Is there a place, or several, where I can report a bad landlord? Thankfully I'm almost done with this guy and never have to worry about him again, but his latest actions have pissed me off to no end. I'm exploring my options for him violating my lease, but in the meantime I'd like to make sure I report this guy to any and all tenant's rights groups and organizations. Does anyone know a good place to start? I had to put up with this sleazy guy and I'd really like to warn people away from him.

http://www.tenant.org/default.asp


If not here, they may know where to post.

I'd call em at the least.

not quite hip to that one rudy....explain por favor?

You don't recognize Pam Zekman & Dave Savini from CBS(sp)?

They usually chase city workers thru back alleys when they're caught screwing around.
She's always been the city's unofficial nutcracker of sorts. Not sure what they'd do fer slum lords but hey give it a shot.

What exactly did the landlord do Alks? Screw you on the deposit or is it much more sinister?

pam zekman chased my parents old neighbor to his car one day about 2 years back. he has since moved out. he was a city worker. my mom saw the whole thing and said it was awesome. she didn't like him so much because he kept a sanford and son looking truck full of junk parked in front of our house for a few months and never moved it.

gimmick = on the ball

Well I don't have the time and/or patience now to give you a full rundown of the laundry list of complaints I have against the guy, so I'll just give you the proverbial straw that broke a back yeterday. He had a cleaning company come into my apartment while I was at work yesterday (with no prior notice) that proceeded to "clean" so much that they threw away groceries out of the fridge and out of my cabinets.

Ah I miss Pam Zekman. Watching her chase down city workers that were getting disability while playing 18 holes of golf or restaurant owners that failed health inspections and had rats in the kitchen was always a good time. My brother works for the city and I always tell him to watch himself or else he'll end the subject of a Pam Zekman special report.

wow

holy shit! yeah, that might be worth reporting.

my gf and i used to live in an aprt. managed by ICM in lincoln park. again, the laundry list of compaints was too lengthy to go into, but it REALLY pissed me off when we didn't have heat (in the middle of jan. 05) on a sunday afternoon and no one called us back until monday afternoon. the stay in the red roof inn on ontario was fun, though

That might be burglary.


After you move out you could go back and smear epoxy on his door jambs and door locks. Climb on the roof and dump a bag of fast setting concrete down the vent stack.

Clearly something is f'd up. A few questions upfront. Are you in fact still living in the unit? Minus, the grocery loss and all. This does appear to be breaking some clear rules if he's got some cleaning crew coming in there if you still reside in the place. Especially if the landlord gave no prior notice! At this point you could certainly argue for some financial loss given that they threw items away. You should make a list and try to come up with a sum in question. Were any other items disturbed? Is your deposit substantial? Has he come into your unit prior to this? Have you been denied ammenities or repairs in the past? If so, he's a scumbag and you should certainly report his ass to the city. If you have access to various locations in the building. Bring an inspector in and make his life a living hell. Sounds like he deserves it.

I'm admittedly confused about the cleaning crew. I know various places will want to throw on a fresh coat of paint or wash the rugs if its wall to wall but I've not heard of somebody trying to pull this off if their are people still residing there cause that just opens him up for lawsuits. Personal property damages, theft, etc.

I'm interested in hearing the rest of this so elaborate when you get a chance.

I don't have tons of spare time to go into all the grisly details, but I'll try to answer some of your questions. I am still living in the unit, my lease doesn't expire until May 31. I am actually moving into a new place with my girlfriend in a couple weeks though, but as of right now I am still fully living in the unit. The only notice he gave me was leaving a voicemail on my cellphone about the cleaning, roughly two hours before they came in - a voicemail that I didn't even get to hear until 6 that night well after everything had happened. My lease states that in a non-emergency situation he has to give me two days prior notice. I did send him a list of items removed, but to be honest it was pretty unsubstantial - some leftover food and a few cans of pop and a quarter of a case of beer. Obviously I'm more pissed about the idea of him removing ANYTHING from my apartment without permission, even if it was fairly insubstantial. My deposit is the fairly standard (at least of late) month and a half. No he has never before came in without permission. As far as other problems with him, here's a brief list:

- Substantial leaks in the main entry hall since I moved in 10 and a half months ago, never been fixed.

