot of folks” because some landlords rely on rental income to generate the money needed to pay their mortgages.
“This is a complicated problem because it’s the renters to be sure are hit, but so are the landlords,” Lightfoot said. “The landlords are struggling to meet their mortgages. Ultimately, where we need to be is to have the banks that hold these mortgages provide some kind of relief all the way down the line. So, you can’t just solve one part of the problem and ignore the other pieces of it.”
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