This story was produced by Injustice Watch, a nonprofit newsroom in Chicago that investigates issues of equity and justice in the Cook County court system. Sign up here to get their weekly newsletter.

By the time three Pilsen tenants began writing letters to their landlord requesting repairs in May 2023, water was dripping from the ceiling of a third-floor hallway even on sunny days. 

“Right outside my unit, there is water leakage from the fourth floor and damage in floorboards due to oversaturation,” wrote Cristina Miranda, one of the tenants, who just months earlier had moved into the four-story building on the southern edge of the trendy Mexican neighborhood. 

“This water leakage is random and independent from rainy weather,” Miranda wrote.

She asked her landlord to immediately address it, along with the other pressing issues she and her neighbors had reported before — a mouse infestation, drafty old windows, and leaks inside some units.

In their letters, the tenants cited the city’s residential landlord-tenant ordinance — a 1980s law regulating leases, offering tenants some protections, and listing their rights, including the withholding of rent.

The organized tenants gave their landlord — Pilsen Rentals LLC — 14 days to make repairs, reminded the landlord the law prohibited retaliation, and calculated how much each issue reduced the value of their unit, checking with their attorney along the way. 

When the 14 days were up in June 2023, each withheld up to 20% of their rent. 

The tenants had help from a nonprofit law firm and a tenant organization, and they were careful to follow every step required under the law. They were well aware of the severe consequences of making a mistake, including possible eviction.

They also reported the issues to city inspectors, who found 18 code violations — from exterior problems that “might admit rain or dampness into the walls” to broken light fixtures, water-damaged walls and ceilings, a rusty porch system and the mouse infestation. The issues were severe enough for the city to impose at least $5,000 in fines, records show.

The landlord for the six-unit building began making some repairs, but the tenants continued to withhold between 5% and 25% of their rent every month for seven months until they were satisfied the majority of the problems were addressed.

In January 2024, the three tenants resumed paying their normal rent, ranging from $1,325 to $1,600.

For Miranda and the two other tenants — Tulsi McDaniels, who lived in a larger apartment next door, and Alex Wirt, who lived upstairs — it seemed like a win. No more mice. No more leaks. No more water damage. But what appeared to be a story of tenants successfully using the city ordinance to secure their right to decent housing soon turned into a yearlong legal battle that would eventually end with each having to leave the homes they had fought so hard to keep.

Within weeks of the final repairs, they learned the landlord was charging them the rent they withheld, plus late fees of up to $65 per month.

In March 2024, the three tenants received notices informing them their monthly rent would increase between 26% and 55%.

The tenants’ attorney from the Law Center for Better Housing, Sam Barth, pushed back on their behalf. Barth demanded the back rent and late fees be removed, arguing the tenants had been lawful and reasonable in light of the landlord’s reluctance to move more quickly to make repairs.

But the landlords didn’t budge. Miranda, McDaniels and Wirt then filed a lawsuit, arguing the rent hikes were “extreme” and “retaliatory,” since the building’s other three tenants received far more modest increases or none at all. As the tenants fought Pilsen Rentals in court over the rent increases, the landlord filed to evict all three.

In the end, after two years of fighting in and out of court — and months of living with leaks and rodents — the three tenants agreed to a confidential out-of-court settlement in April forcing each of them to move out and keep quiet about their long ordeal.

Their protracted legal battle is a stark illustration of how little tenants are able to rely on laws that promised to protect them in Chicago, one of the key findings in the five-part Injustice Watch series “The Tenant Trap,” first published in August 2024.

The investigation found how weakly the landlord-tenant law is enforced by judges, and how common it is for tenants who withhold rent due to lack of repairs to get their leases terminated, receive rent increases, or even get taken to eviction court. As part of the investigation, Injustice Watch profiled tenants who withheld rent — including the three in Pilsen.

None of the three tenants would agree to be interviewed for this report for fear of violating the settlement’s non-disclosure agreements. Their former landlords and their attorneys did not respond to interview requests. But from court hearings and records, Injustice Watch was able to determine some of the key portions of the settlement: the eviction proceedings against Miranda, McDaniels and Wirt were removed from their records, the late fees and withheld rent were waived, and each of the three was forgiven several months’ rent. 

Pilsen Rentals walked away from the litigation without admitting any fault and free to rent the three apartments to new tenants.

“We have yet to see any tenant win a retaliation lawsuit or come out with any kind of recognition of that retaliation,” said Maya Odendahl, a founding member of the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance, an organization that trains and supports tenant unions. 

The alliance was formed from the ashes of a Logan Square tenant union whose members withheld rent, sued for retaliation, and ultimately also settled their case after all tenants had moved out of the building. In both cases, Odendahl said, tenants expressed disappointment at the final outcome of their litigation.

In theory, Odendahl said, the city’s Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, or RLTO, is supposed to protect tenants. But as Injustice Watch exposed in “The Tenant Trap,” the reality is falling short, and property rights of landlords are put above the rights of tenants.

These kinds of retaliation cases are difficult to quantify with court data, but tenants’ rights attorneys said such lawsuits are rare. Some said they’ve never litigated such a case. Another with three decades of experience could recall litigating only three such lawsuits. Barth, the attorney representing the Pilsen tenants, said he has litigated two in the last two years.

Few tenants sue, because of the expense of hiring an attorney and the limited number of lawyers willing to take these cases pro bono, the attorneys said. Also, renters often seek legal help when it’s too late and they are already facing eviction.

