Chicago Tenants Rights: RLTO Deposits, Repairs, and Entry

If you rent an apartment or house in Chicago, your rights as a tenant come primarily from the Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance (RLTO), a city law that goes well beyond Illinois state protections and attaches real dollar penalties when a landlord breaks the rules. The RLTO covers security deposits, repairs, privacy, late fees, notice before rent increases, retaliation, and lockouts. Knowing what it actually requires is what turns a complaint into leverage.

Who the RLTO Covers

Most rental units within Chicago city limits are covered. The main exception is owner-occupied buildings with six or fewer units. Hospitals, dormitories, shelters, and transient hotels are also excluded.¹

One carve-out matters even if you fall into the excluded group: the ban on lockouts and utility shutoffs still applies, along with parts of the Fair Notice Ordinance. So even in a four-flat where the landlord lives downstairs, your landlord cannot change your locks or cut off your heat to force you out.¹

Security Deposits

Chicago’s deposit rules are strict, and the penalty for breaking them is heavy: twice the deposit amount, plus interest.²

Your deposit must sit in a federally insured, interest-bearing account at an Illinois financial institution. The bank’s name and address have to be in the written lease, or disclosed to you in writing within 14 days if there is no written lease. For deposits held longer than six months, interest must be paid or credited to rent every 12 months at the rate the city publishes each year. For 2026, that rate is 0.01 percent.³²

When you move out, the landlord has 30 days to send you an itemized list of damage deductions with paid receipts or invoices attached. If no deductions are made, the full deposit plus interest must be returned within 45 days.³

The double-the-deposit penalty applies to any of these failures: the wrong kind of account, missing disclosures, missed deadlines, or shortchanged interest. The one exception is a simple miscalculation of interest, where the landlord gets 14 days from your written notice to fix it before the full penalty attaches.²

Late Fee Limits

Your lease cannot charge whatever late fee the landlord wants. The RLTO caps late charges at $10 per month on the first $500 of rent, plus 5 percent per month on anything above $500. On a $1,500 monthly rent, that comes out to a $60 maximum. A lease that charges more is unenforceable on that provision, and attempting to collect under it entitles you to recover up to two months’ rent.⁴

Repairs and Essential Services

Your landlord must keep the unit in compliance with building, health, and safety codes, and that duty cannot be waived in a lease.⁵

When something is broken, the most common remedy is repair-and-deduct. Send written notice describing the problem. If the landlord does not fix it within 14 days, you can hire someone yourself and subtract the cost from rent, up to $500 or half of one month’s rent, whichever is greater.⁶

Essential services run on a faster clock. If you lose heat, running water, hot water, electricity, or gas, written notice gives the landlord 72 hours to restore service. If service is not back in that window, you can move into substitute housing at the landlord’s expense or terminate the lease.⁶

Put every request in writing, keep copies, and photograph the problem. Landlords sometimes respond to a repair-and-deduct by filing for eviction based on unpaid rent, and your documentation is what defends you in court.

Landlord Entry and Your Privacy

Your landlord has to give at least two days’ notice before entering for non-emergency reasons like inspections, repairs, or showing the unit. The notice can come by phone, mail, or any method reasonably designed to reach you. Entry is limited to the hours between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. unless you agree otherwise.⁷

Real emergencies like fires or major leaks allow immediate entry. So does an unexpected need to reach your unit while repairing another part of the building.

If a landlord enters without authorization, in an unreasonable manner, or keeps demanding entry in a way that becomes harassment, you can go to court for an order to stop it or terminate the lease. You are entitled to at least one month’s rent or your actual damages, whichever is greater.⁷

Notice Before Non-Renewal or Rent Hikes

Under the Fair Notice Ordinance, approved in July 2020, your landlord has to give you more advance warning the longer you have lived in the unit before ending the tenancy or raising the rent:⁸

More than six months but less than three years: 60 days’ written notice.
Three years or more: 120 days’ written notice.

