{"id":775095,"date":"2026-05-05T14:43:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/775095\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T14:43:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:43:30","slug":"cook-county-landlords-have-filed-for-more-than-40000-evictions-since-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/775095\/","title":{"rendered":"Cook County Landlords Have Filed For More Than 40,000 Evictions Since 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO \u2014 Last spring, a 45-year-old South Shore tenant began receiving brochures from lawyers in her mail. They tipped her off that something was wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The woman, who has lived in her home for 12 years, said the building\u2019s new owner had raised her rent by more than 60 percent in one month. She struggled to pay it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI wound up having my gas turned off for four months because I was sending all my money to the landlords,\u201d she said. \u201cI had to boil water if I wanted hot water.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She soon discovered that her building\u2019s new landlord had filed an eviction suit against her. She never received the legally required notice that her landlord had filed for eviction, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She had to seek help from the Law Center for Better Housing, a legal aid group that persuaded the landlord to agree to a settlement. Now she\u2019s living with relatives while looking for a new home. She asked that her name not be published because she\u2019s worried it could complicate her apartment search.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The South Shore renter is one of tens of thousands of Chicago residents whom landlords have moved to evict in the last few years, according to data collected by the court clerk\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Residents of Chicago\u2019s South and West sides, and particularly the South Shore neighborhood, have been hit hardest by evictions in recent years, according to Block Club\u2019s analysis of available data.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the court\u2019s records are missing addresses for nearly 10,000 of the cases filed between April 2022 and September 2025 \u2014 nearly a quarter of those filed in that time period \u2014 which makes a thorough look at eviction trends all but impossible.<\/p>\n

Experts expressed frustration at the court\u2019s handling of the information, saying the missing data makes it difficult to craft housing and eviction policies to keep people in their homes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so much information missing and you have to take the court\u2019s word for it that they don\u2019t have that information,\u201d said Stephanie Agnew, co-executive director of the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts. \u201cYou have to believe that because there\u2019s no way to double check their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

And lawyers say additional cases have been sealed by judges, raising questions about how complete Cook County\u2019s data is.<\/p>\n

Through spokespeople, Mariyana Spyropoulos, the elected clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, refused to answer questions about the missing addresses or the court\u2019s recordkeeping practices. Other members of her staff did as well.<\/p>\n

Aimie Rucinski, the deputy clerk in charge of the circuit court\u2019s civil division, which includes eviction cases, hung up the phone when pressed about the missing data. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to hold me accountable, I\u2019ll tell you that,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite the missing addresses, the data does show that more than 40,000 eviction cases have been filed with the Cook County Circuit Court since April 2022, just a few months after the expiration of the Illinois moratorium on evictions, which stopped most eviction filings during the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The moratorium aimed to prevent residents from losing their homes amid anticipated pandemic-related financial burdens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the years before the pandemic, the courts received roughly 18,000 eviction filings in Chicago every year, according to data from the Lawyers\u2019 Committee for Better Housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although those numbers have decreased in recent years, landlords continue to file thousands of evictions every year. In 2024, they filed approximately 12,000.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what else we know about the eviction data.<\/p>\n

Evictions Highest On The South Side<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although tenants\u2019 addresses are missing from about a quarter of the records provided by the court, addresses for the remaining data show that landlords have filed evictions against tenants in South Side neighborhoods more often than elsewhere in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With nearly 2,000 eviction cases filed, the 60649 ZIP code, which includes South Shore, had the most total cases as well as the top in every year between April 2022 and September 2025.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The 10 ZIP codes with the most evictions were all on the South and West sides and included the majority-Black neighborhoods Woodlawn, Bronzeville, Kenwood, Chatham, Austin, Auburn Gresham and North Lawndale as well as majority-Latino Little Village and mixed Hyde Park, which has no racial or ethnic majority.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople on the South and West sides just don\u2019t get the breaks that other people get,\u201d said Dennericka Brooks, an attorney who directs Legal Aid Chicago\u2019s housing practice. \u201cYou miss one month of rent and you end up in eviction court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nine out of 10 residents in the South Shore ZIP code are Black, according to census data.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the majority-white 60622 ZIP code, which includes parts of Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village and West Town, saw just 99 evictions over the three-year period, one of the lowest numbers among Chicago neighborhoods, even though the area actually has about 6,000 more residents than 60649. ZIP codes representing parts of Edison Park, the Near West Side and Edgebrook were also among the neighborhoods with the fewest eviction cases, each recording fewer than 35.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The eviction trends are consistent with those in previous years<\/a>, which indicated a large racial disparity in eviction filings in Chicago.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

And some areas may have even more filings than the data suggests, as an evaluation of about a dozen records with Loop ZIP codes showed that the associated addresses were actually on the South Side.<\/p>\n

10,000 Missing Tenant Addresses\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rucinski, the clerk in charge of the circuit court\u2019s civil division, pointed to non-digital form submissions as one cause of the missing records. Many landlords and property managers, or their lawyers, use typewriters or handwriting to add tenant names and addresses to eviction complaints, she said in a January interview. The court\u2019s clerks do not enter that information into the computerized system unless the tenant shows up to their first court date, she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"The plaza at Richard J. Daley Center. Credit: Colin Boyle\/Block Club Chicago<\/p>\n

