A New Illinois Law Protects People are Not Paying their Bills

The law, starting on January 1st, will protect people overdue on bills from having utilities turned off during certain situations. Landlords will have to pay close attention to all of these new rule changes that impact them, here are the details...

Get our free mobile app

According to KFVS, a new law in Illinois will protect people from having their utilities turned off when the weather is hot. The law which starts on January, 1st 2024, will protect the citizens who haven't paid their bills from losing services during the extremely hot weather, in the article on KFVS, they say...

"House Bill 1541 protects vulnerable residents from gas or electric utility service disconnections for nonpayment of bills when temperatures are 90 F or above, or when the National Weather Service issues an excessive heat watch, heat advisory or excessive heat warning."

What Landlords need to know

There are more laws starting in 2024 that will impact landlords besides House Bill 1541, the Effingham Daily News has an article in which they warn landlords about Senate Bill 1741 which will force landlords to provide itemized bills in the Security Deposit Return Act, and they also mention...

"Another of the measures taking effect on Jan. 1. is House Bill 2562, which requires landlords to keep the temperature of all common areas between 67 and 73 degrees."

For more information on those bills, click here!

All three of those new laws starting in Illinois are designed to protect the renter, and the billpayer as opposed to the Landlords and the Energy Companies. Do you think these laws are necessary, and do you support the changes Illinois is making to protect these citizens?

Personally, I think it will be difficult to enforce the rule on turning off service based on temperature, do landlords and companies have to base it off an "official" temperature reading, and what if one day it's 90 degrees so you don't turn it off, but the next day it is 88 degrees so you do turn off the service, and then the third day its 95 degrees, do they have to turn it back on? The other rules are fairly straightforward and protect renters, which I have no issues with.