These rules apply whether you have a written lease or a month-to-month arrangement. They do not apply when the landlord is filing for eviction based on nonpayment or another lease violation. For tenancies of six months or less, the Fair Notice Ordinance sets no specific period, and the standard 30-day notice under Illinois state law for month-to-month tenancies generally applies.⁸

Lockouts and Utility Shutoffs

Your landlord cannot remove you from your home without a court order, no matter what the dispute is about. The RLTO flatly prohibits every form of self-help eviction: changing locks, removing doors, shutting off utilities, or hauling your belongings outside.⁹

If a landlord does any of this, you can recover up to two months’ rent or twice your actual damages, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney fees. You can also call the Chicago Police Department, which is required to investigate self-help eviction complaints. A landlord found guilty faces fines of $200 to $500 per day the violation continues.⁹

This protection reaches tenants in buildings that are otherwise excluded from the RLTO, including owner-occupied buildings of six units or fewer.¹

Retaliation

Your landlord cannot terminate your tenancy, raise your rent, cut services, or threaten a lawsuit because you reported code violations, contacted the media or a community organization, requested repairs, joined a tenants’ union, or testified about your unit’s condition.¹⁰

If retaliation happens anyway, you can recover up to two months’ rent or twice your actual damages, whichever is greater, plus attorney fees. The ordinance also builds in a useful shortcut: if you engaged in any protected activity within the year before the landlord’s action, the court presumes the action was retaliatory, and the landlord has to prove it was not.¹⁰

Discrimination and Source of Income

Federal fair housing law bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, and disability. Chicago adds protections for source of income, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, age (over 40), ancestry, parental status, and military status, among other categories.¹¹

The source-of-income rule matters in practice because it means a landlord cannot refuse you solely because your rent will come from Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8), Social Security, veterans’ benefits, or other government assistance. Complaints go to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations.

Assistance Animals

Under federal law, an assistance animal is not a pet. It is an animal that works, provides assistance, or offers emotional support for a person with a disability. Housing providers must make reasonable accommodations for assistance animals even in buildings with no-pets policies, and they cannot charge pet deposits or fees for them.¹²

If your disability and need for the animal are not obvious, the landlord can ask for documentation from a healthcare provider confirming the disability-related need. A denial is only allowed if the specific animal is a direct threat to safety, would cause significant property damage, or the accommodation would impose an undue burden on the housing provider. A blanket no-animals policy is not itself a valid basis for denial.¹²

Military Service Members

If you receive deployment or permanent change of station orders, the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act lets you end a residential lease early without penalty. Give your landlord written notice and a copy of your orders. The lease ends 30 days after the next rent payment is due following delivery. Notice must be hand-delivered, sent by certified mail with return receipt, or shipped through a private carrier like FedEx or UPS.¹³

Do not sign a lease clause that waives these rights. Under the RLTO, lease provisions that waive tenant rights are already unenforceable, which adds a second layer of protection.

Where to Get Help

Start with a written demand to your landlord that cites the specific RLTO section. If that does not work, call 311 to request a building inspection for code violations, or contact the city’s Department of Housing for questions about deposits and landlord obligations. Discrimination complaints go to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations. Community groups like the Metropolitan Tenants Organization run tenant hotlines that can walk you through your options before you decide whether to take legal action.

1
American Legal Publishing. Municipal Code of Chicago 5-12-020 – Exclusions
2
American Legal Publishing. Municipal Code of Chicago 5-12-080 – Security Deposits
3
City of Chicago. Security Deposit Interest Rates
4
American Legal Publishing. Municipal Code of Chicago 5-12-140 – Rental Agreement
5
American Legal Publishing. Municipal Code of Chicago 5-12-070 – Landlord’s Responsibility to Maintain
6
City of Chicago. Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance
7
American Legal Publishing. Municipal Code of Chicago 5-12-050 – Landlord’s Right of Access
8
City of Chicago. Know Your Rights – Fair Notice Ordinance
9
American Legal Publishing. Municipal Code of Chicago 5-12-160 – Prohibition on Interruption of Tenant Occupancy
10
American Legal Publishing. Municipal Code of Chicago 5-12-150 – Prohibition on Retaliatory Conduct by Landlord
11
City of Chicago. Ordinances and Protected Classes
12
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Assistance Animals
13
Military OneSource. Military Clause – Terminate Your Lease Due to Deployment or PCS