the zoning of our side of the street, which I believe is right where my cursor is, if you can
see it, from its current residential multifamily use to a CMX designation to match the other side
of the street. So my read on that is the planning commission has acknowledged, at least when it wrote
this plan, that our side of the street has a zoning designation that prohibits all commercial
uses, and that doesn't really make sense, given that this is a commercial corridor. So the zoning
code's prohibition on commercial use on our building poses an unnecessary hardship.
Here's a zoning map just that illustrates what I'm talking about. We're RM1, here's CMX 2.5 on
the other side. Again, on the other side of the street, our proposed use would have been permitted
by special exception. Here's the RCO's decision letter. It was a meeting that about half dozen
folks attended. You can see that there was unanimous support among the attendees who voted.
I'll just show you the explanation letter from the RCO, which I'm not going to read it to you,
but basically talks about the owner's commitment to limit hours of operation.
The owner's commitment to limit hours of operation, no alcohol, there's not going to be a liquor license or there will not be alcohol served by the owner.
He's also not going to allow people to bring alcohol. Maximum occupancy, as I discussed, the property has a backyard with a separate rear exit and a side alley that allows people to get from that rear out to the street, which is really well maintained.
Beyond that, and I do apologize, I didn't submit these into the record on time, but my client did gather 10 letters of support from a mix of residents and business owners on his block.
So, you know, they're really, whether it's someone that lives there, someone that's running a business there, there was broad support for trying to activate the lower floor of this building in a commercial manner, rather than trying to squeeze an additional apartment unit in there.
I will rest at this point and bring on my client, Mr. Daphnis, to adopt my testimony.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
My name is Ernst Gessner Daphnis, E-R-N-S-T-G-E-S-N-E-R-D-A-P-H-N-I-S.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Proceed, counsel.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Daphnis, were you able to hear my testimony this afternoon about your case?
Yes, I do.
Was my testimony true and accurate to the best of your knowledge?
Would you therefore adopt my testimony as if it were your own testimony?
Okay, thank you.
Questions from the board.
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Mr. Chairman.
no chair questions or comments from the virtual audience yes chair i have mr charles richardson
with his hand up thank you i'll give him permission mr richardson you've already
been sworn just state your name for the record please charles richardson office of councilwoman
cindy bass room 508 city hall rica chair ds wins the spelling
Councilwoman has no opposition to granting the request variance.
Thank you very much for calling in.
Is there anyone else in the virtual audience?
I see no more hands, Chair.
Planning Commission?
Thank you, Chair.
Sarah Bond, Philadelphia City Planning Commission.
The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the existing residential multifamily zoning.
however the proposed use will not cause detrimental impacts beyond what might be expected
the city planning commission recommends that the zoning board grant the variance
thank you mi 2022-006-011-4927 north fish street i vote yes yes thomas holliman my vote is yes
ishmael shaheed my vote is yes jim
counsel you have your three votes okay thank you very much thank you
number five mi202300840526 mercy mercy street this is an appeal against l and i
Hi, George Downey is the appellant, and Anthony Osborne is the owner and permit holder.
Would the city attorney also come on, please?
George Downey has been promoted.
Hi, Mr. Downey.
Could you state your name for me and spell it for the court reporter?
Hi, Mr. Downey.
Hi, could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Yes, George Downey, G-E-O-R-G-E-D-O-W-N-E-Y.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Okay, just hold on a minute.
Anthony Osborne?
Mr. Osborne, can you raise your hand?
I don't see Mr. Osborne.
I don't see Mr. Osborne.
How about the attorney for the city?
How about the attorney?
What's his name?
Is it Leonard?
Leonard, usually Leonard.
Leonard Ruder, okay.
Mr. Ruder, can you raise your hand, please?
Yes, I'm here.
Sorry, I...
That's fine.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
I was having a technical problem.
Yes, thank you. May it please the board, Leonard F. Reuter, R-E-U-T-E-R, for the city of Philadelphia.
Right. Do you swear or firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
So could you call Anthony Osborne one more time, please?
