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Asthma – FAQ

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What is asthma?
Asthma is a chronic disease of the lungs that makes it very difficult to breathe. The small and medium airways swell and fill with mucus when they come into contact with certain environmental allergens. In some cases, asthma can cause death. Asthma cannot be cured but it can be controlled through medications and cleaning up your environment.

What allergens found in the home can cause asthma?
Dust mites are a common allergen that can trigger an asthma attack. Dust mites can be found in carpets, drapes, overstuffed furniture, and bedding and the result of poor air sealing of windows and doors can allow outside dust into the home.
Other common household hazards that can trigger asthma attacks are:
* Leaking plumbing and roofs; water damaged areas
* Poor ventilation in bathrooms and kitchens
* Basements and crawlspaces without proper drainage or moisture control
* Infestations of cockroaches, mice and rats can cause allergic reactions
* Extreme temperature shifts, either hot or cold, can trigger asthma attacks

Many of these conditions are violations of the building code. Learn how to enforce your right to a healthier home here.

Does the landlord have to provide heat and air-conditioning if I have asthma?
The landlord must provide heat from heat September 15 – June 1. The landlord must maintain the following minimum temperatures:
68 degrees from 8:30 am to 10:30 pm
66 degrees from 10:30 pm – 8:30 am
The landlord is not required to provide air-conditioning.

Learn more about Healthy Home Healthy Child: The Westside Children’s Asthma Partnership

Get more information about city-wide data via the Chicago Health Atlas

Lead – FAQ

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Know the facts about lead:

  • What is lead? Lead is a heavy metal that is harmful to your health.
  • Where is lead found? The most common sources of lead are found in the home! Chipping paint and dust in homes built prior to 1978, tap water, soil and some toys and jewelry are the most common sources of lead. You can’t always see lead, even when it is present.
  • What amount of lead is safe? Lead in the body is not safe at ANY level.  It only takes a very small amount to cause life-long health problems, including learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and other health issues.
  • What are the long-term effects of lead poisoning? Lead can damage organs, stunt neurological development and may even cause death.
  • What are some of the warning signs of lead poisoning? Stomach pains, constipation, poor appetite, sleep problems, headaches, issues with sleeping.
  • How do I know if I have lead in my home? If your home was built prior to 1978, there is a good chance there is lead in your home but the only way to positively identify lead is with testing. The Department of Health offers free testing if your child has recently been found with elevated levels of lead.
  • Who’s responsible for addressing lead sources in the home? The landlord is responsible. Under federal law, at the start of a tenancy, the landlord must provide tenants with a lead disclosure form that details any known lead hazard in your unit or the common areas and a copy of the EPA booklet “Protect Your Family from Lead in your Home“. Under 2004 Childhood Lead Prevention Act, the landlord must also post a notice if a lead hazard has been found in another unit. That notice must remain posted until all documented hazards are properly repaired.
  • What if the landlord refuses to address lead sources? Call the Renter’s Hotline at 773-292-4988 M-F, 1-5pm or call the city of Chicago’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention program at 312.747.LEAD[5323]. You may request an inspection. If the landlord refuses to make repairs and old paint is pulling away from the wall, cracking, chipping or peeling and it is a code violation, you can give the landlord a 14-day written notice to reduce your rent. See “Apartment Repairs and Conditions“
  • What can I do to reduce the risk of exposure? 
    • Ask your doctor to test your child for lead
    • Regularly wet-mop floors and wet-wipe windows
    • Remove shoes when entering the home
    • Teach your children to wash their hands before eating
    • Do not use pottery for cooking or serving without knowing if the glaze has lead
    • Do not disturb paint without protecting your family from the dust
    • Feed your child a diet high in iron, calcium and vitamin C – all help fight lead in the child’s body
    • Test your water for lead and use a EPA approved filter
    • Test soil around home and do not plant a garden before confirming that soil is safe
    • Regularly check recall lists for toys, jewelry and other household items which may have lead

Still can’t find the answer? Send us your questions. Please allow several days for a response. Or to speak with a Healthy Homes Organizer, call 773.292.4980 ext. 225.

Squared Away Chicago

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Untitled We have good news Chicago! As spring descends on the city and peak moving season approaches, renters in Chicago have a great new tool at their disposal to use our free renters app, Squared Away Chicago, to track your issue(s) and communicate with your landlord.  We’ve found the biggest obstacle for tenants trying to get problems remedied has been a lack of documentation. This app lets you upload photos & document issues, creating a lasting timeline that’s instantly accessible to you and your landlord!

 

Simply visit: www.squaredawaychicago.com

Statement on the “Migrant” Crisis

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MTO believes that the recent media frenzy focusing on Chicago’s migrant crisis fails to examine the underlying social issues at play.  Migrants fleeing their homeland in search of safety, security, jobs and housing are not the problem. The problem Chicago faces is a severe lack of affordable housing which began long before the recent influx of migrants.

