COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON HOUSING, NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT AND THE HOMELESS Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, October 16, 2024 2:18 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER, CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU, VICE-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR. ALSO PRESENT:
Good afternoon, everybody. Please find a seat and we'll get the hearing started. Good afternoon, everyone. (Good afternoon.)
I now note that the hour has come and this hearing is called to order. This is the public hearing of the City Council Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless. The purpose of this public hearing is to hear testimony on Bill No. 240823. Ms. Jones, will you please call the roll.
Present. Thank you, Ms. Jones. I want to note for the record that joining us is also Minority Whip Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke, who is also the chief bill sponsor. I now note for the record that a quorum of this Committee is present and this hearing is called to order. So I'll just start with some brief remarks. Good afternoon, fellow Committee members, witnesses and Philadelphians watching here and at home. Welcome to this meeting of the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and the Homeless. I want to start by thanking Minority Whip Nicolas O'Rourke both as the Chair of this Committee and as a renter myself for leading the fight to end rental price fixing. I am very proud to cosponsor the bill being considered here today. Safe, stable and affordable housing is the bedrock of a successful life, healthy communities and a vibrant city. But as we've all said and hear many, many times, the rent is too damn high, so high that Philadelphians pay about $900 million more on rent every year than they can afford to and it's only going to get higher if we don't put an end to the anti- competitive and anti-American practice of large national corporate landlords using software to artificially inflate rental prices at the expense of tenants and mom-and-pop landlords who play by the rules. The Justice Department and Attorney's General from states ranging from California to Tennessee to Minnesota filed anti- trust lawsuits against companies like RealPage, Inc, which creates a monopoly by artificially inflating rental prices across national corporate landlords that own tens of thousands of units, all but guaranteeing that tenants have no 18 alternatives. This algorithm is so insidious that it brands property managers charging even a single cent less than its computed price as "rogue landlords." We know that the expansion of price-fixing software in Philadelphia will have potentially life-threatening consequences. As I just mentioned, our constituents already spend $900 million more on rent every single year than they can actually afford to. This is not money that comes out of thin air. It's $900 million that should be going to essentials like health care and food into our local economy. And as our City's latest point-in-time count proved, homelessness is worsening at a rapid pace, thanks in large part to a lack of affordable housing. Homes are not investment assets to be traded willy-nilly like stocks or bonds. They are the very foundation of someone's life and of our neighborhoods. City Council has an obligation to take preventative measures to prevent an algorithm from assuming control of our City's rental market so that we can protect tenants and mom-and-pop landlords that do right by our communities. Thank you so much. And I'd like to give an opportunity to the bill's sponsor to also offer opening remarks.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to my colleagues all of you all sitting up there looking popular and fancy as I sit over here in the chair as well as our guests in Council chambers today. Really grateful for you all as well as you all for being here. I am proud to be taking the next step toward establishing Bill 17 No. 240823, banning rental price fixing in digital and manual forms. This particular legislation like all of the housing action that this body takes has a context, the housing affordability crisis and the housing access crisis that faces this country in general and this pillar American city in particular. This crisis shows up differently in different places, but here at home it looks like historically high rents, year-over- year increases in homelessness, regular policy rescue efforts for low-income homeowners faced with rising property taxes and low-income renters facing a regressive tax system that takes too much money out of their pockets and that's really only skimming the surface. And on Council we all recognize the ongoing task of equitably navigating this landscape because as has been said far too many times and we have to keep saying it, the rent is too damn high. I see this bill as another piece of the forward-thinking policies Council has approved to address hurdles in this housing crisis as they approach us. Rental price-setting software is one such obstacle to clear before it becomes a massive issue. We see the impact these software services ultimately have in multi-family housing across metro areas. Algorithmically- generated recommendations keep unit prices pressed up against the price ceiling for local markets regardless of the state of the market or the tenants who have historically resided in those areas and it's the tenants that I have and many of us have been elected to protect. Tenants with landlords using these services pay more in rent than