Current and former tenants suing OHA claim the public housing provider illegally overcharged them for rent, denied them the right to contest rent hikes and sought to boot them when they could not pay.
The seed for the lawsuit came from former Creighton clinic director Kate Mahern, a veteran attorney who previously sued OHA in federal court four times. “My rent should have stayed the same for the whole six years because they never let me dispute it,” Moses said on Thursday. “I just feel I got robbed.”
The housing authority charges a “minimum rent” of $50 a month to tenants with no or very low incomes, butand OHA’s own policies say the agency must grant a “hardship exemption” to families unable to pay the minimum rent. Bush sold her plasma to stay up with her rent bill but had to stop after her blood’s iron level fell below acceptable levels, the lawsuit says.last year that required the Chicago Housing Authority to give qualifying tenants rent credits and to erase unpaid minimum rent charges going back years.