Mr. Osborne, Mr. Anthony Osborne, are you in the audience? If you are, can you raise your hand, please?
he's not there hillary uh mr chair since this is an appeal against ellen i and we have
attorney here on behalf of ellen i i think we can um proceed um as far as i could tell
mr osborne was given notice via email um about the hearing um so if he's he is not here that's
that's his choice. Thank you. Mr. Downey, would you present your case? Why don't we do that? Why
don't you tell us where you stand? Of course. So my name is George Downey. I live at 524 Mercy
Street. My girlfriend and I purchased the property in July of 2021. At that time, pretty quickly,
we realized that 526 was operating an Airbnb. Started talking to a few neighbors, started to
understand that, yeah, this is a full-time Airbnb. We haven't met the owner. We're not really sure
who it is. We don't really know who to contact. We have a phone number for a management company
that doesn't really respond too well. And we have an email that we can kind of shoot over.
So throughout 2021, and then as well as 2022, we've been dealing with Airbnb. I've been working
with Mark Squilla's office to try to figure out what we can do about it. And then at the beginning
of 2022, an individual named by Jeff Kummer, J-E-F-K-U-M-M-E-R, he purchased 533 Mercy,
and it found out that he supposedly was the owner of 526.
So at that point, I confronted him.
He validated that he was the owner of 526 Mercy
and was operating the Airbnb.
So I had at least somebody to correspond with for any issues.
And then at this time,
Squilla's office was letting me know
about new legislation coming out
that was going into effect January 1, 2023
in regards to limited lodging licenses.
um in november i think it's november 25th 2022 uh anthony osborne was granted a walk-up license
or essentially an exception to um having to go through the rco and kind of gather um community
support to get a limited lodging license on the pretense that he is the or that is his primary
residence um i have letters um that i can read as well i'm not sure if you guys had a chance to go
through them. We have five letters. Awesome. That pretty much state that we have never met
Anthony Osborne. We've never met the owner of this property. We've been dealing with
nuisances on the streets for over two, essentially since he bought the property
and started operating an Airbnb. I have a letter from the RCO. It was brought to his attention a
few days ago and he had no idea why a property was given a license to operate in a limited lodging
licensed operating Airbnb at that property without having a committee hearing to kind of hear the
the neighborhood's pro or support of it and then I also have a letter from Mark Squilla kind of
attesting the exact same thing that this license was granted using a municipal ID which as I
understand it is granted at with either just a utility in their name or a deed which obviously
does not prove that they are a primary resident and from the IRS website that I kind of looked
into what constitutes a primary residence. It's primarily where they spend the most time.
I also submitted a LinkedIn profile of Mr. Osborne. He's been working and living in New York City for
almost all of his career. So if he is living in this property, at least part-time, somebody would
have met him, somebody would have been able to talk to him. We have seen him come and go, especially
with having to potentially work up in New York City. Myself, I work fully remote, so I live in
this office almost daily. So I'm hoping that the chair can see and kind of disallow this license
and we go through the typical RCO process to have the community hear Mr. Osborne's case on why we
should, the neighborhood is, should be in support of a new limited lodging license for it.
Thank you for your test money. Leonard, you know, it's obvious that Ellen and I acted on
you know it's obvious that ellen i acted on information they were given by this person
information they were given by this person.
yeah so let me just kind of lay out a couple things here um first of all i mean obviously
mr downey testified to a lot of things that he doesn't have personal knowledge of so a lot of
that's hearsay but i don't want to you know i've got i you know i understand he's pro se and he's
appearing here um uh unrepresented uh but in addition to that i think we have one preliminary
problem with this appeal which is that it was filed considerably late in terms of appealing
against the issuance of the permit the permit in question uh was issued uh i want to say september
in at the end of september of 2022 this appeal was not filed until february 7th so it's several
months late um that it got filed and you know again i i you know certainly won't object to
Mr. Downey explaining why it took that long to file the appeal, and again, you can address
that separately.
The other issue here, and this is, I think, one of the important, a couple of the important
things to point out, and I can either share my screen or just simply reference the code
sections at issue, but what we're talking about here is, as Mr. Downey explained, this
This permit was issued by Wright, but the reason why it's issued by Wright is because pursuance to the Philadelphia Code, limited lodging is a by Wright accessory use for a residential property if, and it is for the accommodation of visitors that's conducted by the primary resident of a dwelling unit, the main use of which is for household living, and visitors are there for no more than 30 consecutive days.