their neighbors who don't have a landlord or an AI co-pilot, if you will, that they just so happen to agree with 90 percent of the time. And ultimately, the fact that this is facilitated through the pooling of nonpublic competitor data is what actually got the U.S. Department of Justice involved in its recently filed anti-trust suit against these revenue management companies. Now is the right time to make this intervention in multi- family housing. It's always the right time to do what's right. Remember that all of those apartment projects that moved forward when the tax abatement was winding down, they're getting filled. A new report put them at 65 percent occupied just on projects completed since 2021. I for one am not scared of a denser Philadelphia, which that and other reports point to a real demand for. However, setting the right conditions for all of our residents to have true access as we get there matters deeply to me. The central questions for me remain: Not should we build, but how are we building, what are we building and who are we building for. It's my belief that this bill will help us answer those questions and demonstrate the value of local government getting ahead of big techs tendency to scale first and then ask questions later. We've got to stop that. I'm glad to have the co-sponsorship of of 11 our colleagues, including all the members of this Committee. I'm grateful to all the different stakeholders that we've fruitfully engaged since introducing this bill and I look forward to an informative hearing. Thank you to everyone who will speak today for adding your voice and your thoughts, your views concerning tenant protections here in the City of Brotherly Love, Sisterly Effectiveness and Sibling Solidarity. God bless you.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to the author of this needed discussion and I say that from being a long-term advocate of affordable housing and access to housing. I was part of a group of people that along with former Councilmember, the near and dear Marian Tasco, to do a ceasing decision on all evictions which created the Mortgage Diversion Program, which evolved into the Rental Assistance Program. Now, let me say this, that when I voted for the housing bills during the pandemic that stopped massive homelessness, I remember that vote, saying on the record that I want you to remember this point, to remember that landlords are people too, that they provide the affordable in affordable housing often and that without that kind of advocacy for them, whether it was rent subsidies during COVID, they would be out of business. I know way too many people who invested their whole life savings fixing up grandmom's house to rent out to people in need. And many of them, many of them have decided to sell those properties to some of the conglomerates that you speak of because the regulations, whether it's taxation or sanitation and trash, whether it's some of the things that they have to do just to break even. One of them that was brought up to me was the difference between squatters and tenants and being able to define that difference so that people's properties weren't just stolen from the -- the DA's office will tell you that all too often someone will wait until someone's on the hospital unit to move in, do a false lease and rent out a property that they have no rights over. We have to look at what you're talking about in a continuum of protections for both tenants and people that do investments in our neighborhoods. I will say to you that I know you care. You walked around Brith Sholom. You went to Brith Sholom. You fought and gave me advice on how to save 300 units of affordable housing, for which I am indebted to you guys for. You fought 10 toes down and we came up with $23 million to save people. In the last 24 hours, I had a proud man at the security station trying to get in to see someone. He had two kids in tow and he did not know where he was going to sleep that night because of a broken system of placement. I found out quickly whose District he was in and my Chairwoman's competent staff jumped right on it. That's real help for real people. And I thought that was an outlier, but it wasn't. The next day I have another young lady who's here with her children. At the beginning of this day she did not know where she was going to lay her head, and for them it is real. The difference in this weather being under a bridge is life and death so we can't just disjointedly take a look at one thing. There's a saying that says we shall do no harm. And we have to fix the continuum of housing. So as I listen today, as I learn from you, as I've always learned from you, I want to include looking out for people who provide the valuable service of these housing so that we don't wind up like Seattle where people have to travel -- I'm going to stop real quick -- for an hour because they work in the city but can't afford to live in the city. So as we look at all of these things, they are connected and I hope that we will consider all aspects of this problem. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you so much, Councilmember. Are there any other opening comments from members on the Committee? (No response.)
Okay. Ms. Jones, will you now read the title of the bill.
Bill No. 18 240823, amending Chapter 9-800 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Landlord and Tenant," to add prohibitions and penalties related to anti-competitive rental practices, all under certain terms and conditions.
Thank you. The Clerk will please call the first panel of witnesses to testify on the resolution.
