Having an eviction record can lead to housing and loan applications being denied, and make applicants ineligible for affordable housing programs. In Illinois, landlords sometimes name minors in eviction notices.
A new bill in the final stages of approval seeks to amend eviction laws to prevent landlords from naming children in eviction notices.
“The consequences of naming a child in one of these evictions lawsuits can be serious and lifelong,” said Daniel Schneider, an attorney at Legal Action Chicago with more than a decade of expertise in economic injustice and consumer rights. Schneider told The Chicago Reporter that children as young as one year old have been named in evictions in Illinois.
“Sometimes people first learn of their evictions when they apply for Section Eight housing down the road—they learn, ‘I was evicted when I was a kid and my name’s on that court filing.’” Schneider said.
Not all evictions of families with children lead to children being named in official court records, and the exact number of children named in evictions is unknown, but data suggests that families with children are at the highest risk of eviction in Cook County.
Tenant evictions in Cook County have been climbing to nearly pre-pandemic heights, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Department’s (CCSD) latest eviction report that analyzes data from 2023. In 2023, nearly 12,000 eviction orders were served to tenants in Cook County—more than three times the eviction orders served in 2020 (3,105) and more than four times the eviction orders served in 2021 (2,714).
In Illinois, evictions are performed by county sheriff’s departments. Of those who were addressed through the Sheriff’s Office’s outreach program aimed at assisting vulnerable individuals with unmet housing needs, 513 participants fell into the client category “children,” while 247 fell into the category “clients with children.”
In Illinois, court records of evictions cases are public unless cases are sealed. It is standard practice for landlords to screen tenants before offering them a lease, and during this process background checks and screening reports can turn up records of eviction cases filed against you.
While it is possible to ask a judge to seal an eviction case, according to an online guide from Illinois Legal Aid Online (ILAO), an organization offering legal help and representation to people who can’t afford lawyers, judges typically want records to stay public.
Public record filings of evictions are scraped by private companies to build credit collections and background profiles on people, which are then sold to landlords who conduct background checks, Schneider explained.
“Every hour that these documents are out there and in the public record, risks that it worms its way into the private credit collections and background checks,” Schneider said.
Protections for minors could become even more important with the rise of legislation like crime-free housing laws in Illinois, local ordinances that effectively make it easier for landlords and police to evict tenants. Landlords exploit this power to evict families even when there is little or no evidence that a crime occurred, sometimes evicting tenants without telling them what crimes they’ve been accused of, according to New York Times reporting.
The bill passed in both houses on May 22, and will go into effect if signed by Gov. Pritzker.
“[The bill] not only makes explicit something that should be common sense—that you shouldn’t name a minor who isn’t on he lease—but also provides that if you do that, the complaint will be stricken and the file will be sealed,” Schneider said.
The bill also has provisions that protect landlords: if they do name a minor in an eviction, the landlord will then have the opportunity to refile the eviction of the proper people, just not on a public docket where a minor is named.
Assistance is available to Illinois residents who have an eviction on record or an eviction case filed against them through the Illinois Legal Aid Online (ILAO) portal. ILAO provides access to this guide to removing eviction records, which provides all necessary forms in English and Spanish.