So this is a 14-604 sub-13 of the Philadelphia Code, and this was permitted by way of a bill that was actually goes back to 2015, and it was amended in just in June of 2021.
So, and again, I think what we're what we're focused on here and again, I think this leaving aside the issue of the.
lateness of the appeal the other issues here are somewhat factual like uh in other words does mr
osborne reside at this facility but there's also a legal question which i'll get to in just a sec
um so for purposes of the subsection and i'm quoting from 604 sub 14604 sub 13 for purposes
of this subsection the primary resident shall mean either one a natural person who is the owner
of the dwelling unit and is entitled to a homestead exclusion pursuant to code section 19-1301.1 for
such dwelling unit or a renter, et cetera, et cetera. And that's not the case here. Nobody's
claiming that Mr. Osborne is a renter. And then there are some other requirements about who can
stay there and that kind of thing. And then in addition to having the zoning permit, a limited
it is lodging operator license must also be issued. And I can say that that license,
which is a Title IX license, not subject to this board, that was issued shortly after the
zoning permit had been issued. So the question here is, was Mr. Osborne eligible for the
homestead exclusion? And again, he is the deed holder of the property, and he submitted as Mr.
Downey stated, Mr. Osborne submitted what's called a municipal ID or colloquially in the city. We call it the PHL ID. And this is a provision that was added to the Philadelphia Code a little while ago, several years ago, I think in 2018.
And again, the reasons for it are varied, but the idea was to create a municipal identification card that would be required to be accepted by city agencies as proof of residence.
So Mr. Osborne does have, and there's no dispute that I'm aware of, that Mr. Osborne does have a municipal ID, and I can fortunately just have a poor picture of that.
I can share my screen on that, if that's allowable.
So this isn't obviously the best view here,
but this is actually how it appears in our system.
Let me see if I can...
And it doesn't look like I can flip it.
But anyway, so this is the ID that was presented.
Let me see if I can get that smaller in size. And it looks like an ID card. This is a Philadelphia, this is a municipal identification card issued by the city of Philadelphia.
let me see if I can get that
smaller in size and it looks like an ID card
this is a Philadelphia
And yes, there are a number of different forms of identification and proof of residency that you submit to the city through the managing director's office, I believe, in order to obtain this card.
and this was issued uh to mr osborne i guess it looks i'm assuming that's uh november 4th 2022
and it expires uh in 2027 yeah and i'm assuming they have that in the normal american month day
year. So anyway, this is at the time he was asked to provide proof of the residency. So this is
what he submitted. This is what's in the city's records at LNI in the Eclipse record. So, and
again, I don't think there's any dispute. Well, actually, I take that back. There does appear to
be some dispute about whether Mr. Osborne owns the property, but we do also have a copy of a deed,
which i'll show quickly this was uh this is in also in the city's philadoc system uh the property
was purchased by mr osborne in january of 2021 uh from a v2 properties the prior owner and again
this is attested to in the city's records so let me close that now uh after the bill this is i'll
show you the bill just since i have it open this is bill 16-0-1-5-1 this is the bill uh creating
the municipal identification card and excuse me mr leonard we are not seeing uh that we just still
see his id so you might have to stop sharing and share again okay thank you sorry chair no no that's
fine keisha okay are you seeing that now yes okay and again i think you can take judicial
notice of this this is a bill introduced by city council that became enacted uh
let me see the date of the effective date
it looks like okay so it was introduced in 2016 it would have
a link languished for a bit there were amendments and then it'd be it was signed by the mayor
october 10th 2018 and then just so i don't have that again i just want to share one more quickie
document. Sorry about that. Well, we'll forget about that. So the managing director then
promulgated regulations, and the regulations essentially just follow the requirements of the
code, which in terms of the admissible identification, the code simply, you know, again,
allows the city to issue the ID if you provide certain forms of identification, which
which include, you know, again, things like copies of bills,