More than 1,000 Chicago Housing Authority residents who are behind on rent have not paid for an average of nearly two years.
CHA’s Office of the Inspector General report from the last quarter of 2024 found that as of March 1, 2024, CHA was owed more than $10.4 million dollars in rent by these 1,394 residents and was failing to enforce its lease agreements with them.
CHA is the third largest public housing authority in the country, serving more than 65,000 households, and it also is the largest single owner of rental housing in the city with more than 21,000 public housing units. The agency has a 2025 budget of $1.3 billion.
The OIG advisory comes as the agency is managing senior staff turnover, including in its general counsel position, and is searching for a permanent replacement for former CEO Tracey Scott.
CHA spokesperson Matthew Aguilar said in a statement to the Tribune that the rent arrears and lack of lease enforcement are “partially due to the COVID pandemic” when there were federal and state eviction moratoria on nonpayment of rent evictions. Once courts began hearing eviction cases again, CHA started addressing its backlog of cases and has seen its eviction cases double over the past year, the agency said.
As of February 2024, the OIG report said that CHA had 124 pending eviction cases for nonpayment of rent. About a year later, CHA said this number is 253.
The agency said it has “adequate reserves” and has used them to cover past-due rents prior to collecting federal emergency rental assistance dollars doled out by the city. CHA said it partnered with the Chicago Department of Housing to make $9 million in rental assistance available for eligible households during the pandemic.
The OIG found that CHA has no centralized database accessible to both its legal team and its private property managers to track lease enforcement, eviction actions and payment plan discussions with residents.
“This lack of coordination negatively impacts CHA’s tracking and enforcement of rent payments and can interfere with the accuracy of tenant ledgers,” the OIG wrote.
CHA resident and board member Francine Washington brought up CHA’s lease enforcement issues at the January 2025 board meeting, citing tenant problems related to nonpayment and bad behavior such as drug dealing.
“The law department has sucked in the last four years,” Washington said. “We are not all bad residents, but we have some bad residents out there. We need to start the process of getting rid of them to send a statement. Is there anyone to deal with that?”
Aguilar said CHA has three attorneys who oversee all eviction cases. The agency has hired five new attorneys since April 2024, Aguilar said, and they will assist with eviction litigation in addition to legal matters related to the agency’s primary housing voucher program, said Elizabeth Silas, acting general counsel, during CHA’s January board meeting. Silas said, in response to Washington’s comments at the meeting, that two more positions are posted to handle “policy matters” and to assist with “the backlog” of eviction issues.
The OIG recommended that CHA’s housing portfolio managers regularly review tenant accounts for individuals who are delinquent on their rent payments and for the agency to check in with its private property managers to ensure they are following CHA procedures. CHA should also use its property management software to report and track any eviction- or lease-related actions, the OIG said.
Aguilar said CHA agrees with the OIG’s recommendations and is moving forward with the action items such as checking in with property managers and implementing “enhanced software to better monitor and address” nonpayment cases.
“Residents deserve clarity on their housing status and CHA is committed to providing more proactive communication about repayment options,” Aguilar said.
In 2024, CHA billed all residents a total of about $59.8 million in rent and collected around 94.5% of that, leaving a deficit of roughly $3.3 million for the year, according to agency data provided to the Tribune through a public records request. In 2020 and 2021, the collection rates dipped to around 92% and 89%, respectively.
Other public housing authorities around the country have experienced much worse rent collection shortfalls than CHA, according to the New York Times. And locally, the Housing Authority of Cook County collected only 83% of the rent billed in 2021, according to public records obtained by the Tribune, and had to receive shortfall funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to cover the losses.
Before pursuing an eviction, CHA works with residents who are behind on rent by setting up payment plans, referring them to financial counseling and nonprofit legal services and searching for rental assistance funds, the authority said. If a resident’s nonpayment of rent is because of income loss, they typically qualify for a greater rental subsidy, and property managers work to make payment adjustments. CHA said it can pursue an eviction once a tenant owes $500 or more or is two months delinquent.
“In general, CHA views eviction as a last resort, understanding that people who are evicted from public housing have few other options for housing available to them,” Aguilar said. “At the same time, we recognize that there are instances when it is necessary to pursue these cases.”