LiJia Gong and Madison Gray. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Good afternoon. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon, Committee Chair Gauthier and members of the Committee. My name is LiJia Gong. I'm the Policy and Legal Director at Local Progress Impact Lab. I'm so extremely grateful to be here today to offer insight on this critical issue, and want to especially thank Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke for the invitation to testify. Just a little bit more about me and Local Progress. Local Progress Impact Lab is a nonprofit organization that brings together local leaders like yourselves, partners and experts to build the knowledge, skills and leadership needed to advance racial and economic justice at the local level. And I have been working at the intersection of public policy and the law for over years and 11 I've focused my efforts on 12 advancing the rights of workers, 13 consumers and tenants. 14 Most recently I've been 15 working with cities like Philadelphia across the country that are eager to tackle the rising costs of housing and ban the practice of landlords colluding to raise rents and using algorithms to do so. As I think we all know housing is a basic human need, and like nearly every community in this country, Philadelphia is facing a housing crisis where renters are struggling to stay in their homes or struggling to find a place to live. One of the main drivers of the higher rents, increased vacancy rates and more evictions is consolidation and financialization in the housing market. More and more rental housing is now in the hands of a few large corporate landlords and rental property managers. In fact, in 2019 one in six apartments in the United States were controlled by the nation's 50 largest property managers. The share of units managed by this top 50 group has increased every year for the past 14 years. These large corporate owners and property managers treat housing solely as a profit-making asset as opposed to what we all know, that it is a necessity, the foundation of our communities and ideally what makes for each of us a home. These large corporate investor owners hide behind limited liability corporations, LLCs, so that communities cannot hold them accountable when they raise rents unconscionably or fail to make necessary repairs. The problems of heightened concentration in the rental market, and in particular the problem of soaring rents, is exacerbated significantly by price fixing, especially by these large corporate landlords. These landlords are using so-called algorithmic revenue management software to collude to raise rents. RealPage, a corporation that's headquartered in Texas, is the leader in selling this technology and has 80 percent of the market share when it comes to commercial revenue management software for conventional multi- family housing rentals. How does this all work exactly? Landlords across local markets like Philadelphia share private data regarding their rental properties with RealPage, including current rents, lease terms, available square footage and vacancy levels. RealPage then uses that data and combined with publicly available data sets to make recommendations as to rent and occupancy levels. That maximizes not just the landlord's revenue for the specific landlord but revenue across all of RealPage's clients in the market. RealPage's software provides daily price recommendations and the company has intentionally designed its software and services to increase compliance with these recommendations. " Let me just say that again. RealPage aims to generate more profit for all of the landlords in a given market like Philadelphia at the expense of renters. One of the main ways they do that is by encouraging landlords to keep units vacant and hold out for higher rents, thereby constraining housing supply. The need for Councilmember O'Rourke's and the many cosponsors here proposed ordinance is great. Although it is unclear RealPage's penetration into Philadelphia's market, this information is purposely obscured by private agreements.
This proposed ordinance is a critical preventative step to ensure that Philadelphia's renters have a fair playing field when it comes to looking for housing. S. Department of Justice. First, the outcome of that litigation is far from certain and Philadelphia has an important opportunity to close an algorithm loophole to anti-trust law, to the extent that there is one. Second, this legislation presents an opportunity to expedite justice for Philadelphia renters since it may be years before the litigation resolves. And lastly, although perhaps most importantly, even if RealPage's practices are found to be illegal in federal court given the barriers of anti-trust enforcement, this legislation will help to ensure that a RealPage copycat operating locally or regionally cannot pop back up. The momentum is building and Philadelphia can be a leader nationwide and the largest city to date to pass a ban. The bottom line is that we need to ban algorithmic rental price fixing in order to give everyone in Philadelphia a fair shot at housing, and we need Philadelphia to set the tone for other cities across the state and across the country. Local governments because of their ability to move nimbly in response to the needs of constituents are often times the best poise to take on new illegal practices or rather new technologies that facilitate long- standing illegal practices. Thank you again for your time and your leadership.