Everyone deserves a home.  In fact, housing is a basic human necessity.  Homes provide individuals and families with the security of knowing that they have a place to shelter in which they can eat, sleep and enjoy life.  Homes set a foundation for success and achievement.  Yet there are thousands in Chicago living in tents or doubled-up with friends or relatives.  Even more people struggle to maintain a roof over their head.  Some forgo medicine, miss meals, work two or three jobs sacrificing their mental health and time with their loved ones, just to maintain an often lousy, pest-infested unit.  Instead of facing the deeper problem, political leaders and the media declare a Migrant crisis, which blames those in need for the problem.

At MTO, we believe that regardless of circumstances, everyone deserves a home.  Housing needs to be recognized as a human right.

If we view this complex, challenging, and yet solvable problem through a lens of housing injustice, we can develop solutions that lift up longtime Chicago residents as well as new arrivals.  MTO believes there are immediate steps that can be taken to alleviate the housing crisis:

 

  1. Stop the exploitation and neglect of tenants by putting slumlords out of business through aggressive code enforcement and then force the transfer of their properties into the hands of people and institutions who are committed to maintaining decent affordable housing;
  2. Enact laws that stabilize rents and tenancies such as Rent Control and Just Cause Evictions; and
  3. Build, preserve, and lease up affordable housing. Chicago needs not hundreds but tens of thousands of affordable units.

 

These are some initial steps.  Achieving just and equitable housing policies requires work and commitment to respect and honor the lives of all people by making housing a human right.

Chicago Needs Proactive Home Inspections!

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The Chicago Healthy Homes Coalition (CHHC),  a coalition of renters and advocates, proposes to create a citywide rental housing registry and a proactive healthy homes inspection program. This is a matter of racial and health equity.  No Chicago renter should get sick or die because health hazards, such a lead or a lack of smoke detectors, exist.  No renters should have to live with mold, rats, or use their stove for heat.  We call upon the city to create a citywide program to hold bad landlords accountable and to ensure that all housing is safe, decent and accessible.  

Chicago does not regularly inspect housing for basic safety standards. This means that poor housing conditions can go unaddressed until a tenant makes a report to the city, often after an injury or illness. Proactive inspections will ensure that unsafe housing issues are addressed sooner, fewer people will be harmed or injured, and Chicago’s housing stock will be improved.

 

History + Background

A little over half of all Chicagoans are renters. The city is also home to higher-than-average rates of water leaks, heating and plumbing equipment breakdown, problems with broken plaster and peeling paint, and sewage disposal issues, according to the National Center for Healthy Housing. In 2019 renters made more than 30,000 complaints for occupied blight and other habitability issues, with most complaints coming from the South and West Side.

Simultaneously, the city does not currently require proactive inspection of rental units. Dangerous conditions are only addressed after a complaint is filed with the City. Minor issues are not addressed and unreported hazards often transition into disasters before a complaint is filed. Complaint-based inspection is additionally inadequate because inspectors often limit the the investigation only to what is reported. Many complaints are also never investigated; inspectors regularly have trouble accessing properties without landlord cooperation. The lack of a rental property registration system exacerbates this problem, as many owners do not have discoverable contact information, particularly when the property is owned by a limited liability company (LLC).

 

The Consequences

Lead Poisoning: Because over 81% of Chicago’s housing stock was built before the federal government  banned lead-based paint in 1978, most of these buildings, many of which have not been appropriately  maintained, repaired, or renovated, likely contain lead-based paint. Lead is a major neurotoxin that causes lifelong learning disabilities, hearing loss, speech delays, intellectual disability, ADHD, and aggressive/violent behaviors, even at relatively low levels. In many community areas, the childhood lead poisoning rates are more than double or quadruple the city-wide rate: from 4.4 and 5.7 per 100 children in Austin and West Garfield Park, and as high as 7.2 and 7.3 per 100 children in Englewood and West Englewood.

Asthma: Researchers have found excess moisture allows for the breeding of mold, mildew, mites, and  cockroaches, and that cracks allow pests like rodents and bugs to enter the home, all of which have been  linked to greater asthma morbidity and mortality. In Chicago, Black children have twice the prevalence of asthma when compared to White and Hispanic children. 

Societal, Economic, and Educational Harms: Other poor housing conditions, such as presence of rats and cockroaches, missing or malfunctioning necessities (e.g., toilet, stove, windows), and other structural,  electrical, and plumbing issues have been connected to higher  school absenteeism, reduced performance on standardized tests, and cognitive deficiencies in students. 

