Chicago rental compliance guides

Chicago's Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, codified as Chapter 5-12 of the Municipal Code, sets the baseline rights and obligations for most residential rentals in the city. The main carve-out is owner-occupied buildings with six units or fewer, which fall outside the ordinance's general scope, though some individual provisions still reach owner-occupied buildings regardless of size. Because exemptions are provision-specific rather than all-or-nothing, the Chicago Department of Housing is the authority to confirm a property's coverage with. The paperwork requirements reset at every lease and renewal, not just the first signing. The city's RLTO summary must be attached to each rental agreement, oral leases included, and reattached at every renewal, for every unit, for as long as the tenancy continues. A deposit-holding lease also needs a separate Security Deposit Interest Rate Summary alongside the RLTO summary, showing the current year's rate and the prior two years, and that document has to be regenerated each January when the City Comptroller announces the rate. Under the ordinance, a landlord who fails to attach the current summary faces a $100 damages claim if a tenant proves the violation in a civil proceeding, and the tenant can terminate the rental agreement by written notice specifying a termination date no later than 30 days out. The city updates the summary's exact text periodically, so the current version is worth pulling fresh from the Department of Housing rather than reusing a saved copy. Below are Tusk's plain-language guides to what's currently required.

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