Chicago, Illinois: habitability & repair laws

Verified August 30, 2026 Illinois habitability law →

Legislative changes ahead — not yet in force. This page reflects the law in force today. The following measure would change Chicago's landlord-tenant law:

Ordinance O2026-0026554, amending Municipal Code Chapter 5-12 (the Protecting Renters Ordinance) — A full rewrite of the Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance introduced by the Mayor. Its habitability arm is operative rather than symbolic: it would renumber the whole tenant-remedies section, raise the repair-and-deduct threshold and remove the bar that keeps the remedy from repairs costing more than one month's rent, cap the essential-services withholding, add a fine schedule for failing to maintain the premises and for failing to supply essential services, move the landlord's maintenance duty out of Section 5-12-070 into the remedies section, and create an annual registration requirement for rental units with fees by building size. Nothing in it is law, and none of its figures is stated anywhere else on this page. Status: Introduced June 29, 2026 by direct mayoral introduction and referred to the Committee on Housing and Real Estate, where it remains. The official record shows no committee or Council action of any kind since referral, and no final action date. Three competing rewrites of the same chapter carrying identical text to one another, records O2026-0027201, O2026-0027202 and O2026-0027203, were introduced July 15, 2026 by other alderpersons and referred to the Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards; all three are also still in committee. The City Council is a continuing body, so none of these measures expires with a session. (checked August 30, 2026).

In Chicago a landlord must keep the home in compliance with every applicable provision of the municipal code and promptly make the repairs that duty requires, and the ordinance backs that with repair-and-deduct, rent withholding and termination rights that reach well beyond what Illinois statutes provide.

Cited to Chicago Municipal Code § 5-12-070 (landlord's responsibility to maintain) and 16 more cited sources · Verified August 30, 2026

The city's own building requirements supply the figures: heating equipment able to hold 68 degrees Fahrenheit when it is 7 below zero outside, and, in buildings heated from a plant serving more than one unit, actual heat from September 15 to June 1 at 68 degrees during the day and 66 degrees overnight; hot water at 110 degrees at every required fixture; and set light and ventilation minimums in every habitable room. If the landlord does not fix a material problem within 14 days of written notice, the tenant may either have the work done and deduct the cost, where the reasonable cost of compliance is no more than the greater of $500 or half a month's rent and no more than one month's rent, or withhold an amount that reasonably reflects the reduced value of the unit. When heat, water, hot water, electricity, gas or plumbing fails, or a condition is an immediate danger to health and safety, the tenant can buy the service and deduct it, claim the lost rental value or take substitute housing right away, withhold after 24 hours, and terminate the lease after 72 hours, unless the failure is the utility provider's inability to supply service. Taking that essential-services route rules out the repair-and-deduct and withholding subsections, and a tenant who terminates must hand back possession within 30 days or the notice is treated as withdrawn.

Chicago habitability law at a glance

What the local law is called	Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, with Title 14X of the Municipal Code, Minimum Requirements for Existing Buildings
What it changes for a tenant here	What must be fixed · How fast · What the tenant can do · What the tenant gets
Local heat standard	Different duty types for different building or heating configurations — see details
In the published city code	Yes — cited to the published compilation

What must be fixed

Chicago states the landlord's duty in a single sentence and takes its content from the rest of the city's code: the landlord must maintain the premises in compliance with all applicable provisions of the municipal code and must promptly make any and all repairs necessary to fulfill that obligation. Section 5-12-110 then lists twenty-seven circumstances that count as material noncompliance with that duty, among them failure to provide or maintain in good working order a flush water closet, lavatory basin, bathtub or shower, or kitchen sink; failure to maintain heating facilities or gas-fired appliances as the municipal code requires; failure to provide heat or hot water in the amounts, at the levels and at the times the code requires; failure to provide hot and cold running water; failure to keep the foundation, exterior walls and roof sound and in repair, substantially watertight and protected against rodents; failure to prevent the accumulation of stagnant water; failure to exterminate insects, rodents or other pests; failure to provide adequate light or ventilation; failure to maintain and repair equipment the landlord supplies or is required to supply; and failure to keep the dwelling unit and the common areas fit and habitable. The list is expressly not exhaustive. The figures behind those phrases sit in the code's minimum requirements for existing buildings. Water heating equipment must be properly installed and maintained and capable of delivering an adequate amount of water at every required sink, lavatory, bathtub, shower and laundry facility at a minimum of 110 degrees Fahrenheit; where hot water is furnished from water heating facilities used in common, it must be supplied throughout the year; showers and shower-bath combinations must have an automatic safety mixing device preventing sudden temperature changes and temperatures above 120 degrees, and a water heater thermostat does not count as that device; and water hotter than 140 degrees may not discharge into a lavatory, bathtub or shower. Every dwelling unit must contain its own bathtub or shower, lavatory, water closet and kitchen sink, kept sanitary, safe and operational. Every habitable space must have at least one window facing directly outdoors or onto a court, glazed to at least 6 percent of the room's floor area, with exceptions for kitchens, for rooms that open widely onto an adjoining room with enough window area for both, and for spaces meeting the natural-light requirement in force when they were built or rehabilitated. Every habitable space other than a kitchen must have an openable window equal to at least one-third of that required glazed area, and every bathroom and toilet room must have an openable window equal to at least 4 percent of its floor area, mechanical ventilation, or a gravity vent flue to the roof with a clear area of at least 5 percent of the floor area and never less than 120 square inches. Common corridors and stairways in residential buildings must be adequately lighted, by daylight or artificial light, at all times the building is occupied.

