How City-Funded Organizing Helped Evanston Tenants Take on Private-Equity Landlord

Ebony Joy recalls the day Quadrel Realty Group took control of her building at 929-935 Michigan Ave. in Evanston, Illinois. The private-equity-backed landlord, shortly after acquiring the property, replaced tenants' keys with Latch's keyless entry system, now operating as DOOR, and imposed a new $30 monthly fee. Residents had no ability to negotiate the charge. "We had to do the Latch," Joy says.

The dispute escalated when tenants learned that Quadrel was paying Latch well below what it charged residents. Shelterforce notes that the Evanston RoundTable reported in 2025 that the standard monthly fee paid to Latch by landlords was $5. A more recent account, cited in the same report, states that the resident fee had risen to between $30 and $40 a month, while the landlord's payment had increased more modestly to $7. "Once we discovered that … we were basically arbitrarily paying them … was really when we got upset," Joy says.

The keyless fee was one of several grievances. Joy says that under the previous owner, maintenance requests were handled by an on-site superintendent whom tenants knew by name. Under Quadrel, work orders began to disappear, and rents and fees rose for a third consecutive year. Residents saw costs climb while conditions deteriorated, with no clear avenue for redress. That frustration led to the formation of the Quadrel Evanston Tenants Union in March 2025.

After more than a year of organizing, the union reached a comprehensive agreement in June 2026 with Quadrel and North Park Ventures. The deal covers five buildings with roughly 120 units in southeastern Evanston, a community just north of Chicago. Shelterforce's publisher context frames the outcome against a broader comparison: Evanston's city provided financial support for tenant organizing, while Minneapolis did not. The publication raises the question of whether that difference helps explain the divergent results for tenants in the two cities.