How to End a Tenancy in the Jackson Park Pilot Area

If you own rental property in Woodlawn or South Shore, City Hall quietly rewrote your exit rules. In September 2025, the City Council passed the Jackson Park housing ordinance, the South Side's answer to the Obama Presidential Center's $3.1 billion gravity, and it changed two things every landlord in the area needs to know before ending any tenancy: no-fault terminations, non-renewals, and rent increases now require up to 180 days' notice, and since April 2026, selling a tenant-occupied building means offering it to your tenants first. Miss either rule and the tenancy you thought you ended keeps running on the old terms, or your sale contract acquires a legal cloud.

Fair warning before we start: this is one of the most confusingly drafted ordinances I've read in twelve years of practice, and I read zoning code for fun. Let's untangle it.

First, the Name Problem (Yes, the Ordinance Is Confusing on Purpose-Adjacent Levels)

The new notice rules live at Municipal Code § 5-12-135, titled the "Jackson Park Expanded Fair Notice Pilot Program." Except subsection (g) of the same section calls it the "South Shore Expanded Fair Notice Pilot Program," a drafting leftover so obvious that the code publisher attached an editor's note saying the intended language "is likely 'Jackson Park'" and that future legislation will fix it. Meanwhile, the companion purchase program was grafted onto the old Woodlawn ordinance chapter from 2020, and the City posts its official rules in a web folder labeled for the Northwest Side preservation ordinance. Same program, four neighborhood names, none of which is a map. So here is the actual map, which is the only thing that matters:

The pilot area is bounded by 60th Street (north), Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive (west), South Chicago Avenue (southwest), 71st Street (south), and South DuSable Lake Shore Drive (east). In neighborhood terms: Woodlawn, the western half of South Shore, and a corner of Greater Grand Crossing: the blocks ringing Jackson Park and the Obama Center, in Wards 5, 6, and 20. If your building is inside that box, both programs below apply to you. If it isn't, the ordinary citywide rules in my Chicago evictions guide govern and you can stop reading (though the ordinance's authors assume this area is a preview of city policy, and I agree).

Rule One: The 90/120/180-Day Notice Ladder

Everywhere else in Chicago, the Fair Notice ordinance (RLTO § 5-12-130(j)) requires 30, 60, or 120 days' notice to terminate, non-renew, or raise rent, depending on tenancy length. Inside the pilot area, § 5-12-135 supersedes those tiers for covered leases:

• Tenancy of one year or less: 90 days' written notice;
• Tenancy of more than 12 months up to three years: 120 days' written notice;
• Tenancy over three years: 180 days' written notice.

Each tier applies before terminating a periodic tenancy, declining to renew a fixed-term lease, or increasing the rent. Read that last item again: a rent increase on a ten-year tenant in South Shore now requires six months' written notice. For a landlord used to the citywide 30-day floor, the shortest pilot-area window is triple the notice you grew up on.

Which leases are covered: the section applies to leases within the pilot area "beginning on or after the effective date," which was 60 days after the September 25, 2025 passage, so roughly Thanksgiving 2025. Leases that predate it arguably remain under the citywide 30/60/120 tiers until they renew; whether a renewal "begins" a new covered lease is exactly the kind of question this ordinance doesn't answer, so my standing advice is the conservative one: once any new term starts after late November 2025, give the pilot-area notice. Being generous with notice costs you weeks; being wrong costs you the whole notice period again.

The penalty for getting it wrong is the same structure as citywide Fair Notice, supersized: an under-noticed tenant may stay, on their existing terms and at their existing rent, for up to 180, 120, or 30 days (tiered by lease length) from the date you finally give proper notice, no matter what your defective notice said. On a long-tenancy non-renewal, a botched notice can cost you most of a year of the old rent.

The sunset: the pilot self-repeals three years after its effective date and no later than January 31, 2029, unless the Council extends or expands it. The Department of Housing owes the Council a report with recommendations on taking the requirements citywide; file that under "things to watch."

What the Pilot Does NOT Change

This matters as much as the new rules. Section 5-12-135 modifies only the no-fault pathways. Inside the pilot area, exactly as everywhere else in Chicago:

• Nonpayment: the 5-day notice under § 5-12-130(a) works normally (including the tenant's one-time right to cure).
• Lease violations: the 10-day breach notice under § 5-12-130(b) works normally, including for refusing you lawful access.
• Abandonment: the RLTO abandonment rules are untouched.

In other words, the pilot raises the price of ending a tenancy without a reason. Tenancies that end for cause still end on the ordinary timeline, through the ordinary Illinois eviction process. One caution: as notice periods stretch to six months, the temptation to "find" a for-cause ground grows, and so does the tenant bar's scrutiny of it. A thin breach case served where a 180-day notice was owed will read as pretext, and it invites the retaliation presumption if there's any complaint history in the file. Pick your ground honestly and paper it.

