While few Illinoisans in 2026 regularly reflect on the COVID-19 eviction moratorium, a 68-year-old Robbins resident says she is fighting its continued effects daily.
After pleading her case to a Cook County judge along with those in local and state offices, Delean Fuller hopes her efforts to secure financing to pay delinquent property taxes will be enough to keep the home she inherited from her father on Claire Boulevard.
“I was not getting any help,” Fuller said. “All these offices, and they just give you the run around. It’s like nobody really cared.”
It’s not lost on Fuller how much her father, Houston Fuller, sacrificed to purchase the small Robbins home as a rental property.
She said her dad was a builder who helped construct the Claire Boulevard home and helped maintain it before he bought it in 2002, using the family’s residential home as collateral. Fuller says since her father’s death in 2015, she has paid about $1,200 per month on that home’s mortgage.
At the same time, Fuller inherited the rental property as well as its tenants, a woman and two children, Fuller said.
She said she quickly began noticing issues with the property and difficulties collecting rent from the tenant.
“I tried to work with her because of the children,” Fuller said.
But by early 2020, she says, “it had got to the point that she had to go.”
Fuller initiated the eviction process, but it was quickly halted due to the statewide eviction moratorium that took effect March 20, 2020. The safety net was a lifeline for many renters during a pandemic-induced recession, but for Fuller, it exacerbated financial struggles.
Meanwhile, Cook County continued to expect timely returns of its ever-growing property tax bills, which for 2020 totaled about $3,800 for the 1,056-square-foot home.
By November, Fuller had lost her job at a Harvey OB-GYN clinic that went out of business. She later gained employment as a home caregiver, providing medical services for clients directly. But the nature of her work with the elderly has been inconsistent in nature, and she relied on rental payments to pay the home’s taxes.
“This was during COVID. We were all scrambling, hurting for money, because my job went under also,” Fuller said. “I could have possibly tried to take out a loan, but my credit fell. I fell behind on everything.”
Tax buyer Gross and Duquesne 2019 purchased Fuller’s delinquent 2020 taxes for about $5,200 at the annual tax sale in November 2022, according to a petition it filed for the house’s deed.
Fuller was able to resume the eviction process for the small Robbins home in August 2022, and the tenant was ultimately forced to leave in December of that year.
Real estate and eviction attorney Ezekial McDonald-Lewis said not accounting for a 19-month moratorium, Cook County’s eviction process is among the longest in the country, often ranging from six to eight months “if you do everything correctly,” he said.
“If you maybe try it yourself and fail, or you hire an attorney that’s no good and you end up taking more than a year, that’s not horribly uncommon either,” he said.
McDonald-Lewis, of Chicago’s Erwin Law, said landlords who own multiple rental properties or benefit from many tenants can factor in the costs of a lengthy eviction process. Those without funds in reserve, however, can easily find themselves in financial straits.
“Personally, I’m very pro-tenants’ rights, but when you have a timeline that’s eight or nine months, it’s not just negatively affecting landlords anymore,” he said. “You’re excluding small-time landlords, because you’re making things way harder for them than the big companies that can just budget for it.”
The house Fuller now owns underwent three other tax sales in 2010, 2013 and 2015, when her father owned it. Fuller said the family struggled financially as her dad experienced health issues around the same time, but managed to pay the delinquent taxes before being taken to court.
But in this case, the tax buyer filed an instant petition in the Cook County court system to take the property in March 2025. The process to take the house remains underway as Fuller navigates the court system while seeking affordable legal representation.
More Top Picks Best Noise Canceling Headphones For Autistic Adults
Fuller says she didn’t find out her taxes were sold until October 2025, when she inquired into her delinquent property taxes, hoping to work with the treasurer’s office to pay the amount owed and late fees over time.
“It took me a while to get everything up and going, but they would not allow me to make payments,” she said.
Records of notifications of the tax sale Fuller received from the Cook County clerk’s office show they were sent to the Claire Boulevard home while it remained unoccupied.
State law prevents the county from accepting payments over time on tax delinquencies, according to the treasurer’s office. That would change if the governor signs legislation passed this spring by the Illinois House and Senate that would also ultimately phase out Cook County’s entire tax buyer system.
A new system would have the county alone acquiring liens on overdue property taxes, charging taxpayers 0.75% a month, or 9% a year in interest. If the taxes go unpaid after three years, the county would auction off the property deed to the highest bidder and the original homeowner could petition to get the post-debt profits.
Under existing law, as seen in Fuller’s case, the original property owner is given between 30 months and three years before the tax buyer can obtain the deed in court, netting whatever equity is left in the property beyond the accrued debts.
Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas said in an emailed statement her office pushed for the bill’s passage in part because she sympathized with those who have lost their homes in tax sales.
“Once this bill is signed and goes into effect, it’s going to help a lot of people,” she said. “For too long, families who fell behind on their taxes risked losing not only their homes, but all the equity they spent years building. This legislation creates a fairer system that protects homeowners, taxpayers, small landlords and taxing districts alike.”
A federal judge, prior to the passage of the recent legislation, ruled Cook County owed tens of millions to homeowners who lost their homes and built-up equity as a result of the annual tax sale, as the process was declared unconstitutional.
A sample of 380 properties compiled by the plaintiffs in the case lost a combined $27.7 million to such “equity theft.” The total class is about 2,500, though the plaintiffs’ attorney said the group grows every time Cook County issues a new deed. This figure only accounts for certain types of homes, not business owners who lost their properties in the same process.
Despite this, Fuller said she’s felt little sympathy for her situation from Cook County Judge Martha-Victoria Jimenez, who is handling her tax sale case. She has since requested a substitution of judge, which is pending.
“I was shrinking, I was invisible,” Fuller said she felt in the county courtroom.
During a hearing Wednesday, she explained to Jimenez difficulties hiring a lawyer to represent her in the proceedings.
“I’m a caregiver, I make minimum wage, so it’s just been really, really difficult,” she said. “I sought out attorneys, but they all want their monies up front … I do want to look into other alternatives that people are suggesting to me.”
Jimenez granted what she said was a final 30-day stay to allow Fuller to attain an attorney.
In the meantime, Fuller continues maintaining the Claire Boulevard property, though the tax delinquency has prevented her from renting it out since the 2022 eviction.
She said as a former real estate agent with a passion for interior design, she hoped when she first inherited the house it would be the first of many she could renovate and eventually sell. Walking through the home, Fuller explained a vision for the quaint property, laying out goals to finish the home’s basement and modernize its kitchen.
“I wanted to make it a cream of the crop, redo the driveway, everything, which is still my hope and dream,” she said. “To make it really, really nice in the community and put a nice family in there.”