Chicago Families Are Not For Auction

By Fatima Monteiro

Chicago is preparing to sell nearly $1 billion of debt stemming from unpaid fines and fees to private buyers in exchange for an estimated $85 million upfront. The message sent is clear: as long as the city receives its pennies-on-the-dollar check, what private debt collectors do to Chicago residents doesn’t matter. It’s dead wrong and unfair. 

A recent Cook County ruling found that the City of Chicago “systematically overcharged” residents on parking tickets and other violations over more than a decade, affecting roughly a million tickets and leaving the city liable for over $163 million in illegally assessed fines and penalties. First, our city overcharged us. Now, they’re selling debt some of us should never have had to pay and that most of us can not afford to pay.

Many Chicagoans have opened a “payment due” notice in the mail and felt that familiar tightening in our chest.  Having to figure out if we can pay a traffic camera ticket or parking violation isn’t about irresponsibility. It’s too often about choosing between competing necessities. Consider the average single mother: She works, pays rent, keeps the lights on, covers gas and groceries, and makes sure her children get to school and activities, after all of that there is little money left. To make matters worse—when tickets go unpaid, penalties and late fees build.  

Eventually, they boot or tow your car. We’ve all been there, coming outside to go to work or to go pick up your kid from school and there’s the big yellow boot on your car with a notice plastered for the whole neighborhood to see that you did not pay your bill.  Families then make the hard decision to forgo food, delay utility payments, or skip medical expenses to avoid losing the vehicle they rely on to take their kids to school or get to work. 

A 2023 report from Fines and Fees Justice Center found that, nationally, 17 million households with children were forced to endure shortages in healthcare, housing, or food because a parent had court debt. But these aren’t just abstract numbers; in Chicago, those are households you know. Maybe it’s one you’re living in right now.

Chicago’s inhumane decision to sell this debt does not remove the original hardship. It transfers it and often adds to it. Once debt is auctioned to private buyers, residents are no longer able to work with the city’s relief programs and are now forced to deal with collection companies whose mandate is profit. What was once a municipal obligation becomes a commodity. 

The families who could be affected by this sale deserve a real, public conversation about what comes next. There has been very little reporting on this sale and the people of Chicago deserve the right to know that they are being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

If the city acknowledges that many residents can not afford to pay these fines in the first place—and is already willing to forgo over 90 percent of what’s owed by selling this debt—then the logical solution is not to sell the debt. It is to reconsider it, and what’s causing it. 

Indeed, for many households living below certain income thresholds, debt that has already compounded beyond the original fine should be eligible for full or substantial relief. When penalties and late fees have multiplied a $100 citation into hundreds or thousands of dollars, the system has moved from accountability to extraction.

Waiving the debt for residents who demonstrate financial hardship is not a reward for wrongdoing. It is an acknowledgment of our very real economic reality. A debt that cannot be paid will not magically become collectible simply because it is sold to a private buyer. 

Chicago already recognizes the ability to pay principles in programs like Clear Path Relief. The city could expand those principles further,  automatically enrolling low income residents into debt forgiveness programs, eliminating accumulated penalties, and restructuring fines to prevent escalation. And the city, and state, must take steps to eliminate the underlying drivers of debt—fees and unjust fines—to prevent this problem from recurring.

True fiscal responsibility does not come from auctioning off a low-income family . It comes from designing policies that do not trap families in cycles of unpayable debt in the first place. Chicago can choose a path that protects both its finances and its people.

Fatima Monteiro is the Campaign Strategist on the National Advocacy Team at the Fines & Fees Justice Center