Rule Two: Selling? Your Tenants Get First Crack (TOPA)

The second half of the ordinance rewrote Municipal Code chapter 5-10 into the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Jackson Park Pilot Program: same boundary, effective April 6, 2026 per the Department of Housing's rules. If ending the tenancy is step one of your plan to sell, this is now part of ending the tenancy:

• Coverage is broad. The Department reads the codified program to cover essentially any occupied rental property in the area, expressly including renter-occupied single-family homes and condos. The exclusions are narrow: government-assisted housing, institutional housing, and CHA units. (An earlier draft limited the program to 10-plus-unit buildings; that limit did not survive.)
• Before you list: you must deliver a Notice of Intent to Sell to every tenant and to the Department: 60 days before listing for buildings with five or more units, 30 days for one to four units, on the Department's forms, in the languages your tenants read. The clock doesn't start until compliant delivery, so sloppy notice tolls your own sale.
• When you have a deal: a third-party contract you intend to accept triggers the tenants' right of first refusal: notice to the tenants or their association, who then have statutory windows to match the price. Tenants can form an association (75% of occupied units; 50% in buildings of four or fewer) or assign their rights to a third party, including a nonprofit.
• The traps: "sale" includes transferring a majority interest in the owning entity (selling your LLC is selling the building) and leasing the property for more than seven years. Price cuts of 10% or more and other material changes can restart tenant rights. Plan the contract timeline around the notice windows or your buyer's financing contingency will expire inside them.

If this structure sounds familiar, it's because the Northwest Side got there first; I covered that program's right of first refusal in my Block 606 article. The Jackson Park version is its South Side sibling, and the direction of travel is clear: TOPA-style programs are how Chicago now responds to any neighborhood with rising values.

The Landlord's Pilot-Area Checklist

• Screen the address first. 60th to 71st, King Drive to the lake. Every termination, non-renewal, rent increase, or listing decision starts with this map check.
• Calendar backwards. A December 31 lease expiration for a four-year tenant needs notice by July 4. Long-tenancy non-renewal decisions in the pilot area are now summer decisions, not autumn ones.
• Serve Fair-Notice-style paper, properly. Written notice, delivered in a provable way, stating the termination or increase date. My free notice forms are in the eviction resources library.
• Audit before any no-fault ending: repair-request history (retaliation exposure), lease start date (which tier applies), and whether the tenancy is really the thing you want to end; sometimes the rent increase with 180 days' notice beats the vacancy.
• Selling: build TOPA into the deal calendar before signing a listing agreement, and disclose the program to your broker and buyer on day one.

My flat fees don't change inside the pilot: $1,600 for a Chicago eviction, contested trials included, with the full cost breakdown in what an eviction lawyer costs. What changes is the value of getting the notice right the first time: in this zip code, a do-over costs half a year.

Frequently Asked Questions

What area does Chicago's Jackson Park housing pilot cover?

The box bounded by 60th Street (north), Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive (west), South Chicago Avenue (southwest), 71st Street (south), and South DuSable Lake Shore Drive (east): Woodlawn, western South Shore, and a slice of Greater Grand Crossing around the Obama Presidential Center, in Wards 5, 6, and 20. The same boundary governs both the notice rules and the tenant purchase program.

How much notice must I give to end a tenancy or raise rent in the pilot area?

For covered leases: 90 days (tenancy of one year or less), 120 days (more than 12 months up to three years), or 180 days (over three years) before terminating a periodic tenancy, non-renewing a fixed-term lease, or raising the rent, superseding the citywide 30/60/120 Fair Notice tiers. The pilot covers leases beginning on or after its late-November 2025 effective date and sunsets no later than January 31, 2029.

Can I still evict for nonpayment or lease violations in the pilot area?

Yes, unchanged. The pilot touches only no-fault endings and rent increases. The 5-day nonpayment notice and 10-day breach notice under RLTO § 5-12-130(a) and (b) work exactly as they do citywide, and the abandonment rules are unaffected.

Do I have to offer my building to my tenants before selling it in Jackson Park?

Since April 6, 2026, in most cases yes. The TOPA pilot requires advance Notice of Intent to Sell to tenants and the Department of Housing (60 days for 5+ units, 30 days for 1 to 4 units) before listing, and gives tenants a right of first refusal to match a contract you intend to accept. It reaches renter-occupied single-family homes and condos, and selling the LLC that owns the building (or signing a lease over seven years) counts as a sale.