Reprieve For Tenants Mortgage Payments

Democrat Senator Maggie Crotty (Oak Forest) has been behind the move of initiating a new law that will permit tenants to continue to stay in their homes for 120 days after being notified that their landlords had failed in their mortgage payments. The reporting in Daily Southtown had egged on the senator. This applies to those tenants who, in their part, had not skipped in paying their current rents. Till now tenants could have been evicted without warning.

Crotty is of the opinion that if tenants are regular in paying their rents why should they be made to suffer when landlords defaults? It was reported that the Williams family had been thrown out from Country Club Hills after their landlord had stopped paying mortgage dues. The local authorities had scattered their belongings on the front home turf leaving the couple with their three children high and dry. The irony is that they were always correct and current in paying their rent for quite a number of years. The new law targets these innocent victims from being victimized for the owner’s misdemeanors. The owners often do this intentionally for fear of failing to collect the rent.

As per the new law (due to come into force from January 2008) the lenders – whether they be banks or mortgage concerns, must inform the tenants about the impending foreclosure. The mortgage holders till date could, if they wanted, include the names of tenants or ‘unknown occupants’ in the filings. This allowed the tenants little or no time to get their footings. But now the new law has shifted the onus to the lenders and not the ex-borrowers to notify the tenants and pre-warn them about the changed circumstances. 120 days will give them enough time to search out alternative arrangements although with each passing day the rental market is getting more and more squeezed.

The renters have formed organizations and one of them reports that during the past seven months more SOS calls are coming in. The tenants appear to be in a state of alarm when they contact the helpers. The majority have been peremptorily thrown out without a hint of the coming crisis. The pressure of numbers is forcing these tenant’s organizations to take a new comprehensive effective approach. The fear remains that even during the grace period utilities might be cut off causing choked sewerage and the like.

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