CHICAGO—If you receive an eviction notice from the CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) or one of its private management firms, you must know your rights. This could be the deciding factor in whether you remain in your apartment or are thrown onto the street.
The management office can’t just tell you to get out verbally—they have to start by giving you a notice. The notice will tell you that they are terminating your lease within a certain amount of days or that they simply are not going to renew it. Management has been writing these notices with misleading language like, “You are hereby required to surrender possession of said premises to the undersigned on that date,” hoping this will scare you to just move out. Only a court order from a judge can force you to leave. Before they try and take you to court, you have the right to first an informal and then a formal grievance hearing.
As part of the “One Strike” policy, if alleged criminal or drug activity is the reason for the eviction, the CHA will deny requests for grievance hearings. With “One Strike,” no criminal conviction is necessary, just an arrest, even if it is a false arrest and even though as Americans we are all supposed to be “innocent until proven guilty.” This is so systematic that police arrest reports now have boxes indicating public housing—yes or no.
Recently, management tried to evict on the basis of allegation alone, without a police investigation, police report or arrest, and still try and deny the grievance process. Or further, they tried to deny residents the right to be represented in the informal hearings in violation of the Grievance Procedure, manual section XII.C. It reads, “The Head of Household has the right to be represented by counsel or by other persons chosen as the Head of Household’s representative and to have such person make statements on the Head of Household’s behalf.”
If the decision in either one of the grievance hearings is in your favor the eviction ends then and there. If the decision is not in your favor, they still have to take you to court. At this point you need a lawyer. And here lies the problem: CHA residents are too poor to afford a lawyer. So many people are being evicted that legal aid is overwhelmed. In eviction court you do not have the right to be represented by council as in criminal court. You can tell the court you are not ready to stand trial because you are looking for an attorney and they may give you a little more time. However, you do have a constitutional right to a jury trial and if you demand one, it cannot be denied. It will give you much more time to get an attorney.
While it’s good to know the few rights that we still have left, it is now that we must ask ourselves, why are our rights being taken away in the first place? That question shall be addressed in future editions of the People’s Tribune.
