A home renovation contractor has agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a city lawsuit charging it repeatedly ignored or circumvented Chicago’s building permit rules.
The agreement with Atlanta-based ResiPro and its parent company, ResiCap, was announced Friday and resolves complaints dating to 2018.
Chicago’s Law and Building departments found at more than 170 properties, ResiPro either worked without permits or did renovations beyond the scope of the city’s Easy Permit system for simple jobs, sometimes ignoring stop-work orders and hiring unlicensed tradespeople.
The ResiPro sites were throughout Chicago but mostly in South and West side neighborhoods. The city said private equity firm Lone Star Funds owned many of the ResiPro sites in Chicago.
“Building permits serve a very important purpose. They ensure that construction work being performed in the City of Chicago meets building code standards that keep us safe,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in the settlement announcement. “The public’s safety will always be our highest priority, and anyone caught sidestepping this process will face severe consequences.”
The settlement also includes a $1.66 million restitution fund for eligible homeowners who schedule a free private inspection. City officials said homeowners can receive from $1,000 to $10,000, depending on substandard work the inspections turn up.
Homeowners eligible for a claim will be notified by mail. They have 90 days from receipt of the notice to submit a claim form and must schedule an inspection within 120 days. Further information is at chicago.gov/resiprosettlement.
ResiPro and ResiCap executives could not be reached for comment.
The companies admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement and said they no longer work in Chicago. If that changes within five years, they are required to notify the city’s Law Department.
In 2019, ResiPro said it was active in 34 states and 59 markets. The publication Qualified Remodeler that year ranked it third among the 500 largest home improvement contractors, but it has since fallen off that annual list.
City officials in their 2022 lawsuit described a business model emphasizing speedy work so individual homes could be quickly rented or sold, or often bundled into portfolios for investors. Work had to be completed in unrealistic time frames and without detailed plans or architectural drawings, the city alleged.
The complaint shows the city received whistleblowing help from ResiPro’s former quality control inspector Timothy Haggerty. He alleged cases of being ordered to approve work despite shoddy construction or lack of permits.
The settlement calls for Haggerty, who the city said lives in South Carolina, to be paid $90,720 and his lawyers to get $180,720. His attorney could not be reached. The city’s share of the settlement is $272,160.
“ResiPro’s failure to get permits in Chicago was not mere negligence — it was strategic,” the city said in its complaint. “Project Managers reported that while ResiPro rarely got permits in Chicago, Defendants did get permits in smaller municipalities, such as Bartlett or Schiller Park. ResiPro got permits in those municipalities not because of unique legal requirements, but instead because they believed they were more likely to get caught.”
ResiPro committed “unlawful and reckless conduct” because it was out for “a quick buck,” said the city’s corporation counsel, Mary Richardson-Lowry.
