There's some irony in the complaint of apartment owners who are saying Waukegan's new rental unit housing inspection program is an invasion of their tenants' privacy.

   It isn't uncommon for apartment leases to include "Landlord's Right of Entry" clauses.

  One widely used lease gives landlords or their agents the right to enter apartments "to inspect same" if tenants get 48 hours' advance notice.

  Landlords can walk into an apartment "without notice or consent of the tenant" in the event of an "emergency" or "for practical necessity" if repairs or maintenance elsewhere in the building "unexpectedly require such access," the lease states. Tenants are supposed to be told someone was in their home within two days after the visit.

  In other words, if your lease contains this special little clause, or one like it, landlords can come into your apartment whenever they want by if they state they "unexpectedly require access."

  Even without an access clause, it isn't unheard of for landlords to visit their apartments unannounced.

  There's been some hysteria over the law, too, although periodic inspections of rental units by municipalities isn't anything new. Iowa requires such inspections "on a regular basis" and a number of Illinois communities require such inspections.

  "TO ALL WAUKEGAN TENANTS ... The Waukegan city government has passed a law that says your home must be searched," warned the Lake County Apartment Owners Association and the Fair Housing Center of Lake County, which is administered by SER/Jobs for Progress in Waukegan, a Hispanic social service agency, in a full-page ad last week.

   The city law actually requires a periodic "inspection" of most but not all rental units, not a "search," which has an ominous sound, as in "search warrant."

  Single-family homes are likely to be next, the groups suggested. "No owner's homes will be searched, yet," the ad stated.

  Apartment inspection appears to be an attempt to drive Mexicans out of the city, wrote Maria Coronado, a columnist for a Spanish/English weekly.

  "I dreamt that they threw me out on the street with everything I own along with my child," she wrote. " 'Out! Out with you and your kid!' they shouted in harmony, the mayor, the fire department, the police department and the head of Code Enforcement, all with crude voices and bad faces ... War has been declared against the Mexican. They want to throw us all out of Waukegan."

  The rental inspection law is actually a sinister scheme by aldermen to win white votes, Coronado revealed: "It finally hit me, what local politicians and all of their henchmen pretended to do under this policy wrapped up in concern over public safety for its citizens," she wrote. "It is nothing else but a political strategy to win votes from White people in the upcoming elections."

  Inspection laws are supposed to improve quality of life of tenants and their neighbors and maintain property values by making sure landlords live up to basic requirements for decent housing. There's some evidence that inspection programs can accomplish that, although they can be abused by city administrations trying to put heat on political enemies who own apartments.

  The "landlord access" lease clauses make sense, too, even though landlords can abuse the clause.