Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Illinois

Mostly you sound aggravated, and justifiably so! But you don't say whether you have a written lease. If you don't it may be a completely different situation. Assuming you have a written lease, however, first you need to look at your lease.

Based on your work hours, you seem to have some particular needs. If those needs are not brought up with the landlord before you rent and are not in the lease, then the landlord may have no obligation to provide you any special services.

Most form leases do require the landlord to take care of the "common areas" such as a shared parking lot, halls and hall lighting, heating if that's included in rent, etc. But those leases also usually don't say what your rights are if the landlord doesn't take care of business. In that case unless there is a local ordinance that protects tenants, you are stuck with local building codes, and Illinois law. Local building codes deal with heating, and that's something you could complain to the building department about. Same with hall lighting. Illinois law leaves you with very little -- primarily the right to sue the landlord for the breach of lease. Some communities like Chicago have ordinances protecting tenants, but not for everything either. Not a great situation.

The landlord may be acting reasonably:

a. heating - most centrally heated buildings throttle back heat at night (65 is not unusual and I believe is w/in code but do check) and then pump it up when most (obviously not you) people get up for work -- 5:30 - 6 am.

b. lighting - it should go on and there should be a swtich, either manual or motion. Again check with Niles about any requirements.

c. plowing - here again timing of plowing may be reasonable given the lot is outside. The fact the landlord is willing to plow late at night when it could be as bad the following morning rush, is some indicating the landlord is acting reasonably even if he or she didn't rush out to help you shovel....

Most leases don't even give you any "self-help" rights -- such as shoveling as you did and then deducting rent. You'd most likely have to negotiate that for yourself.

Sorry to sound so negative because you seem to be saying you're paying a good dollar for the place. Again, you must look at your lease. If none of the particulars you need are there, your landlord may be acting reasonably and your extra requirements may just be your problem. There's nothing that says you can't ask your landlord to provide additional or special services given your work hours -- a (UL APPROVED) space heater, for example, but you may have to pay. If the particulars are in the lease, you are certainly entitled to point them out to your landlord and ask how he or she intends to fulfill the landlord obligations. Do so with tact. If this is your first lease term you most likely have no relationship to speak of with the landlord and when the time's up the landlord may not want to renew -- then again if you and the landlord can't come to terms on providing you what you need, you may have to find a place where you can regulate the heat for yourself and have sheltered parking.