Unpaid parking tickets and Credit Reports

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? IL

Hi-

My boyfriend flat out refuses to pay his parking tickets for a suburb of Chicago. He had 5 $50 tickets, which are now $150 each. These have now gone into collection and are on his credit report (we got a copy of it the other day, 5 are listed although he's only been getting letters from the credit ppl about 3 of them). He claims that noone looks at parking tickets, and even though theyre on his report, it doesn't matter at all. Granted, this is also a man who has a horrible credit rating as is and is just learning how to pay his credit card bills on time. I've been working with him to help him fix his credit, but I was wondering how right he was on this matter. Any thoughts/comments on this sort of thing (eg, how does this affect him getting school loans or a mortgage in the future?)?

Thanks,
Mary