Singer R. Kelly was evicted from a Near West Side industrial building that he used for a recording studio and residence, on the grounds he owes tens of thousands of dollars in back rent. The decision also comes days after a series of new allegations of abuse against him surfaced in the Lifetime series, “Surviving R. Kelly.”
A Cook County judge this week ordered the R&B star out of the warehouse at 219 North Justine Street after Midwest Commercial Funding said he owed nearly $80,000 in back rent, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
City attorneys, meanwhile, are asking another judge to grant inspectors access to the building, alleging its uses as a recording studio and residence violated zoning code. Inspectors were at the building Wednesday night trying to get inside, but no one answered, the paper said.
Kelly, who was acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008, has denied all allegations he abused women, including those made in the Lifetime series. The Cook County state attorney’s office said at least two women have since come forward alleging inappropriate conduct by Kelly in 2002 at the warehouse and a home on the South Side in the mid-1980s. [Chicago Sun-Times] — John O’Brien