Fires and Fatalities: Between 2014 and 2019, 140 fires killed 92 Chicagoans. Nearly half of those fires  involved buildings without a working smoke detector. A Chicago Tribune / Better Government Association investigation into fires in the same timeframe found more than two dozen cases in which safety conditions played a role in the fires, but records showed the buildings had not been inspected for five or more years. 

Public Fiscal Costs: Chicago’s inability to address dangerous housing conditions is expensive to the public. Very conservatively estimating that just one-half of Chicago’s 1,376 lead-poisoned children in  2017 required special education, Chicago therefore spent roughly $7.5 million to $15 million per year in additional instructional costs for those students alone. Other studies corroborate that every dollar spent to prevent lead poisoning saves hundreds of dollars in the form of greater earnings and reduced taxpayer-funded health  care, special education, and law enforcement costs.

In  2018, Chicago’s Office of Inspector General found that our current complaint-based system permitted safety and health hazards to go unaddressed for longer than the law allowed. A follow up report in 2019 gave the City recommendations to improve inspections.

 

Our Solution

CHHC is proposing a three-year pilot to begin the transition from Chicago’s ineffective and dangerous complaint-driven inspection system to a proven proactive rental inspection and rental registry program. 

The pilot includes three major components: 

(1) healthy homes inspection of all residential rental properties  in two select community areas; 

(2) a citywide residential rental registry

(3) community outreach to  educate and engage tenants, landlords, and other stakeholders. 

The program is designed to be budget neutral, as it will be funded by registration fees paid by landlords. It  will be implemented by a project manager hired by the city, in collaboration with the Departments of  Housing, Buildings, and Health.

 

Healthy Homes Inspections. The City will develop a healthy homes inspection program to be used citywide and pilot the program in two community areas—one high-need and one mixed-need. The pilot’s healthy homes inspections will incorporate nationally-recognized principles of healthy homes,  including that they be dry, clean, safe, contaminant-free, well-ventilated, thermally controlled, well maintained, and accessible.

Rental Registry. As part of the pilot, the City of Chicago will establish a citywide residential rental registry, to be managed by the Department of Housing. All landlords will be required to register their rental  properties with the City annually, paying a registration fee and providing some basic information about the property.

Repair Grants for Small Landlords. The rental registry fees would go into a fund that prioritizes grants for small landlords who own 6 or fewer units to make necessary repairs. This will encourage landlords to participate in the program.

Community Outreach. Because community buy-in and support is critical to the success of the pilot, the  City will involve key stakeholders in the community at all stages of pilot development and implementation by creating a community advisory board to assist with oversight and evaluation at the  end of the pilot. The City will also hire inspectors and other City personnel from pilot  communities, which will help to ensure that the pilot is implemented equitably and with the needs of the community in mind.  

9 Potential Solutions to Keep Chicagoans Safer From Fires.  Better Government Association

 

Evaluation

To evaluate the pilot project, the City will hire an independent professional who is a healthy housing expert. This individual will design and implement a robust evaluation, collecting and analyzing both qualitative  and quantitative measures. 

Quantitative Measures: Identified hazards; hazards remediated; cost to the City; cost to landlords; training needs; number of inspections/inspectors; frequency of inspector success in property entry; estimated fiscal benefits for the public; financial and health  benefits for impacted households.

Qualitative Measures: Qualitative measures will include open-ended interviews with inspectors,  community stakeholders, advocates, landlords, and tenants about their experiences during the pilot. 

The evaluation will also use the inspection data to identify common housing hazards that are not considered  violations under Chicago’s Building Code and make recommendations for possible amendments. The  evaluator will additionally ascertain compliance with the rental registry requirements, to inform potential  incentives and penalties to ensure compliance.

**Read our full white-paper here.**

 

 

Take Action!

We need City Council to implement this project. Call your Alderman today and demand they support Chicago Healthy Homes!

Join the Coalition! Sign up to be a sponsor.

With Help MTO Resolves another Lockout. 

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Ms. Bueno is a Pilsen resident. She became unemployed because of COVID-19.  The landlord turned hostile and refused to negotiate a fair agreement, which would take into consideration her financial hardship. Instead, her landlord started harassing her. She called MTO to report the landlord shutting off her lights and gas. 

A utility shutoff is a lockout, according to the City of Chicago Municipal code, so we instructed her to follow the City of Chicago’s lockout reporting procedure. She made a complaint to 311 and called the Police.  The officers did not take the matter seriously and claimed the situation was a civil matter.  As happens all too frequently, the officers did not follow the CPD Special Order #SO4-01-03. 

It took a while for Ms. Bueno to get a miscellaneous police report from the police and a building code violation.  She was able to get her utilities restored though this did not last long.  


The utilities did not stay on for long.  She called MTO again about another light shutoff and this time the landlord locked the breaker room access. We partner with the Chicago Tenants Movement (CTM) in order to create a more proactive response to lockouts. CTM sent a volunteer response team that included an electrician. The team was able to enter the breaker room and restore Ms. Bueno’s lights. The Chicago Tenants Movement response team took action when CPD and DOB would not. We need to push for proactive solutions to lockouts here in the City of Chicago.

