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Author: Mark Ainely | Partner GC Realty & Development & Co-Host Straight Up Chicago Investor Podcast
Most people don't even realize that even though Oak Park sits inside Cook County, if you own a rental property there you don't actually follow the county's rulebook. You follow Oak Park's own Residential Tenant and Landlord Ordinance, a local law the village has run since before most of suburban Cook County had any tenant landlord ordinance at all. I talk to investors constantly who assume that because they know the Cook County RTLO, they know Oak Park. They don't, and that gap has cost people money.
If you own, manage, or are thinking about buying a rental in Oak Park, here is what actually separates it from the rest of suburban Cook County, where the rules came from, and what changed as recently as last November.
If part of what's on your mind is simply what an Oak Park property could rent for once you've got compliance handled, our free rental analysis will give you a real number to work from.
Key Takeaways
-Oak Park runs its own Residential Tenant and Landlord Ordinance under home rule authority. It is not simply covered by the Cook County RTLO like most other suburbs.
-Oak Park's landlord tenant framework traces back to the village's 1968 Fair Housing Ordinance, one of the first in the country, passed in response to a local civil rights fight over discriminatory real estate practices.
-Oak Park requires its own municipal rental license and condo registration. Most suburban Cook County towns have no such requirement unless the property sits in unincorporated Cook County.
-Late fees, security deposit holding requirements, and the deposit cap itself are essentially identical to Cook County's ordinance. Those aren't places where Oak Park differs.
-Ordinance 25 154, adopted in November 2025, added a mandatory in person fair housing training requirement for owners, agents, and property managers.
-The same ordinance added a rental assistance disclosure requirement and a formal license revocation and transfer process for problem properties.
Oak Park Doesn't Follow the County. It Never Really Did.
When the Cook County Board passed the Residential Tenant Landlord Ordinance in January 2021, it automatically covered almost every suburb in Cook County. No village board vote required. If your property sat in Skokie, Berwyn, or Palatine, you woke up one day in June 2021 under new rules whether your village did anything or not.
Oak Park was different. Along with Chicago and, historically, Evanston and Mount Prospect, Oak Park already had its own tenant landlord ordinance on the books, so the county's law didn't just fall on top of it. Oak Park's Village Board formally adopted its own version on July 19, 2021, layering in local provisions the county law didn't cover: the village's own occupancy standards, its property maintenance code, and its heat provision code. If you're an investor who owns in both Oak Park and, say, Forest Park or River Forest next door, you are not managing under the same rulebook even though the properties might be a five minute drive apart.
Where This Actually Came From
Oak Park's rental rules didn't start as a landlord compliance measure. They started as a civil rights fight, and that history is worth knowing if you own property there.
In the mid 1960s, Oak Park was almost entirely white, and local real estate agents were routinely steering Black buyers and renters away from the village, the same practice that had already resegregated neighboring Austin on Chicago's West Side. Community members, Black and white, organized weekly marches down Lake Street to the doors of local real estate offices, carrying signs referencing discriminatory practices that traced back to the founding of the local board of realtors in 1917. After years of organizing and a genuinely contested political fight, including opponents who tried to force a village wide referendum to block it, the Village Board passed Oak Park's Fair Housing Ordinance on May 6, 1968, by a 5 to 2 vote, a month after the federal Fair Housing Act. It banned discrimination in home and apartment sales, rentals, advertising, and financing, and it outlawed panic peddling, the practice of scaring white homeowners into quick, below market sales by warning them the neighborhood was "changing."
That ordinance created the village's Community Relations Commission, and out of that same era came the framework that eventually became the modern landlord tenant code. By the late 1960s, roughly half of Oak Park's population lived in multifamily rental buildings, and there was no shared set of rules governing how landlords and tenants were supposed to deal with each other. A committee made up of landlords, tenants, and realtors worked with the village's Community Relations Department to draft what became Chapter 12's Residential Tenant and Landlord Ordinance, the same chapter that governs rentals in Oak Park today.
The point for an investor is this: Oak Park's rental code was never built purely around habitability and late fees the way most municipal rental ordinances are. It was built, from the start, around fair housing enforcement, and that DNA still shows up in how the village writes and amends the ordinance today.
Where Oak Park Actually Matches Cook County
Before getting into what's different, it's worth being straight about what isn't. Investors who manage in both Oak Park and elsewhere in suburban Cook County sometimes assume every provision reads differently once you cross into the village. On the rules landlords check most often, that's not true.
Late fees use the identical formula. Oak Park caps late fees at $10 if rent is $1,000 or below, or $10 plus 5% of the amount over $1,000. That's the same structure, same numbers, as the Cook County RTLO.
