Fishman sent her maintenance man to deliver a ten-day eviction notice to her door.
Yeah, that's not legal. Hope the tenant finds a good lawyer.
Mun. Code Ch. 5-12-170: Under the 2020 revisions of the RLTO (“Fair Notice Ordinance”), Landlords must provide a tenant that is not in the eviction
process:
• 30 days of notice to terminate a month-to-month tenancy, decline to renew your lease or raise your rent if you have lived in
your apartment for less than six months.
• 60 days of notice for the same if you have lived in your apartment for more than six months but less than three years.
One of the high-points in my life was having a landlord show up with the local sheriffs to try and force an eviction that up until this point had only been verbal. I happily showed them the state's tenant laws that said "30 days after written notice is provided" and had a lawyer friend on speed dial if they had any questions. Landlord got so belligerent that the sheriffs escorted them off instead.
Ten day notice may be given under certain conditions including breach of contract, see ILCS 5-9/210 and Chicago municipal code 5-12-130. And in this case, the landlord claims displaying a flag is a breach of contract.
(Note that the notice means that the lease will end in ten days, which is when eviction proceedings may start. It will take considerably longer for the courts to send a sheriff out to enforce it).
Landlords can’t legally remove someone from a unit until they’ve filed in court and a judge orders the Cook County Sheriff’s Office to enforce the eviction.
Sounds like he'd have to go through a judge first too.
True, at the end of a ten day (or 30 day) notice, the landlord can go to court to force the tenant out. This process will take a while, but it will immediately blacklist the tenant and make it much harder for them to find a new rental.
So in practice, it's often better to leave before the landlord goes to court.
It's probably not an eviction notice, but a "comply or vacate" notice. Journalists often confuse "eviction notice", which is a court order, with the sort of formal written demand notices that tenants are entitled to receive.