This spring, while legislators in the Senate of the state of Illinois debated a bill that would limit local programs that are known as crime -free housing, hundreds of witnesses showed up to share their opinion about the proposed changes.
City officials and police chefs argued that regulations that arrange the programs, for which landlords can be asked to expel tenants who have been in contact with law enforcement should remain as they are. Aggressive regulations are needed, they said, to help the police drive drug dealers who have set up a shop in apartment buildings and to force landlords to tackle problems on their property.
Proponents of homes and tenants spoke to support major changes, which indicates several cases of discriminatory and illegal enforcement. Landlords also argued for further regulation and told senators that they were not interested in acting as the arms of enforcement of the police.
It is a debate that has been intensified in the last three decades, because the number of crime -free housing programs is spreading from a handful of early adopters to more than 2,000 municipalities in 42 states.
A study by the New York Times and the Illinois Answering Project showed that in recent years hundreds of people in Illinois have been deported, many of them about small violations that did not take place anywhere near their homes. Sometimes people with expansion were threatened after they called 911 for help.
Over the years, many national and local authorities have changed their regulations to try to prevent such results, often with mixed results.
Some cities have looked at alternative strategies to keep rental properties and their tenants safe. There are six here.
1. Protect victims of domestic and sexual violence
In 2015, Illinois adopted legislation throughout the state that prohibited one of the most disturbing unintended consequences of crime -free housing programs: the regulations have sometimes punished the victims of crimes.
In many municipalities with these laws, the police recommend a landlord to turn off a tenant after receiving a fixed number of 911 calls from or over a specific apartment; Without much research, everyone in the household is forced to move. Victims of domestic violence were lose their houses After reporting offensive partners. Some survivors, fear from deportation, avoided the police to call for help.
The 2015 legislation made it illegal to use crime -free homes against tenants who called 911 to report incidents of domestic or sexual violence. Iowa and Pennsylvania have made comparable changes after the expansions of battered women in those states were published.
But the new provisions have not sufficiently protected victims, according to many people who originally fought for the changes, because police officers still have to decide whether an incident is categorized as domestic violence.
A recent report Published by a coalition of proponents of housing in Illinois, it turned out that in many municipalities reports about domestic violence still caused evictions. In the suburb of Chicago van Rolling Meadows, for example, a majority of the removal assignments in 2023 was inspired by calls from domestic violence. In Belleville, in Southillinois, 911 calls from domestic violence led to more than a hundred expansions from 2021 to 2024.
“Ten years later we still see discriminatory enforcement,” said Emily Coffey, who worked on the report as part of her work at the Chicago Lawyers “Committee for Civil Rights. “We still see enforcement against survivors of domestic violence,” she said, “although it is clearly a violation of state and federal law.”
2. Prohibitions based on 911 calls
A law on the state of New York that was adopted in 2019 required municipalities with crime -free programs to protect people who call emergency services for whatever reason.
“Despite their intention to help communities, there have had an exaggerated broad regulations instead of a harmful horrifying effect that reflects victims of violence and crime by gaining access to police assistance and have endangered public safety,” ” The legislation states.
The law dictates that every tenant in the state has the right to contact the emergency services without reprisals, and it protects landlords against a fine or against losing their license if they do not deport a tenant on the basis of the number of calls to the police.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New York maintains one Page “Know Your Rights” About the law on its website, with a link to its services and a message for both tenants and landlords in case a deportation is entered by calling 911: “You can take a action for damage or for the evacuation canceled.”
3. Limit enforcement to serious crimes
Cities that enforce aggressive crime-free housing laws can deport tenants for the violation of almost any law or municipal legislation. In some cities, the deposits of fireworks or allowing a minor can drink a beer to a deportation.
In 2019, California issued regulations for the entire state that limits the enforcement of the crime -free regulations to serious violations. The state forbidden cities to initiate evictions based on excessively broad definitions of crime.
Faribault, Minn., Tried something similar after the ACLU accused in a lawsuit of discrimination against black residents, including a growing Somali population.
As part of a settlement of 2022, Faribault agreed to revise in his regulation, which now describes the specific violations that can lead to a deportation. John Sherwin, who became Faribault’s police chief when the settlement was completed, said that the city was about 25,000 small enough that every time a crime took place at a rental home, his officers checked with him about whether it justified a crime -free action.
“We are not deported for a little less than a crime,” said Chief Sherwin. “I think this is just a smarter way to do it. This regulation is for dealing with what causes the most social damage in the community, and those are serious crimes.”
4. Requires the correct process and supervision
In Richtton Park, 30 miles south of Chicago, Diamond Jones and her family were ordered from their house after they had called the police several times in 2022 to report shootings and threats against them. At the time, the city -free housing program of the city had no professional process.
Mrs. Jones later sued, and if Part of a settlement reached in 2025Richtton Park began to give tenants the opportunity to dispute the allegations against them and to argue against a deportation.
John Murphey, the city lawyer who wrote the amended Regulation, said that there had to be an appeal under the new policy. But he emphasized that he designed the process to be handy and cheap for tenants.
“Instead of hiring a lawyer and fighting it in evacuation court, this offers an early opportunity for the tenant to tell his or her side of the story,” said Mr. Murphey.
The legislation considering in Illinois would require that all crime -free programs have a similar professional process.
5. Rent registration, complaints hotlines and enforcement of the code
On the demand for the underlying problems, crime -free housing policy is intended to resolve, local officials often point to absent landlords, investors who buy property, but are not close to manage or maintain them properly.
According to chef Sherwin it was a “crime recipe to thrive.”
But there are other ways to make rental properties safer and more orderly. By creating a detailed register for all rental buildings, municipalities can maintain control over non -repeating landlords by threatening them with the loss of their registration or with fines if they repeatedly do not deal with code overlaps or problematic tenants. To identify problems early, cities can perform routine inspections of rental properties and create a hotline for complaints from tenants.
Peoria, ill., Who arranged a lawsuit in federal housing discrimination on his fixed lid in 2020, is now highly dependent on other tenants’ laws for lease violations and expansions, and its code enforcement division wants to connect tenants with support services and free legal assistance. Peoria also expanded a repeat program, with which the city can sue landlords for code violations and give some of all returned funds to tenants to help them find a new house.
A crime -free regulation “is a tool that we have,” says Joe Dulin, director of the community development of the city. “It’s not the first tool we ever want to use.”
6. withdraw or prohibit regulations
A few years ago, St. Louis Park, a city in the suburbs of Minneapolis, went through an extensive process to analyze possible improvements to his crime -free residential practices. Local news items That showed that the city had deported hundreds of people, often for incidents that were not even crimes.
After nine months, the group appointed by the city to study the issue was proposed to two solutions: St. Louis Park could retain its regulation, but to make a long list of required changes, or the city could withdraw it, while landlords also demand that landlords receive licenses and register their property. In the end, the St. Louis Park city council unanimously voted to abolish crime -free homes.
Other municipalities throughout the country have also withdrawn their crime -free regulations, usually after being confronted with lawsuits or threats of legal action. Last year California forbade the regulations in the entire state.
In Illinois, the proposed legislation would not go that far. Cities can still demand that landlords expand tenants who have been convicted of a crime that took place on a rental home. But most other enforcement would be limited.
“It’s a matter of safety safety,” said Senator Karina Villa, the most important sponsor of the bill, of the efforts to limit policy. “People must feel safe to contact their law enforcement without fear of repercussions, without fearing on the street.”
Reporting for this article was supported by a subsidy from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. Financiers have no control over the selection and focus of stories or the processing process and do not assess stories before publication. The Times retains full editorial control over this story.
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