Tenant Possibly Violated Housing Regulations

[Paul Schaefle]

Hello,

I own a small multi family property in Illinois and I have reason to believe that the tenant may have violated one of the local housing regulations. I will work to educate the tenant and make sure they don't do the same thing in the future, but I'm wondering what penalties I could face as a result. I've never had a violation before, so I'm not familiar with the process. The regulations are written from the perspective of the landlord making the violation, so I wonder if there is different treatment if the tenant is the one who does the violation. Has anyone gone through the process of correcting a violation in Illinois? Any insight is appreciated- especially if the tenant was the one who caused the violation without your knowledge.

[Greg M.]

Quote from @Paul Schaefle:

Thanks for the feedback. I may have used the wrong wording. The tenant may have used the unit in a way or made changes to the unit that caused there to be a regulation violation.

For example, the regulations say that the bathrooms must provide full privacy, but if the tenant removed the bathroom door. Or, there are occupancy maximums for bedrooms based on the square footage of the bedroom. If one bedroom had a maximum occupancy of two, but they allow three people to sleep there. These are against the housing regulations, but I wouldn't have knowledge about it unless it was discovered during an inspection or the city notified me.

The landlord must provide a bathroom with full privacy. However, tenants are free to do what they wish. If they want to remove the door and poop out in the open of their unit, they have that right. No one is going to cite you for a tenant removing the door.

I don't know IL law, but max number of people is usually based on square footage and can be well above what a normal person would want. No one is going to care that 3 people are in a bedroom "designed for 2 people". Besides, the law probably allows for 6-10 people to be in that bedroom. 

The only time you may get cited is for safety violations. For example, the tenant removing the smoke detectors or installing non-opening bars across the window. Even with this, inspectors probably would just tell you to have it fixed if you could show that the tenants make the changes without your permission or knowledge.