Illinois COVID-19 Rent / Mortgage Relief Bill Heavily Revised in Quick Succession

General

I received several calls to submit witness slips in support of the “COVID-19 Emergency and Economic Recovery Renter and Homeowner Protection Act” today.* Curious about the topic, I googled the bill’s title and found a fair number of articles on it. A lot of the reporting on this bill, like the Tribune and The Real Deal articles below, states that the bill would “cancel rent debt” and “suspend mortgage payments.”

However, after a little digging, I found that the bill in its current state (SB 3066 House Amendment 003) definitely does NOT do those things, though the substance of the bill as presently proposed is still pretty wild. I’ll give a walk-through on the bill as proposed – and other proposed legislation – in the days to come. Spoiler warning: statewide total eviction moratorium may be incoming.

To be clear, I don’t think that this reporting inaccuracy is “on purpose,” as an earlier version of the bill (HB5574 House Amendment 001) DID set out to accomplish these things and most of these articles were published prior to the present amendments. However, this reporting has not been updated/corrected to my knowledge and, as our legislator’s debate on whether to enact this bill into law, think it’s important that people understand, at least in broad strokes, what the bill does and does not do.

Regards,

Scott Kane

* To their credit, Chicago Housing Initiative and United Neighbors of the 35th Ward were both able to accurately describe the bill’s contents as of this morning.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-re-coronavirus-rent-relief-legislation-20200520-6cog3rewubhzjauxbtjzn5zgrm-story.html

https://therealdeal.com/chicago/2020/05/20/illinois-legislators-to-vote-on-massive-rent-mortgage-relief-package-this-week/