The security deposit cap is the same amount. Oak Park caps security deposits at 1.5 times monthly rent, the identical cap used in the Cook County RTLO. This isn't a local number Oak Park came up with on its own.
Security deposit holding requirements are essentially the same. Oak Park requires the deposit held in a federally insured account at an Illinois financial institution, separate from the landlord's own funds, with the institution's name disclosed to the tenant in writing and any transfer to a new account disclosed as well. That mirrors the county's requirements almost word for word, right down to both ordinances stating a landlord may charge a deposit but isn't required to.
The core remedies and notice periods track the county's model too. Lockout protections, the 30-day deposit return window, the 5-day notice for nonpayment of rent, and the 2 times damages plus attorney's fees penalty for security deposit violations all match what you'd expect under the county ordinance.
Knowing where the two overlap matters as much as knowing where they don't. It means you don't have to rebuild your entire compliance process from scratch for an Oak Park property, only the pieces covered in the next section.
What's Actually Different From Cook County's Rules
If you're used to operating under the plain Cook County RTLO, here's where Oak Park adds its own layer on top:
You need an actual Oak Park rental license. This is the biggest practical difference. The Cook County RTLO doesn't require a village level rental license anywhere it applies. Cook County itself only requires a rental license for buildings of four or more units, and only in unincorporated Cook County. Oak Park is incorporated and requires its own municipal rental license and condo registration for rental property in the village, administered through the village's own Pay Online portal, separate from anything the county does.
Fair housing training is now mandatory, and it has to be in person for some roles. This one came directly out of the village's own testing. The HOPE Fair Housing Center ran an independent investigation for the village and found that intake processes at several Oak Park housing providers were discriminating against applicants using housing voucher assistance. That report led directly to Ordinance 25 154, adopted in November 2025, which requires property owners, designated agents, and property managers to complete in person fair housing training. Illinois REALTORS pushed back hard on an earlier draft that would have applied training and penalty requirements to every employee of a management company, including maintenance staff, and the final ordinance narrowed that scope, though staff and contractors still need some form of fair housing education.
You now have to disclose rental assistance resources. Landlords must provide tenants with information on local rental assistance resources at move in or when the lease is executed. This isn't a Cook County requirement.
There's a real license revocation and transfer process now. The same ordinance formalized how the village suspends or revokes a rental license for a negligent property manager, and it clarified how a license transfers when a rental property changes hands, which matters if you're buying an occupied rental in the village and assumed the license just carries over automatically.
If you own in Oak Park and you've been treating your compliance checklist as "whatever Cook County requires," you are very likely missing the license and now the training requirement.
FAQ
Does the Cook County RTLO apply to my Oak Park rental at all? Only as a backstop. Where the Oak Park RTLO doesn't address something, the village directs landlords back to the Cook County RTLO and Illinois landlord tenant law. But for anything the Oak Park ordinance does cover, and it covers most of what matters, the village's own rules control.
Do I need a separate rental license for a condo unit I rent out in Oak Park? Yes. Oak Park requires rental license and condo registration for rental units, and it's handled through the village directly, not the county.
Is the fair housing training a one time class or ongoing? As of early 2026, the village was still finalizing implementation details, including the training curriculum and how often it needs to be repeated. If you own in Oak Park, check with the village's Neighborhood Services Division directly before you assume a single session covers you indefinitely.
Does this affect Section 8 or voucher holders specifically? Yes, directly. The HOPE Fair Housing Center testing that led to this ordinance specifically found discrimination against applicants using housing voucher assistance during intake. If your leasing process treats voucher applicants any differently than any other applicant, that is exactly the practice this ordinance was written to catch.
Is Oak Park's rental license the same thing as the RTLO? No. The rental license is a separate administrative requirement tied to owning and operating a rental unit in the village. The RTLO is the substantive law governing your relationship with the tenant. You need to comply with both.
Don't Go At This Alone
Rules like these are exactly why "I didn't know the village required that" is one of the most expensive sentences a landlord can say. Oak Park is one of over 100 municipalities across Chicagoland where we manage rental property, and every one of them has its own version of this story, its own local wrinkle layered on top of county and state law. At GC Realty & Development, our team tracks these changes because our owners can't afford not to know them. We manage roughly 1,500 units across the Chicago area, and staying ahead of exactly this kind of local compliance shift is a core part of what we do every day.
My own approach to this business has never been to sell people on a service they don't need. I'd rather give landlords the real picture, even when it's more complicated than they'd like, so they can make a good decision with their eyes open. If you own in Oak Park, or you're looking at buying there, we're glad to walk through what it actually takes to stay compliant.
Related reading:
-What Cities Are Part of the New Cook County Residential Tenant Landlord Ordinance (RTLO)
-Chicago's Fair Notice Ordinance Explained
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