In its latest legal salvo, the City of Chicago is seeking to consolidate thousands of debts it says are held by a north suburban woman and real estate companies tied to her, dubbing them “extreme scofflaws” for amassing millions of dollars in unpaid rat-related tickets.
The city is asking a judge to combine all of the debts into one so that all the judgments can be “pursued together in the most efficient manner possible,” according to court records.
The filings allege altogether that the woman, Northbrook resident Suzie B. Wilson, and her 27 companies owe the city more than $9.3 million from about 5,140 judgments issued for violations occurring across more than 600 properties in the city since January 2018.
This comes after the Illinois Answers Project and Block Club Chicago revealed earlier this year that Wilson had managed companies that accumulated more than $15 million worth of tickets written for violations on mostly vacant properties in the South and West sides of Chicago as far back as 2010.
Wilson and the companies, according to the city’s court filings, “rarely, if ever, do anything at all to maintain these properties.”
“They are a blight on the communities that must suffer their presence and subject the residents of those communities to dangerous and unhealthy conditions,” the filing states.
The investigation explained why the city of Chicago was losing the war on rats, leaving residents in the lurch, and how it infrequently went after property owners even after they were ticketed for rat-related offenses. The companies that the city ties to Wilson had amassed the largest debt, according to an Illinois Answers analysis.
“The Judgment Debtor has failed to pay any of those Judgments and has done nothing to fix the significant underlying problems that cause so much harm to the City and its residents,” the filing states.
Wilson had been listed as the agent manager for all of the companies until Illinois Answers and Block Club reported her name in connection with the companies and the debts. Less than a week later, Wilson’s name was removed as manager from the companies’ corporate filings, and the managers are now limited liability companies based in South Dakota, a state with records laws that do not require companies to list which individuals manage the companies. An attorney whom Wilson tapped in an unrelated lawsuit is now the agent for the companies. He declined to comment.
Illinois Answers and Block Club reported last month that the city had jumped into the legal battle between Wilson and the Chicago Transit Authority, which needs eight properties that the real estate empire owns that are in the path of the $3.6 billion Red Line Extension Project. The CTA wants to extend the train line 5.6 miles south to 130th street and needs the land as part of its plan, but the two sides can’t agree on a price.
Previously, one of Wilson’s companies sued the city, claiming that it was unconstitutional for the city to fine the company for failing to cut its weeds, but a federal judge dismissed the case.
Messages left for Wilson and her attorneys were not returned.
