ALBANY PARK — Apartments owned by embattled Northwest Side landlord Gary Carlson will get new management and security as Carlson has been ordered to resolve code violations at dozens of buildings by early next year.
The agreement is part of a settlement to resolve 72 building court cases the city filed against Carlson.
Carlson owns about 60 buildings with 500 apartments in and around Albany Park and Irving Park, according to a 2016 investigation by the Sun-Times and the Better Government Association. Carlson’s buildings have logged hundreds of code violations over the years, and he has been on the city’s building code scofflaw list since 2021.
The agreement requires Carlson to hire Kale Realty, a professional management company, to oversee 13 buildings. Alds. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez (33rd) and Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), whose wards include Carlson’s buildings, helped choose the buildings that would get the new oversight along with officials from the Chicago Police Department and the city’s law department, according to a statement.
“I am deeply proud of all the work we have done alongside the 35th Ward office, all the government agencies, Autonomous Tenants Union and community that lead to these outcomes,” Rodriguez-Sanchez said. “This is a clear example of how we collaborate and take action to hold landlords accountable and protect tenants in our community.”
Carlson said he welcomes some of the mandated improvements but criticized the city for the terms of the settlement, calling some of the required updates a “tremendous waste of money.”
The contract with Kale Realty has already begun. The firm will oversee the general management of the 13 buildings and be the point of contact for tenants, officials said.
Additionally, the police department will install new cameras at 11 of Carlson’s buildings and provide an overnight call service for reporting emergencies, officials said.
The landlord must also “remedy violations at all of his occupied properties” by Feb. 15, 2025, officials said.
The city has issued more than 500 building violations at property’s Carlson owns since 2008, according to city records.
Those have included smoke detectors that don’t work; broken, missing or defective window panes; noxious odors permeating apartments and large cracks in walls and ceilings, among other complaints, according to records.
Carlson has previously said he addresses most violations at his buildings once he’s notified of them and has a “file cabinet” full of documents from the cases.
Carlson blasted the settlement in an interview with Block Club.
“They’re singling me out for all these building code violations. I won’t say that some of them weren’t beneficial. I really appreciated some, but a lot of them were just a tremendous waste of money,” Carlson told Block Club. “They’ve given me a massive homework assignment, which my foolish lawyer has agreed to and forced me into doing for them.”
One change from the settlement he welcomes is new security cameras to help address “squatters” he said are plaguing his apartment buildings. But overall, the settlement’s stipulations are unreasonably expensive for “one little landlord” to afford all at once, he said.
“My attorney that represented me, I would never use him again. If I could put the pages back on the calendar, I never would have hired him to do this job to begin with,” Carlson said. “I’m just an ordinary guy. If they force me into doing some of these things and I have to sell my buildings to pay for it, do you think the new owner is going to keep these as affordable housing?”
Carlson is also unhappy he has to present Kale Realty and other city officials with information about his properties and pay for a call service for his tenants, he said.
Carlson previously told Block Club he’s available for 30 minutes a day, four days a week — 8-8:30 a.m. Monday through Thursday — for maintenance calls to his office phone. He’s also available anytime via text.
“For the last 20 years, that’s worked out. The only time it doesn’t work is when tenants don’t call between 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. and then accuse me of not doing what I should be doing,” Carlson said. “But if they call it the right time, by God, I’m right there for them for whatever they need.”
Tenants have told Block Club that Carlson and his employees frequently ignore their calls and messages.
When Carlson and his staff do respond to calls or texts, they are disrespectful, try to gaslight tenants into thinking there isn’t an issue or flat out yell at them for complaining, neighbors said.
“Dealing with Gary Carlson on a regular basis, man, I had to become more and more combative every day,” Thelia Stennis, a former tenant, said in December. “Yes, I’m a strong Black woman. But damn, I’d be tired sometimes. It’s exhausting being strong every day. It’s exhausting having to argue with somebody every day.”
Carlson’s current and former tenants told Block Club last year that they didn’t want the city to reach a settlement with the landlord, arguing it would let him continue taking advantage of people. They wanted him barred from managing buildings due to his history of neglect and unsafe conditions.
Besides the code violations, Carlson has faced criticism for lax security of his properties. A firefighter was shot near one of his buildings in 2020, a 27-year-old woman was fatally shot inside another one of Carlson’s buildings that same month and the police raided a third building in 2021 in a drug investigation.
Rodriguez-Sanchez and Ramirez-Rosa convened a task force in 2021 to investigate and hold Carlson Properties accountable, officials said.
As part of that inquiry, current and former tenants created the Fair Tenants Union and joined with the Autonomous Tenants Union, Metropolitan Tenants Organization and Albany Park Organizing Committee.
Advocacy by Carlson’s tenants over his neglectful property management led to the Chicago Housing Authority adding Carlson to its Do Not Lease list through at least 2025, though this did not immediately cancel every existing voucher contract with Carlson.
“Our residents deserve to have a responsible landlord, and Carlson tenants deserve a safe and dignified place to live,” Ramirez-Rosa said in a statement about the settlement. “I want to thank the many residents and tenants who worked with our offices to report violations and organized with their neighbors to make their communities and buildings safer.”
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