Had the three Pilsen tenants continued to fight their case and lost, they would have faced paying thousands of dollars to their landlord. In the eviction proceedings, the landlord asked judges to order the tenants to pay the withheld rent plus fees, damages accruing at double their rent per month, and court charges. A rough estimate of those costs amounts to more than $20,000 each, Injustice Watch found.

“Sometimes just being able to walk away debt-free with no record of an eviction is the best outcome,” Barth said in an interview. “And it’s the best outcome for both sides, because the landlord wants this tenant out of their hair.”

As Barth and the tenants found out, those who do sue enter a dizzying legal system where seemingly commonsense arguments aren’t enough to win a case or even small battles along the way. Ultimately, the tenants’ demands were simple: They wanted their landlord to maintain the property. But if this case is any guide, despite protections in the law, tenants who assert their rights risk losing their home.

The Pilsen tenants were also daunted by judges’ decisions that left Barth confused, at times frustrated. For instance, his request to stop the landlord’s three “retaliatory” eviction cases until the tenants’ lawsuit was decided was denied by Judge Allen P. Walker.

Then Barth asked Judge Kathy M. Flanagan to consolidate all four cases under one judge who could understand the context of the whole case. Also, the eviction cases were moving more quickly than the tenants’ lawsuit.

Flanagan denied the request in late 2024, but in a later court hearing appeared to question her own ruling.

“What was argued to me on December 18, 2024?” Flanagan said from the bench, adding that she usually grants consolidation requests. “What was my reason?” Ultimately, she denied the request again.

These aren’t the only lawsuits tenants bring against their landlords.

Some have also filed class-action suits for unsafe conditions. Others have attempted to become parties in city lawsuits against their landlords for their failure to keep buildings up to code. In those cases, tenants also face uphill battles. Class-action plaintiffs have to convince judges the tangled web of limited liability companies that on paper own their buildings are connected. Meanwhile, tenants hoping to join city lawsuits are likely to land before Judge Leonard Murray, the supervisor of the housing court section, who doesn’t believe tenants have a right to formally become parties in those cases.

Once outspoken, tenants are silenced

The Pilsen tenants were suing Pilsen Rentals LLC, the limited liability corporation that on paper owns the building on the corner of Damen Avenue and Cermak Road. It’s the section of the neighborhood that’s closer to the industrial corridor than to the art galleries and murals that made it popular, though as Pilsen has gentrified, this part has also become attractive to renters and investors alike.

Pilsen Rentals is one of dozens of companies co-managed by Paul Tsakiris, the founder of First Western Properties, a real estate firm with a vast residential portfolio in Pilsen and Little Village. The lawsuit also named First Western, but because of the strong legal protections shielding the humans behind corporations, Tsakiris was not named in the litigation. 

In court records, the landlords defended the rent increases and accused the tenants of acting in bad faith by withholding rent for issues that didn’t impact them directly. For example, the landlords, through their attorneys, wrote that the leak only affected tenants on the third floor and the mouse infestation was contained to one unit where they claimed the tenant was to blame because of her lack of cleanliness.

“The court may take judicial notice of the fact that mice generally thrive in indoor areas where food is available, particularly in areas that are not kept clean,” the landlords wrote.

Even though the tenants have been silenced by their settlement, their fight has been well publicized. 

The day Miranda, McDaniels and Wirt filed their lawsuit, they held a news conference outside the offices of First Western Properties in the West Loop. With TV cameras rolling, the tenants and their allies chanted about tenants’ rights and called out their landlord for retaliating against them. 

“Why do we have to beg them to do what’s their responsibility as owners?” Miranda said in Spanish. “My neighbors and I started this struggle so we can have homes with dignity and security.”

“We have done everything by the book, according to the RLTO, and we are still faced with retaliatory rent increases,” McDaniels said. “Shame!”

“My first five years of living in the apartment, there was no tenant union,” Wirt said. “I dealt with frozen pipes almost every winter. The apartment couldn’t maintain heat without an electric heater.”

While the landlord addressed some issues, he said, the situation improved significantly after he and his neighbors started organizing. “There’s been a drastic change in their repairs and response time,” Wirt said. “That’s because we pressured them with withholding rent through the RLTO.” 

Their alderman, Byron Sigcho-Lopez, the chair of City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate, took the megaphone at the end of the rally and spoke about his support for the three tenants and the need for more tenant protections to end the “unethical practices of companies like First Western.”

Immediately after the news conference, Miranda received a notice her lease would not be renewed and she was expected to be out by July of last year. McDaniels’ and Wirt’s letters followed, informing them their leases would end two months later.

The three Pilsen tenants didn’t start out wanting to fight their landlord. Miranda was a lab technician who had moved to Chicago for a job. McDaniels was a server, though through her experiences, she became a tenant organizer with the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, the advocacy group that advised them early on and pushed for the landlord-tenant law in the 1980s. Wirt was an insurance underwriter who loved his neighborhood and his apartment but was upset at what he said were abysmal conditions in his home. 

In an interview last year, Miranda, McDaniels and Wirt said they felt part of a growing tenant movement. They realized they were eventually going to have to move, and it seemed unfair to them that complaining about conditions led to people losing their home. Their experience, they said at the time, had helped them understand where tenant protections were failing. And it had inspired them to help others who were going through similar experiences.

Asked about what continued to drive them, even when facing evictions, Wirt said then, “We don’t think landlords should be able to get away with this stuff.”

Mitra Nourbakhsh, Kelly Garcia, and Maya Dukmasova contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on Injustice Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.