For the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance, which is an alliance of several small Chicagoland area property owner groups, allowing for the cases to move forward is a step in the right direction.

“Just because we can evict doesn’t mean we want to,” Michael Glasser, president of the NBOA, said in a news release. “Housing providers don’t want to go through the long and painful legal process of eviction, especially when they have the opportunity to receive rental assistance. However, having the ability to evict is an important tool. Often, invoking the eviction process brings a tenant to the table, resulting in productive negotiations.”

One issue facing housing providers, according to the NBOA, is the fact that assistance is available only to current tenants at the time of filing. So if someone didn’t pay rent for several months but moved out prior to filing a declaration, a landlord could not apply for assistance for that tenant.

As well, a poll of NBOA members showed that for the applications filled out by landlords, about a third of them did not receive confirmation by tenants.

Other landlord groups have warned that while the governor’s order protects those earning up to $99,000, assistance is available to only those earning 80 percent of the Area Median Income, which equates to $38,000-$52,000 depending on the region.