Ms. Bueno is one of many stories of lockouts occurring in Chicago. Since the Eviction Moratorium began in March 2020, MTO has received reports on 574 lockouts. In a normal year, MTO receives about 250-300 lockout reports.  The COVID-19 pandemic has only multiplied the already existing housing crisis here in Illinois. The lack of consequences from the police and building department allows bad landlords to continue the illegal lockouts as a way to dance around the Eviction Moratorium. As the housing crisis escalates, we encourage you to join us in pushing resolutions to lockouts. Contact Javier Ruiz at javierr@tenants-rights.org to become part of the solution.

Leland Building- Organizing Success

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For most of us, 2020 has been a year of trials and tribulations. A seemingly never-ending barrage of new challenges has confronted us at the turn of each season. As Chicagoans continue to grapple with a deadly global pandemic, many are struggling desperately to hang on to the only thing that can keep them safe: their homes.

After moving into her two-bedroom Albany Park apartment with her teenage daughter in January, Ferrus Najemba felt safe and secure. Victor Munoz, who had lived next door with his wife and two daughters for 13 years, felt the same way. But that all had changed by May of this year, when all 20 or so tenants in the seven-unit building were told that they had to go. Just five days after purchasing the building on May 23rd, the new owner, Brian McFadden, sent 30-day notices to the tenants telling them they must leave by the end of June.

Salvadore Alvarez holds up a copy of the 30-day notice he received outside of his apartment building on September 4, 2020.

Everyone in the building had always paid rent dutifully. Many of the tenants, most of whom are immigrants with children, have lived in the building for years. Their former landlord never mentioned anything about selling the building. The tenants were surprised, confused, and angry. In hopes of delaying their ouster from the building, Ferrus and her neighbors worked with organizers from Metropolitan Tenants Organization and the Autonomous Tenants Union to form a tenants union and demand one-year leases for all current residents.

The newly formed Leland Tenants Union (named after the street where they reside) tried to meet with the owner, but he ignored them for weeks. They worked with their Alderman (Carlos Ramirez Rosa (35th), and held a press conference outside their building in September. “He has not called me back. Pick up the phone, Brian. Sit down with these tenants. They’re prepared to sign permanent leases. They’re prepared to pay rent. Do the right thing,” Rosa said. One by one, tenants from the building shared their stories and demanded a meeting with McFadden. “When we got the eviction notices, it was heartbreaking and scary. I was angry,” Victor Muñoz said during the press conference, his voice cracking with emotion. “I started worrying about my kids. How am I going to keep a roof over their heads during this pandemic?”.

Victor Munoz speaks during the press conference outside his apartment on September 4, 2020.

The tenants union didn’t stop making their demands, and their dedication paid off. A week after their protest, negotiations with McFadden resumed. In October, McFadden agreed to waive back rent and give all the tenants one-year leases.

Today, MTO is joining the Leland Tenants Union and the thousands of renters across Chicago calling for a Just Cause bill, which would eliminate no-cause evictions, give more time to tenants who do have to move, and put certain limits on reasons why a landlord can displace a tenant. With such a bill, tenants like Victor and Ferrus would be protected, and our communities would be that much safer.

Global webinar on tenant struggles in the COVID crisis: Saturday May 9 at 1 pm CST.

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Housing Is A Human Right!

Global webinar on tenant struggles in the COVID crisis: Saturday May 9 at 1 pm CST. The National Alliance of HUD Tenants (NAHT) sister organization in the UK, Defend Council Housing, is hosting a Global Webinar on Saturday, May 9 at 2 pm EST/ 1pm CST! Panelists from Defend Council Housing; a private housing organizing group in London; a tenants movement group in Barcelona; CASA in the Bronx; and Michael Kane from NAHT will be featured!

Just click on here for Youtube Live and here for Facebook Live Saturday May 9 at 1 pm CST.

Drexel Tenants Win Relocation

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Tenants at 4625 S Drexel formed a tenants association.  The building was in horrendous condition and the owner of the building in April of last year decided to close the building and evict all the tenants.  The tenants flyered the building and met monthly.  They all called the city to report  the building’s numerous building code violations and to request an inspection.  The City inspected the building.  The City told the owner to fix the building.  Then the heat went out.  The landlord tried to use this as an excuse to evict all the tenants and issued everyone 30 day notices to vacate the building.  At court the judge ordered the owner to fix it.  Then the water went out.  The judge ordered the landlord to pay each of the 17 remaining tenants $1200 relocation assistance.  This was on top of the 3 months the tenants did not have to pay rent.  The tenants won $51,000 plus months of additional time to find a new residence.