Thank you so much. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hi. My name is Madison Gray. I'm a staff attorney at Public Interest Law Center. Thank you for allowing me to testify today in support of this bill which would prohibit landlords from using anti-competitive rental practices and algorithms to drive up rent costs. At the Public Interest Law Center we support this legislation because we know that renters in Philadelphia flat out cannot afford for their rent to go up. The City has an affordable housing crisis as we all know. More than half of Philadelphia's renters are already cost-burdened. Meaning, they pay at least 30 percent of their income on housing costs, and that problem is most acute for renters with incomes below $30,000 a year. 88 percent of those renters are cost- burdened. This crisis is compounded by the fact that over 6 percent of Philadelphia's federal 7 affordable housing complexes are 8 set to expire over the next decade. 9 At the Law Center we've 10 worked with renters who are dealing 11 with the downstream consequences of 12 this. We've worked with single 13 mothers and grandmothers who have 14 been forced to couch-surf for 15 months at a time as they 16 desperately search for safe 17 housing. We've worked with people 18 with mobility disabilities who have 19 been confined to inaccessible and 20 unsafe units for years as they struggle to find an affordable, accessible place to live. And earlier this year we were proud to work with the courageous residents at Brith Sholom who fought to save their apartment complex because they knew that if the City and PHA did not step in and save the day, many of them would end up with nowhere else where they could afford to live. Philadelphia is also a city where a few landlords control the majority of units. Only 2 percent of Philadelphia landlords have more than 25 units. But as a group, these large landlords who only amount to about 1,000 landlords own more than half of the City's nearly 300,000 rental units. This small group of landlords has outsized influence over the City's rental market. Together they set the norms and conditions for renters across the city. In fact, if they came up with a scheme to increase rents at their properties, they could drive up rents all across the city. To be clear, a scheme like that would likely violate federal anti-trust law. But in recent years we have seen landlords adopt new rent- setting algorithms that have the same effect. With respect to one such company, RealPage, the Department of Justice has described how these programs work. RealPage contracts with competing landlords who agree to share with RealPage non-public, competitively-sensitive information about their apartment rental rates and other lease terms to train and run the pricing software. This software then generates recommendations, including on apartment rental pricing, for participating landlords based on their landlords competitively-sensitive information. In their complaint, the DOJ further alleges that RealPage's rent-setting algorithms replace competition with coordination and quotes RealPage's own words that the algorithm tool ensures that landlords are driving every possible opportunity to increase price even in the most downward-trending or unexpected conditions, by encouraging landlords to move in unison versus against each other. In a healthy rental market, landlords compete to put heads in beds and are incentivized to set rental prices at a competitive rate to attract as many potential renters as possible. But once a critical mass of landlords in a given geographic area are using this software, these incentives shift. Rather than competing against each other to maximize the number of heads and beds, landlords are incentivized to work together to obtain revenue increases that would otherwise be impossible. Cities across the country have already seen the consequences of this.
5 percent increase in Nashville rents to his company's algorithm, explaining as a property manager very few of us would be likely to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually. Likewise, tenants in a Seattle neighborhood where 70 percent of the neighborhood's rental markets were taken over by large firms that relied on algorithms saw their rents increased by 42 percent over the course of a decade, which was steeper than the 33 percent increase in rents for comparable buildings. A recent ProPublica report found that these algorithms are effective at persuading landlords to behave as ruthlessly as possible, often against the landlord's own intuition. " Apartment managers can reject the software suggestions, but as many as 90 percent are adopted. In some cases these algorithms even recommend that landlords force tenants out via rental increases and let units sit empty in order to artificially decrease housing supply so that landlords can raise rents and make more money. 4 percent. An executive of that company explained the net effect of pushing people out was $10 million in income. Renters in Philadelphia simply cannot afford for the same to happen here. This legislation gives renters a tool to protect themselves from these price-gouging practices at a crucial point of time before it's too late. We are proud to support this legislation and thank you for holding this important hearing.
Thank you for your testimony. Are there questions or comments from members of the Committee for this panel?
So when you talked about the example of Brith Sholom, you mentioned a stat of I think 30 percent of the licensed agreements for those types of properties. Coming off my -- what's the total -- do you have a roundabout of the total number of potential units that are going to be negatively impacted by that rough guess?
Yeah. I don't have that in front of me. I think the number I've seen is 1300.
I think over the -- or I recall seeing over the next decade or so we have about 12,000 housing units that are backed by time-limited subsidies, whether they be tax credits or have contracts that are coming off of line.
Councilmember Rue Landau. Thank you both so much for your testimony. For all the years that I did landlord-tenant work, one of the guiding principles from landlords, and there are some really great mom-and-pop landlords here in Philadelphia, is that they never wanted their unit to be vacant. Having it vacant even one month when you do that math, it takes a very long time to recoup it. And, in fact, you're going to have to raise the rent other months in order to recoup it. So the whole goal was never to have vacancies. And to me among all of the negative impacts of this algorithm and how it's not human-centric or caring for tenants who need and deserve housing, because we all need a place to live, is that in any way it would manipulate the vacancy-occupied rate because that kind of took -- it's taking away the human aspect of this as well when the landlords are saying I'm working with you here because I'm trying to keep it occupied. So thank you so much for all of your work on this and for coming to support the bill.