The number of missing addresses more than doubled after the circuit court switched to a new computer system in 2018, according to Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based news organization that has collected eviction data dating to 2007.<\/p>\n

Rucinski and other court officials did not respond to requests for comment on this issue.<\/p>\n

Without knowing where evictions are taking place and what data is missing, it\u2019s hard to know how trends have evolved and nearly impossible to craft policy to help people stay in their homes, said Michelle Gilbert, legal and policy director for the Chicago-based Law Center for Better Housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just a problem, but a surprising problem,\u201d Gilbert said. Eviction \u201chas such a big impact, and there just isn\u2019t very comprehensive data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th), chairman of the City Council\u2019s housing committee, said one of his current priorities is developing a way to guarantee legal representation for evicted tenants, like 74-year-old Dannies Travis.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, when Travis was fighting an eviction order from her Uptown landlord, she initially tried representing herself but was frustrated by the court\u2019s opacity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A judge issued a default order on Jan. 13 noting Travis had not shown up for her first court appearance. But Travis said she had only learned about her court date the evening before and was in the hospital on the day of the hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to call the court and I tried and I tried and I tried and I got through to nobody except to tell me I should have been in court,\u201d she said. \u201cWell, you could have told me a week ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Dannies Travis sits on the bed of her South Shore apartment on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. Credit: Jeremy Battle\/Block Club Chicago<\/p>\n

A judge denied Travis\u2019 motion to overturn the judgment and sheriff\u2019s deputies removed her from her home soon after, her lawyer said. She now lives in South Shore.<\/p>\n

Court officials declined to answer questions about Travis\u2019 case or late notices to tenants.<\/p>\n

Travis is now represented by Jim Garfield, a supervising attorney at the Uptown People\u2019s Law Center. Cook County courts are not much easier for attorneys to navigate, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon for us to call the main line and get transferred again and again and then get told something you know is totally untrue,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you call back and leave a voicemail that never gets returned.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 90 percent of Chicago tenants lack a lawyer<\/a> in housing court, according to a 2019 study by the Law Center for Better Housing, compared to just 20 percent of landlords. Nationally, just 4 percent of tenants<\/a> are represented, according to the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel.<\/p>\n

And anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of tenants lose their eviction cases<\/a> by default when they don\u2019t show up to a court hearing, according to a 2021 national analysis by Washington, D.C., think tank New America.<\/p>\n

Sigcho-Lopez said his efforts to guarantee representation for tenants have run into challenges in part because he struggled to gather enough data to make the case in Cook County.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The housing committee \u201cwanted to have a hearing on the matter and couldn\u2019t get the data,\u201d he said. \u201cIt certainly causes problems with policymaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most Records Missing Landlord Addresses\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nearly every record in the recent eviction data is missing at least one vital piece of information: the landlord\u2019s address, which is absent for 98 percent of the cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That makes landlords filing evictions harder to identify.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many of the landlords or property managers are listed as limited liability companies, or LLCs, which are often set up to manage a single building or complex. When the addresses are missing, tenants, advocates and researchers find it more difficult to identify the person or business associated with an LLC, thus limiting transparency about which landlords are filing evictions.<\/p>\n

Chicago residents suffer when lawyers are unable to search court databases for a landlord\u2019s eviction history, said Garfield. He recalled representing tenants who had all been evicted from a building \u201con very, very thin grounds,\u201d but he and his team struggled to gather the information necessary to prove the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that there was some kind of targeting based on ethnic identity,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we couldn\u2019t look up cases by owner or property.\u201d<\/p>\n

No Explanations From the Court\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Spyropoulos was elected Cook County court clerk in 2024 after campaigning<\/a> as \u201cone of Chicago\u2019s leading advocates for transparency in government,\u201d as her website put it. But, through a spokesperson, she repeatedly declined to answer questions about the missing eviction data.<\/p>\n

Court officials would only say they are looking into ways to make the missing data public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis subject will get brought to the attention of our Executive Clerk of Operations and Legal, for options on how to obtain [the information] moving forward,\u201d wrote Mirella Miranda, the court\u2019s data services director, in an email. She and others declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n

In Illinois, courts are not covered by public-records laws<\/a>, meaning judges and clerks do not have to comply with records requests from the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything we need or want is up to the discretion of the chief judge or whatever office you ask,\u201d said Agnew, of the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, which released a report<\/a> this year about Illinois\u2019 lack of judicial transparency. \u201cI think that\u2019s always a looming cloud over conversations because everything is willy-nilly and it depends who you talk to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Support Freedom of the Press<\/strong><\/p>\n

Independent journalism like this only exists because of readers like you.<\/strong> This World Press Freedom Day, help Block Club raise $20,000<\/strong><\/a> to fuel high-impact investigations that hold Chicago\u2019s institutions and leaders accountable. Make your tax-deductible donation here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 Last spring, a 45-year-old South Shore tenant began receiving brochures from lawyers in her mail. They…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":775096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-775095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-illinois"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116522504349647143","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}