The answer, which the Act now states rather than changes, is that a genuine trespasser with no colorable claim is a police matter. The Eviction Article governs the relationship between a landlord and a tenant, or an association and an owner — parties with a legal relationship. It was never intended to protect a person who broke in.

Where the line still sits, and why it will still be argued

The distinction turns on whether the occupant can show any claim of right, and that is a question of fact that a responding officer must resolve on the doorstep with incomplete information.

Police can be expected to demand proof of ownership and to decline where any lease or occupancy claim is asserted — even a weak or fabricated one. A person who produces a lease signed by someone who does not own the unit has asserted a claim. So has a former tenant whose lease expired, a family member of a deceased owner, and an occupant who says the owner gave permission.

Every one of those is a civil case, and this Act does not change that.

What an association needs ready

If the association wants a police response to be possible at all, the file has to make ownership provable at the door rather than after a records search:

• the recorded deed or a current title report for the unit;
• the association's owner-of-record roll, current enough to be credible;
• documentation that the association has authority over the common elements, where the trespass is in a hallway, garage or amenity space rather than a unit;
• a written record of any prior notice given to the occupant.

Common-element trespass is worth separating out, because it is where associations have the strongest position and use it least. A person with no connection to the building sleeping in a parking garage is not an occupancy dispute at all.

The risk of over-reading it

An association that treats this Act as authority to call police on a delinquent owner has misread it badly. A unit owner behind on assessments has the strongest possible claim of right — they own the unit. The remedy there is 9-102(a)(7), which is untouched, and which now runs through a written collection policy the association must have adopted first.

Getting that wrong is not a technical error. Directing law enforcement at a person with a colorable claim of right exposes the association and the individual director who made the call.

What to watch next

Whether Illinois follows other states toward an actual expedited procedure for unlawful occupancy. Several have adopted affidavit-based removal processes; Illinois has adopted a savings clause. Those are different things, and the gap between them is where the 2027 bill would sit.