The local heat standard

Chicago's heat duty splits by how the building is heated, and the split decides what the landlord actually owes. Every dwelling unit and sleeping unit must be provided with permanent heating equipment capable of maintaining 68 degrees Fahrenheit in all habitable spaces, toilet rooms and bathrooms when the outdoor temperature is 7 degrees below zero; cooking appliances, domestic water heating equipment and portable space heaters may not be used to provide that capacity. Where heat does not come from a shared plant, the owner may require the occupant to secure and pay for the energy the equipment runs on, but that does not relieve the owner of responsibility for providing functioning heating equipment. Where heat is furnished from a heating plant used in common to heat more than one unit, the duty is to supply actual warmth on a calendar: from September 15 to June 1 the units must be supplied with heat so that occupants, with all windows and exterior doors closed, can secure at least 68 degrees from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and at least 66 degrees from 10:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m., in all habitable spaces, toilet rooms and bathrooms. The owner may disengage heating equipment between those dates so long as the required minimum temperature is still maintained inside the units. One exception applies in buildings where the same facilities are used to provide both heating and cooling to the units: there the minimum is 64 degrees at all hours between September 15 and October 15 before the first date the nighttime outdoor temperature falls below 45 degrees, and again between May 1 and June 1 on or after the first date the daytime outdoor temperature exceeds 75 degrees. A tenant with an in-unit furnace or individually metered heat is covered by the equipment standard, not by the temperature calendar.

How fast

Chicago attaches its own deadlines to each remedy and they are not interchangeable. For a defect the tenant has given written notice about, the landlord has 14 days to correct it, or as promptly as conditions require in an emergency, before the tenant may have the work done and take the cost off the rent. The same 14 days runs before a tenant who has given written notice of an intention to withhold may begin deducting the stated amount from the monthly rent. Where the problem is an immediate danger to the tenant's health and safety, or a failure to supply heat, running water, hot water, electricity, gas or plumbing, two much shorter counts run from the tenant's written notice: if the landlord has not corrected the condition within 24 hours the tenant may withhold an amount reflecting the reduced value of the premises, and if the failure persists for more than 72 hours the tenant may terminate the lease by written notice. The other essential-services options carry no waiting period at all: buying the service and deducting its cost, claiming the reduction in fair rental value, and moving into substitute housing are available during the whole period of the landlord's failure, from the moment notice is given. To end a lease over a condition that renders the premises not reasonably fit and habitable, the tenant's written notice must set a termination date at least 14 days after the landlord receives it, and the landlord may cure within that period. After a termination on either route the tenant has 30 days from the end of the notice period to deliver possession; if possession is not delivered, the tenant's notice is deemed withdrawn and the lease remains in full force. Fire or casualty damage runs on its own 14-day notice periods.

What the tenant can do

The ordinance gives a Chicago tenant a set of self-help remedies that Illinois law alone does not provide. Where there is material noncompliance and the reasonable cost of compliance does not exceed the greater of $500 or one-half of the monthly rent, subsection (c) lets the tenant recover damages, or give the landlord written notice of an intention to correct the condition at the landlord's expense; if the landlord does not correct it within 14 days, or as promptly as conditions require in an emergency, the tenant may have the work done in a workmanlike manner and in compliance with existing law and building regulations and, after submitting a paid bill from an appropriate tradesman or supplier, deduct the amount from the rent, limited to that same figure and to the price then customarily charged for the work. Two limits travel with it. The dollar figure is a threshold on the reasonable cost of compliance, not an allowance to take $500 off any repair, and the subsection does not apply at all where the reasonable cost of compliance exceeds one month's rent, which puts the most expensive repairs outside it entirely. Separately, and with no dollar threshold, subsection (d) lets a tenant give written notice of an intention to withhold from the monthly rent an amount that reasonably reflects the reduced value of the premises, and begin deducting it if the landlord has not corrected the condition within 14 days. Where the material noncompliance is an immediate danger to health and safety, or the landlord fails to supply heat, running water, hot water, electricity, gas or plumbing, subsection (f) adds five options after written notice: buy reasonable amounts of the missing service and deduct the cost on presenting paid receipts to the landlord; recover damages based on the reduction in fair rental value; procure substitute housing; withhold an amount reflecting the reduced value once 24 hours have passed without a correction; or terminate the lease once the failure has persisted more than 72 hours. The withholding and the termination each carry their own carve-out, written separately into each: neither is available where the failure is due to the inability of the utility provider to provide service. Choosing this route closes off two others, and only two — a tenant who proceeds under subsection (f) may not also proceed under subsection (c) or subsection (d), while the 14-day termination right, the damages and injunctive relief provision, and the fire-or-casualty options are untouched. None of these remedies is available where the condition was caused by the deliberate or negligent act or omission of the tenant, a member of the tenant's family, or another person on the premises with the tenant's consent, and a tenant correcting something that serves more than one unit must first notify the other affected tenants and cause the work to be done with the least practical inconvenience to them.

