Mariela Arteaga had done nothing wrong. She paid her rent on time every month. It didn't stop a bank from pressing her to move out of her apartment.

"The bank has come to my house twice offering me $3,000 to move out," Arteaga said. "I told them I have a lease till the end of the year, but they didn't care."

How could Arteaga, a renter with no mortgage, become a victim of the foreclosure crisis rampaging through many of Chicago's neighborhoods -- including Mount Greenwood and Morgan Park?

It was cases like Arteaga's that prompted Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart two years ago to temporarily suspend evictions of tenants who had not been notified by their landlord that their building was in foreclosure.

Dart, a likely mayoral candidate, said the problem is no longer limited to areas previously targeted by sub prime lenders.

"We have been finding ourselves migrating more into much more high end areas now," he said. "It's almost as if those [lower income homes] have been foreclosed on and now it's gone into high end areas."

Upon receiving an eviction order, Dart said he and his deputies post informative fliers on tenants' doors four to five weeks in advance of the deadline to vacate.

"We're very direct," he said. "We lay it all out. "Here's what's happening. Here's the number you need to call."

But how effective has this policy actually been in preventing the predatory tactics of banks? As in cases like Arteaga's, where the bank contacts the tenant directly, there is no way for Dart to intervene before the fact.

On top of that, despite a slight decline, eviction figures remain high. A spokesperson for the Cook County Sheriff's Office said the office received 15, 366 eviction filings in 2008 and 13, 854 in 2009.

In a city where over 50% of residents rent, those numbers have serious implications. But Dart said more available options have eased the process.

"We've managed, I think, to address all those scenarios by this really intense effort on the front end," he said. "Once we have engaged someone and let them know what their rights are, they now know where to go and they can go early enough where they can intervene the case."

Some experts say the pressure applied to tenants in foreclosure cases stems from the fact that banks are no longer the only party involved on the other side of the process. Because banks now sell their loans to multiple investors, who then hire loan servicers as middlemen, tenants are forced to answer to more entities.

Ian Glassford, vice president of Chase Bank in Ann Arbor, said working with tenants is not bankers' forte.

"Banks do not make great landlords," he said. "It's not their business. They're in the business of lending money to people who will hopefully pay them back." Glassford added, "We're doing what we can to help people out."

As for Dart, he said what banks initially perceived as radical, anti-banking politics have become a source of more cooperative discourse.

"I was trying to make some changes in Springfield, and it was made clear to me that if I was pushing the cure for cancer, I wouldn't be able to get it passed," he said. "There was some stigma that we were against the banks which wasn't the case. I wasn't trying to reinvent the system. We just needed a level of due process."

by Justin Saper
MEDILL NEWS SERVICE