- When I signed the lease he said that the building was controlled by one heating system and we would only have to pay him a pre-determined monthly cost for the heating in the winter (capped amount, specified in lease). However, once the reports of an expensive heating winter started coming up, he decided to take out his heating system and install ones for each apartment since he knew he was going to get fucked by the amount he had in the lease. So he came in and ripped out all the radiators in my apartment, replacing them with the standard heat registers of a forced air system. But he did NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, to repair the damage from where these units were removed. There is still a six foot by fourteen inch hole in the middle of my living room from where that radiator was removed.

- Everytime a maintenance guy or cleaning crew comes in, I get home to find the main building doors completely unlocked or secured in any way.

- When I've comlained to him in the past about anything, he responds in a very rude and condescending manner in which he pushes all the blame off himself.

Anyway, just thought I'd fill you in a bit. I've relayed this information to a couple of lawyer friends and sent it in to the Tenants Rights Organization linked above. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure this guy gets outed as a bad, bad, bad landlord.

Epoxy on the door handles is all well and good, but even more fun would be suing him under the Chicago Tenant-Landlord. Most of the violations provide for an award of attorneys fees; and some of them provide ridiculous damages. For example, if a landlord doesn't treat your security deposit in a proper manner, the tenant may be entitled to double the safety deposit plus attorneys fees.

I've seen cases where a landlord fucked up a $50 yearly interest payment, and the tenant got a judgment or settlement in the range of $4,000. Of course the converse if that the landlord will sometime countersue for "damages" done to the property while you occupied it, but there's lots of attorneys that will take these tenant cases on a 1/3 contingency fee. You may want to look into it.

Wow, this dude sounds fucked-up. Even in some of the gross places I've lived I never had to deal with a landlord this bad.

Thing is, this dude just looks at every as dollar signs and not people. His standard M.O. is this - gets a cleaning service to come and clean the place really good just before he shows it at whatever their cheap hourly rate is and then ignores it until the lease is up and its time to show it again. Never fixes anything, except in the case of the heaters, in which he realized he was going ot get screwed. Best part? He writes it into the lease so that the previous tenant pays for the cleaning service to prepare it for the next guy. For example, per my lease (which I'm kicking myself now for this part), I have to pay a certain fee for cleaning upon vacating the premises. At the time I signed my lease he explained it as a way to not have to clean the place thoroughly myself and still get my full deposit back, sounded good at the time. Sweet deal for him, huh?

I bring this question to wiser minds.

My friend's sister was recently told to either turn off her fans/heating when she's not in her apartment or her rent will be raised (5 months before the expiration of the lease) by the landlady. The owner also came into the apartment with some type of maintenance workers (for the furnace, I believe) while the girl wasn't there and giving only a half hour's notice, and she's done this before without any notice at all.

Is this a case for the tenants' association or is it dependent on what's on the lease?



Alky isn't obliged to give an epilogue, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested.

Raising rent in retaliation is illegal. That should be reported straight off. Of course, it's a "he-said, she-said", so nobody's really going to listen. If the landlady wants to raise the rent for any other reason, then she needs to write a new lease.

I don't know about the notice issue. She should check her lease for that.

You can also "Yelp" the dude -- I know that I've been using Yelp as a resource for checking out management companies / landlords (they all seem pretty evil ... I guess it's a matter of picking the lesser one). Anyway, it's nice to give a heads up to other people.

landlords pretty much HAVE to, by law, give 24 hours notice if they are going to be at your apartment, or get your direct approval.

there are lots of little things landlords should do and dont. contact teh tenants union, def.

Thanks for the info. I will advise.