What the tenant gets

What a Chicago tenant actually gets depends on the route taken. Under repair-and-deduct the tenant recovers the cost of the work off the rent, held to the greater of $500 or one-half of the monthly rent and to the price then customarily charged for that work. Under the failure-to-maintain route the tenant keeps an amount that reasonably reflects the reduced value of the premises, for as long as the failure continues; the ordinance sets no dollar figure and no percentage table for it, so the tenant chooses the amount and carries the risk of choosing badly. On essential services the tenant may recover what the substitute service cost, or damages measured by the reduction in the fair rental value of the unit, or the reasonable value of substitute housing up to an amount equal to the monthly rent for each month or portion of a month of noncompliance, prorated, and is excused from paying rent for the period of the landlord's noncompliance while in that substitute housing. A tenant who terminates gets back all prepaid rent and the security deposit with the interest the ordinance's deposit section requires. Damages and injunctive relief are available for any material noncompliance, by claim or as a defense, and the ordinance states that this does not preclude other relief the chapter gives the tenant.

What housing is covered

The ordinance covers rental homes in Chicago broadly, and the exclusion that matters most on repairs is for owner-occupied premises containing six units or fewer, which sit outside most of it; the ordinance's exclusions section names further arrangements that fall outside it as well. The code standards themselves reach wider than the ordinance does. The minimum requirements for existing buildings apply to dwelling units and sleeping units as such, so a tenant in an excluded owner-occupied building still lives in a building that must meet the heat, plumbing, light and ventilation figures; what that tenant lacks is the ordinance's remedies for enforcing them.

How this fits with Illinois law

Illinois has no statewide habitability statute. The duty to keep a rented home fit to live in is the implied warranty created by the Illinois Supreme Court, and the only general statutory repair remedy is a narrow repair-and-deduct right capped at the lesser of $500 or one-half of the monthly rent, which by its own terms does not reach owner-occupied property of six or fewer units. Chicago's ordinance is where most of what people call Illinois repair law actually lives: it puts the maintenance duty in writing, sets the deadlines, and supplies withholding, substitute-housing and termination rights the state statutes never gave, drawing its standards from the city's own building requirements.