Can I just add on that point? I think that one way that one can think about the impacts of RealPage is that it's inflationary and I think it has to do with the fact that it's kind of controlling vacancy rates in this way while just increasing prices, right. That's just increasing prices for us. And we know that one of the main drivers of inflation right now across the country is housing, is rents. And I think that at the conclusion of this litigation I would not be surprised if we can see a real impact that RealPage has made on inflation across the country. So I think your point about the vacancy rate is so well- taken. And I think what that makes me think of is what RealPage is doing is just causing inflation in our communities when it comes to housing.
Thank you so much to both of you for your testimony and for your work. The Clerk will please call the next panel of witnesses to testify.
Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
John Mondlak. Good afternoon, Councilperson Gauthier and members of the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and Homelessness. My name is John Mondlak and I'm the Interim Director of the Department of Planning and Development. I'm here to testify on Bill 24-823 introduced by Councilmember O'Rourke. Thank you for the opportunity to testify here today regarding the growing housing affordability crisis. The proposed bill before you today aims to address anti-competitive practices in the rental market. We have met with the bill sponsor's team on this bill and appreciate the cross- collaboration and proactive discussions which are now incorporated into the amendments before you. Mayor Parker has committed to increasing and retaining affordable housing within the city, which is why we support the intent of this bill, keeping housing affordable. The legislation before you aims to achieve this goal with the hope of preventing any software or price coordination that would interfere with affordability. One particularly concerning trend nationally is the use of rent-setting software and algorithms by landlords which can facilitate price coordination. When housing providers adopt these same algorithms, it leads to uniform rent increases across the market, inflating prices and further destabilizing an already fragile housing ecosystem. In a city where affordable housing is scarce, such practices push many renters into financially, precarious situations or even homelessness. This bill hopes to curb these harmful practices by prohibiting landlords from using algorithmic tools to collude on rents, ensuring that rental costs reflect market conditions only rather than artificial inflation. As we face this housing affordability crisis, it's vital to take proactive measures to prevent predatory practices that disproportionately harm low-income residents. This concludes my testimony. Thank you for allowing me to testify on Bill 24-823 today.
This is to the author of the bill. Help me in plain understand is this a issue of creating monopolies, oligopolies, a collusion that -- oh, I'm sorry. Does this bill 21 address the potential for these algorithms to create monopolies and oligopolies that create price fixing locally? Is that the intent of keeping them from colluding to artificially inflate the cost of housing? Is that the plain --
Okay. That's good enough for me. I just didn't -- and so, I guess the follow-up would be if all of us up here wanted to collude, do we need that algorithm to do it or can we say 1400 is where we start for two bedrooms? Do you think that by passing this law we stop that monopoly or retard it or how effective do you think this will be?
So in the interest of maintaining addressing the actual crisis around affordability as well as access and recognizing the way that tech is getting much farther ahead of our traditional means of law-making or creating conditions where folks can get housing or what have you, this is getting ahead of the advancement of this particular practice having seen what it's already done in cities of significant size and populations and tenants who are experiencing it. So this is about -- I don't know that it resolves. Of course human beings can say what they want to say. But this algorithm kind of masks with technology what would be evidently concerning and/or illegal if it was done manually. And so, we want to address that as we see it already happening before it gets to the --
So if I understood what you said, it's not just the people up here that might collude, it's a national collusion that that algorithm can put in everybody's numbers and say here's what you should be charging in Philly, this is what happened in Atlanta, this is what happened in Texas. Our algorithm suggest here's where the floor is?
As I understand it, there is information that is being compiled that sets the particular price to ensure I guess in occupancy the information, the data is not necessarily held by the tenants. It's held by the actual companies or what have you, and that is where that's being kept. They don't have necessary access to that. That's where it's being kept, and it creates I think a technology and information imbalance that makes it difficult for the human aspect to kind of poke through and for us to be able to get kind of the right price for folks to be able to get housing.
I think I got it. You've been helpful. Thank you, Councilman.
If I could just add to your example. If all of you colluded on price but you all owned one building, you would have no effect on the market. But if each of you own percent of 6 the market in a particular area, 7 then you would absolutely have an 8 effect and it would be illegal. 9 Now, the chances of trying 10 to get all the folks together, you 11 can do it and if there's big 12 national owners that own big 13 segments of the market and they all 14 get together, they could do it 15 without the software and it's just as illegal. But the software makes it super easy for anybody to subscribe. And so, you can get to 60, 80 percent of the market with just a handful of people signing up for this service. And so, it's the same way it gets to the same place and it's just as illegal whether you're doing it with the software, without the software. The software just makes it easier.
