Michael Pensack, executive director of the Illinois Tenants Union, has played a key role in bringing together two of Chicago’s most antagonistic interest groups. For the first time in years, the Chicago Board of Realtors and other groups representing landlords and property owners are engaged in productive negotiations with a number of the city’s tenant organizations, including the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, the Rogers Park Tenants Committee, the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, and the Legal Assistance Foundation. The two camps, who usually disagree on just about everything, have discovered that they share a common goal: to put Michael Pensack and the ITU out of business.
Who is Michael Pensack, and why are all these people saying terrible things about him? A tall, bearded man with a booming voice, Pensack talks and moves with a nervous intensity that makes him appear younger than his 48 years. Since moving to Chicago in 1964, he has been a divinity student, a labor organizer, an insurance salesman, and director of a community development agency. In 1980 he became a full-time tenant organizer.
In April 1988 the Reader published a generally sympathetic profile of Pensack, which painted him as a dedicated advocate of the underprivileged, willing to work long hours for low pay in order to advance the cause of tenant rights. That picture couldn’t be more wrong, say Pensack’s current critics. They say he takes advantage of landlords by encouraging tenants to abandon their leases, and takes advantage of tenants by charging high fees for services they can receive free elsewhere. In addition, they say, the ITU gives out questionable legal advice and exposes tenants to legal liabilities that could run into thousands of dollars.
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There was no misunderstanding, says Karczewski. “That’s how he left it, that ‘I went into law.’ Based on what he told me, I thought he was an attorney.”
Another satisfied ITU customer (who prefers not to have his real name published, due to pending litigation) is a man I’ll call Steve Samuels. Samuels called Pensack for help in 1988. He was living in a Gold Coast apartment with two other men at the time. “The two other guys decided to transfer to Hawaii,” Samuels recalls. “That meant we had to break the lease somehow, and we wanted to do it legally.” For a fee of about $100, Pensack helped him break the lease.
