The Carbondale City Council voted in its Jan. 14 meeting to postpone the vote to approve amendments to the housing code detailed in the Carbondale code of ordinances and has released a public survey for residents to give feedback on the amended ordinance. 

The revision was first discussed by city officials early in 2023 and has officially been underway since Feb. 13, 2024, but was delayed several times amid attempts to establish a working commission of Carbondale landlords and tenants to provide input, which failed due to a lack of volunteers to participate according to the city.

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The survey will be open until Wednesday, Feb. 19, and all residents of Carbondale are encouraged to give feedback. Much of the work revising the code was undertaken in part by City Attorney Jamie Snyder.

“If you look at the survey, you’ll see that most of the questions are very vague,” Snyder said. “The goal is to release a second survey with more specific questions based off of the responses to this one. We currently have about 80 responses. I’d prefer closer to 2,000, but that would be a lot to ask for.”

The original intention was for the amendments to be written under the advice of a working commission made up of equal parts landlords and tenants, but after multiple attempts to establish one, the most recent of which had three volunteers out of the required 11, the amendments were drafted by city staff instead.

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“A lot of our announcements ended up in people’s junk mail, and a lot of the responses we did get ended up in general emails that do not get checked often enough,” Snyder said. “We did get a good few responses, but not as many as the city had asked for.”

Snyder worked closely with Councilperson Adam Loos in drafting the amendments to the city code.

“What we want to do is not to affect those (landlords) who are all doing the right thing, but to give us the tools to reign in those who aren’t doing the right thing,” Loos said at the Jan. 14 City Council meeting.

Loos later repeated this sentiment, adding, “You’ve seen the boarded up buildings. If we had this 40 years ago, we wouldn’t have those today, and a few people in this room would not be in business.”

The amendments would require landlords to have an explicit reason outlined in the lease to withhold a tenant’s security deposit, such as damage to the property. The revised code would also require landlords to give an advanced notice of at least two days before entering the residence to perform maintenance, and would put a greater amount of responsibility on the landlord for their tenants’ well-being in the case that their unit is declared uninhabitable. The new code also reorganizes the chapter to group all tenant rights to a habitable unit in one place for easier reference according to Snyder.

Loos requested in the Jan. 14 meeting community feedback on regulations surrounding “contract for deed” agreements, a type of contract that functions similarly to a mortgage, where the tenant takes much more accountability for the property and pays the landlord in fixed installments until a specified amount is reached, at which point ownership of the property is transferred to the tenant. 

Under the current code, and the amendments that were in the draft at the time, defaulting on payments in this type of contract could be met with eviction regardless of how long the tenant has lived in and cared for the property, a decision that Councilperson Clare Killman expressed her concerns with.

“I work as a mediator in Illinois’ 1st Circuit doing mediations between landlords and tenants in eviction dockets throughout the lower nine counties of Illinois and I have an issue, personally and professionally, with the concept of contract for deed,“ Killman said. “In practice it winds up becoming what someone thinks is equity becoming entirely lost after it’s all said and done, and results in a near unanimous eviction with the decimation of any sweat equity that they are pouring into a property because they believe, at the end, that they will have some semblance of ownership.”

“I would prefer some provision indicating that it should follow normal foreclosure procedures,” she said.

Several members of the community were present at the Jan. 14 meeting to make their opinions on the amendments known, predominantly landlords who own or manage property in the city. One citizen in attendance, SIU alumnus Connor Sullivan, urged the council to speed up the process.

“I honestly think that this focus group is something of a red herring,” Sullivan said. “It sounds to me like there were only three (volunteers) and all three were from property owners. There wasn’t any interest from tenants, and I haven’t heard a plan to solicit input from tenants… Eleven months is more than ample opportunity,” he said. “We’ve got to get this done, especially since this is not even the last step of the council’s plan to address this issue, and there are other ordinances and measures waiting in the wings that can’t move forward until this does.”

Rolf Schilling, owner of Schilling Property Management, a Daily Egyptian advertiser, and a member of Commercial Realty Associates, expressed frustration with the attempts to assemble a working committee. 

“I know several landlords made applications, surely there should be a long line of tenants who should have applied, if they have a big enough gripe,” Schilling said. “Why are we even doing this if the tenants aren’t there to request representation or to be on the committee? The legal department stated that even after advertising on Channel 3 TV and in local newspapers for volunteers. It seems like the public, who all of you represent, are not very concerned about the revised housing ordinance.”

Adam Ashby, a representative of the Southern Illinois Democratic Socialists of America attending with a handful of other members, responded to Schilling’s concerns.

“Since the first proposal of these amendments, we have been canvassing and soliciting signatures in support of it,” Ashby said. “We currently have a little over 150 tenants who have signed on to a statement saying that they agree with the amendments and support them fully. As for why they are not at council tonight, a few of the common reasons that we have heard brought up are the fact that they may have work, if you’d ask my boss, I’m sick right now… Additionally, I have heard that some people are scared of retaliation from their landlords. We’ve heard a lot from landlords tonight, you could imagine that if you were one of their tenants, and you say something that they may infer as mean or nasty, they may seek to retaliate on you, or you may at least be afraid of that retaliation.”

A public meeting will be held to discuss the issue further once the survey has concluded, but a date has yet to be announced. A date for a future vote to approve amendments to the ordinance has also not been announced.

Staff reporter Morrigan Carey can be reached at mcarey@dailyegyptian.com. To stay up to date with all your southern Illinois news, follow the Daily Egyptian on Facebook and Twitter.

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