When she moved in late last year, Linda Danner liked having neighbors one-third her age because it made her feel young, and — until her body could no longer tolerate it — she loved the sunlight that flooded her tiny studio apartment.
It felt like a good place to live. And until recently, Danner’s Edgewater apartment felt like it might be a good place to die.
But Danner, who is dying from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is now in a bitter fight to avoid eviction — one the 61-year-old former nurse said she welcomes.
“I’m not budging. If I die here, they can take my body out, and that’s the first time they’ll get me out,” said Danner, sitting on a bed littered with pill bottles and a box of jumbled-up music CDs. Propped up at the head of her bed was an oxygen canister to help her breath.
Danner has an ally in her fight: Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, whose office is refusing to enforce a judge’s eviction order. Dart’s office has gained national attention in recent years for refusing to evict renters out of foreclosed homes.
“Obviously we don’t want to defy the court’s order, but this is an exceptionally tragic situation and we want to find some resolution short of having this woman die homeless or die on the street,” said Cara Smith, the sheriff’s chief policy officer.
Lawyers for Lakeside Management, the real-estate investment company that manages the building where Danner lives, are expected to be in a Cook County courtroom on Friday, seeking to have a judge force the sheriff’s office to execute the eviction order. Smith said sheriff’s department lawyers will call Danner’s doctor to the stand if necessary to prove how sick she is.
Robert Kahn, an attorney for Lakeside, scoffed at the sheriff’s department characterization of the case.
“That’s funny,” Kahn told the Chicago Sun-Times last week. “I like how the sheriff spins it.”
Truth is, he said, Danner has caused “myriad” disturbances ever since she moved in in October 2015 — frequently arguing loudly with her adult daughter. At one point, Danner’s daughter had to be escorted out of the building by police, he said.
The bigger issue is that Danner isn’t a legal tenant, Kahn said. Her mother signed the lease, not her. It’s time, Kahn said, for the sheriff’s office to do their job and remove Danner. Under the terms of the order, Kahn said, Danner was supposed be out by early March.
“Linda Danner isn’t our tenant,” Kahn said. “So I don’t know how this sheriff thinks we should have sympathy for a person who isn’t our tenant.”
Certainly, Danner says, she merits some sympathy. After living in San Francisco, her family fell on hard times during the recent financial downturn and she moved back to her native Chicago. She lived in one bug-infested apartment after another, before finally finding what she thought was a safe, clean studio in the middle of the Loyola University campus. She’s dealt with throat cancer, lupus and now her lungs are failing.
Lakeside Management is a property management division of the Loyola University. A spokesman for Loyola University said they can’t discuss a pending legal matter.
About two months into her lease, Danner said, the building’s management demanded she leave, pointing out — for the first time — that her name wasn’t on the lease.
“My credit got bad when I got sick,” Danner said, explaining why she had her elderly mother sign the lease instead.
On a recent visit to her apartment, Danner — her skin slack and blotchy — sat on her bed, a hand resting on the handle of her cane. Gray floral-print fabric covered the windows. Her lupus has left her extremely sensitive to sunlight, she said.
Danner admits she’s argued from time to time with her daughter, who, she said, is dealing with her own emotional trauma.
A couple of days ago, Danner said, her daughter was banned from the building — the woman who helps her bathe, carries up her groceries and delivers her pills.
“I’m disabled and I’m dying, and they won’t let her come up here and take care of me,” Danner said.
That, Danner said, “is the biggest injustice in all of this.”
