Mayor Johnson's Protecting Renters Ordinance and the aldermanic counter-proposal FAIR are both in committee — one requires just-cause eviction with up to $10,000 in relocation assistance, the other drops just cause and nearly doubles the small-landlord exemption. Neither side has publicly locked down the 26 votes needed for passage.

Two competing visions for Chicago's tenant law are before the City Council, with a September floor vote expected — and the fate of just-cause eviction hanging over the 600,000-plus renters who make up more than half the city's households.

Mayor Brandon Johnson filed the Protecting Renters Ordinance (No. O-2026-0026554) on June 25; the Committee on Housing and Real Estate — chaired by Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward) — heard it June 29. PRO would require landlords to state a reason before declining to renew a lease and, for larger landlords invoking no-fault grounds, pay the departing tenant the greater of $10,000 or ten months' rent in relocation assistance. Smaller no-fault displacements carry lower floors: $5,000 or five months' rent for condo conversions, major repairs, or owner-move-ins; $3,000 or three months' rent for owner-occupants of two-to-six-flats. The proposal also caps application fees at $20, limits security deposits to one month's rent, requires landlord registration at $20 to $60 per unit, and creates a new Bureau of Rental Housing Services. An LLC ownership-disclosure requirement and a right-to-counsel program are also included.

Members of the Budget Accountability Coalition — the bloc that derailed Johnson's 2026 budget — responded mid-July with the Fair and Accountable Illinois Rental Ordinance, or FAIR. Sixteen of the coalition's 31 members signed on as co-sponsors at introduction, per Block Club Chicago; Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward), FAIR's lead sponsor, told WBEZ the group now includes 23 of roughly 30 alders who opposed the mayor's failed corporate-tax pitch. FAIR drops just-cause requirements entirely and would expand the small-landlord exemption — currently covering owner-occupied buildings with six or fewer units — to any landlord holding up to 12 rental units citywide, with no owner-occupancy condition. Housing advocates told WBEZ and Block Club that the change would strip renters in 7-to-12-unit buildings of security-deposit dispute rights, foreclosure protections, fire-damage compensation, and the one-time right to cure an eviction proceeding — all protections those tenants currently hold under the 1986 Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance. FAIR's application fee cap is $50; it also eliminates the proposed Bureau of Rental Housing Services.

The committee structure is itself a story. PRO sits with Sigcho-Lopez's Housing and Real Estate Committee; FAIR was referred to the Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards — which Villegas chairs, a post he assumed in April 2026 following a months-long Council impasse over the seat, according to Block Club Chicago. Villegas has declined to commit to advancing FAIR on the same September timeline the Johnson administration is pushing, telling Block Club his coalition's backers deserve the same extended period of deliberation the mayor's ordinance received. Twenty-six votes are required for passage; neither side has publicly locked down that count.

Both ordinances remain in committee as of July 27. The last time the Council passed a sweeping renters' rights law was 1986 — before bidding wars, fee stacking, and LLC landlord structures that tenants routinely cannot penetrate when repairs go unaddressed. The MRLTO's small-landlord exemption, written when the city looked different, is now the fault line both ordinances are fighting over, with one side drawing it at six units and the other at twelve.