Even when nothing goes wrong, moving is trash

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s typical to see moving trucks winding through streets and alleys of Chicago on the first day of any month. The act of moving hardly sounds like a luxury, but as we heard in the last episode, it could be worse. About a century ago, Chicagoans only moved on May 1 and sometimes Oct. 1. That meant thousands of moving wagons clogging the streets, price gouging and exploitation. Today, people move any time of the year and there are more protections for tenants. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use some advice to make moving and renting in Chicago easier. Host Erin Allen talks with local U-Haul representative Constance Turner about best practices when it comes to packing up and moving in. Then, she sits down with Sam Barth, staff attorney with Law Center for Better Housing, to talk about what renters can do to protect themselves.

Transcript

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0:31.5	What's up, Chicago? I'm Erin Allen, and this is Curious City.
0:36.3	If you've ever moved to a new apartment or house in Chicago, you know it is stressful,
0:42.1	even if everything goes smoothly.
0:44.3	But imagine you're trying to move on the same day as everybody else in the city.
0:51.6	Chaos, right?
0:55.0	Last episode, we got into the history of moving day, which back in the 1800s only happened on May 1st, and sometimes on October 1st.
1:04.0	Yeah, only on those two days out of the whole year.
1:08.0	It was a headache for tenants and landlords. Maybe the only people
1:12.9	who really benefited were the movers. They were making bank and extorting people. Today, even
1:19.7	though people can move whenever they want and there are way more protections for tenants,
1:24.6	moving is still trash. Like for me, I have had several plants die during a move.
1:31.5	One time I moved during a cold and windy Chicago winter, and it was so cold that in the 30-minute
1:37.7	drive from my old home to my new one, the plant froze to death, never to perk up again.
1:45.0	I know you have your horror stories too, likely even worse than mine.
1:50.0	So we asked you, the listeners, to share your thoughts and questions about moving and renting in Chicago.
1:56.0	Here's a message we got from listener Amanda Marquez.
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