Notes and caveats

Chicago's heat rule is really three rules — The familiar 68-degree-and-66-degree calendar binds only dwelling units and sleeping units heated from a heating plant used in common to heat more than one unit. A tenant with an in-unit furnace or individually metered heat is protected instead by the equipment standard, which requires permanent heating equipment able to maintain 68 degrees when it is 7 degrees below zero outdoors, plus the rule that an owner who makes the occupant pay for the fuel still owes working equipment. Anyone who says the temperature calendar applies to every Chicago rental is quoting a scope clause out of the section.
Section 13-196-410 is no longer Chicago's heat provision — A great deal of tenant guidance still cites Section 13-196-410 for Chicago's heat requirements. Chapter 13-196 now reads simply Reserved in the Municipal Code in force, so that section number no longer exists. The live provisions are Sections 14X-8-802.2, 14X-8-802.2.1 and 14X-8-802.2.2. Section 14X-8-802.3.2 is not a substitute either: it is the twin provision for indoor occupiable work spaces and speaks of workers and the period the space is occupied, not of homes.
Repair-and-deduct is a threshold, not a $500 allowance — The greater of $500 or one-half of the monthly rent is a test on the reasonable cost of compliance that decides whether the repair-and-deduct subsection is available at all, and the deduction is then held to that same figure and to the customary price for the work. The subsection also does not apply where the reasonable cost of compliance exceeds one month's rent, so a repair can be too expensive for the remedy rather than merely partly recoverable. Guidance that says a Chicago tenant may deduct up to $500 for any repair has the mechanism backwards.
Terminating and leaving are two different steps — Under both the 14-day termination right and the 72-hour essential-services termination, a tenant who terminates must deliver possession of the unit within 30 days after the notice period ends. If possession is not delivered in that window, the ordinance treats the tenant's notice as withdrawn and the lease remains in full force, which can leave a tenant who thought the tenancy was over still liable on it.
The state cap and the city threshold run in opposite directions — Illinois caps its statutory repair-and-deduct at the lesser of $500 or one-half of the monthly rent. Chicago uses the greater of the same two figures. For a rent under $1,000 the two rules point to different numbers, and the city's route also carries the separate one-month-rent bar the state statute does not have.
The list of material noncompliance is not numbered in the published code — Section 5-12-110's twenty-seven circumstances are printed in the published code as an unnumbered run of paragraphs, so this page describes the items rather than citing them by number. Numbering that appears in secondary summaries comes from the printed ordinance, and the numbers are not interchangeable between sources; the safest citation is to the section as a whole.
The published code can run behind the City Council — Two ordinances amending Chapter 5-12 have passed the City Council since the most recent amendment shown anywhere in the published chapter, and neither appears in the code as published. Neither concerns repairs or habitability, and neither touches Section 5-12-070 or Section 5-12-110, so nothing on this page turns on them. The date on this page reflects the City Clerk's record of enacted measures as well as the code edition.
Enforcement of these rights is the tenant's own — The ordinance's habitability machinery is a set of remedies the tenant exercises directly against the landlord; the chapter itself creates no city office, fine schedule or inspection cycle for repairs. Complaints to city departments about building-code violations are handled outside this chapter, and this page does not state that process.
Which exclusions this page states — The exclusion set out above is the one that decides most repair questions: owner-occupied premises of six units or fewer sit outside most of the ordinance. The ordinance's exclusions section names further arrangements that fall outside it, which this page does not set out one by one; a tenant whose occupancy is not an ordinary residential lease should read that section before relying on the remedies described here.
Where the court decisions sit — This page states the ordinance and the building requirements it pulls in. The court decisions that create the underlying duty in Illinois are Illinois Supreme Court cases, and they are set out on the Illinois page; no Chicago-specific decision is relied on here.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Chicago, Illinois: habitability & repair laws (verified August 30, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/habitability/illinois/chicago/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified).

Citations

Chicago Municipal Code § 5-12-070 (landlord's responsibility to maintain) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 5-12-110 (tenant remedies: the material-noncompliance list and subsections (a) through (g)) · (a), (c), (d), (e), (f), (g) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 5-12-020 (exclusions from the ordinance) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-8-802.2 (residential occupancies; heating equipment capable of 68 degrees at 7 below zero) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-8-802.2.1 (source of energy; owner still owes functioning heating equipment) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-8-802.2.2 (heat to be provided; common heating plant, September 15 to June 1) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-9-902.1 (required fixtures in every dwelling unit) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-9-905.2 (hot or tempered water; no discharge above 140 degrees) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-9-905.2.1 (showers; automatic safety mixing device, 120 degrees) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-9-905.5 (water heating equipment; 110 degrees at every required fixture) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-9-905.5.1 (hot water to be provided throughout the year from common facilities) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-6-602.2 (light in habitable spaces; 6 percent glazing) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-6-602.3 (lighting of common corridors and stairways) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-6-603.2 (ventilation of habitable spaces; openable window area) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code § 14X-6-603.3 (ventilation of bathrooms and toilet rooms) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago Municipal Code, Title 13 chapter list (Chapter 13-196 shown as Reserved) (verified 2026) Official source
Chicago City Council record O2026-0026554 (ordinance amending Municipal Code Chapter 5-12, introduced June 29, 2026) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the Municipal Code of Chicago as published by the city's code publisher at supplement 2026 S-73, current through the Council Journal of March 18, 2026. Chapter 5-12, the Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, was read section by section, all 24 sections with every history line, including the complete texts of Sections 5-12-070 and 5-12-110. Chapter 14X-8 (heating and mechanical systems), Chapter 14X-9 (plumbing systems and fixtures) and Chapter 14X-6 (light and ventilation) were read section by section with their history lines, and the Title 13 chapter list was read for the present status of Chapter 13-196. Currency was verified against the City Clerk's own legislative record rather than the code edition alone: every legislative matter for file years 2021 through 2026 was enumerated and reviewed for measures amending Chapter 5-12, which showed two passed ordinances not yet appearing in the published chapter, neither touching Section 5-12-070 or Section 5-12-110, and no enacted change to either section since 1991 and 2017 respectively. The introduced text of the mayor's proposed rewrite of Chapter 5-12 and its record of committee action were read from the City Clerk's legislative system.

This page records Chicago's local law on habitability and repairs. The statewide position — Illinois requires landlords to keep rented homes habitable, but the duty comes from the courts rather than from a statute: the Illinois Supreme Court created an implied warranty of habitability in 1972 and has since applied it to every residential lease in the state, whether or not the town has a housing code. — lives on the Illinois habitability page with its own citations and verification date.