Good afternoon. Just following up on Councilman Jones' question, I guess what I'm wondering is the effect because from -- well, the Councilman as he mentioned if we all got together and decided that we were going to basically price fix and we own large units, then I guess we will be exempt from the bill?
No? If we were -- well, no, if we were not using the software. If we just decide -- well, I guess we would be under the bill because it would still be anti-trust. But if we're smaller landlords, which is the majority of landlords in the city of Philadelphia, like the mom-and- pops, you know, listen, I'm a smaller landlord, I know what the market's bringing in and I'm not colluding but I'm still pricing at the same rate as some of the larger landlords, but there's no obvious effect or there's no inclusion for them on a bill like this, correct?
What I would say is that this is geared towards -- where we have seen the algorithms being used are by large corporations, specifically in the area of multi-family housing.
We're not seeing it, as I understand it, as it relates to small landlords. We're seeing it with these large corporations, which I think many of us know are coming in, buying up a lot or what have you and thereby we're seeing those prices increase. And so, that's the focus. And the intent of the bill is to be able to capture that, which is what we're seeing nationally before it shows up in a major way here in the city of Philadelphia.
And what you pointed out, Councilmember, that's not collusion. That's just business, right. That's just --
It's a fine line between business, collusion, you know, anti-trust. These things kind of intermingle a little bit to some degree and you can easily be, you know, it can easily be suggested that someone is doing something untoward, although that might not be the intention or that might not be what they're intending to do.
The bill doesn't sort of ban any type of practice of a landlord taking it upon themselves to look at comps in the area --
And so, for smaller landlords they always have that option to look at, again as you said, the comps in the neighborhood, who's renting for what, and that adds into what the problem is that we're trying to address here.
Correct. And I also want to point out, which I pointed out in my conversation with RealPage when we were preparing for the hearing, is that the tool creates an imbalance. There's no corresponding tool that allows for tenants to instantly work together to drive down rental rates. And if there were, I'm sure that'd be a big problem. So it's the act and it's also the very unfair balance that it creates between people trying to find housing and people who own housing. Are there any other questions and comments from people on the Committee? (No response.)
The Clerk will please call the next panel of witnesses to testify.
Sarah Haynes- Saunders, Tyrone Jones, Lori Peterson and Shawmar Pitts. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
A little nervous. Good afternoon, everyone and good afternoon, Councilmembers of the Housing Committee. My name is Sarah Haynes-Saunders and I am a member of One Pennsylvania Renters United Philadelphia. I was born in South Carolina and moved to Philadelphia at the age of 5. I am 66 years old and disabled and I live at 6342 Carnation Street in Germantown. I started renting from Active Realty on August 15, 2015 and since then the landlord has changed a few times, and now my landlord is now Carnation Street Ventures, LLC. Only two repairs have been made since then. One was a broken sink pipe, which I had to wait a week to get repaired and was during Thanksgiving week and ruined Thanksgiving dinner. This past winter my heater broke and it took them another week, a whole week, to fix my heating. I was without heat in the middle of the winter for a week. In my bathroom the ceiling is peeling and in my living room the carpet is over a decade old. Because of my disability, I cannot clean it and the landlord refuses to replace it. In January of this year I was paying 925 per month and that's when the PHA vouchers came out. I noticed my landlord Carnation Street Ventures seemed to be evicting more people than usual and renovating the vacant units. I wanted to move into another apartment that was nicer than mine and because they wouldn't renovate anything in my apartment. I was told by the landlord that I could move and I signed a lease to move into another unit three doors down for the same rent, 925 per month. But then a plumbing problem came up and after they fixed the plumbing, they renovated the apartment and jacked the rent up to 1250 per month even though I had a signed lease for 925. In 2015 when I moved in, I was paying 700 in rent. The rent will go up steadily each year, but in February 2023 it jumped from 850 to 925. And then in February of this year, the rent increased by $175 so that I'm now paying 1100 a month for the same unrenovated apartment I moved into for 700 a month. Where is the fairness in that? Where is the equity in that? My landlords are making profit while I'm on a fixed disabled income. When I moved in, in 2015 my monthly income was around 1200 and now it is 1430. My landlords are charging me a larger portion of my income each year. Why, why not the same? Why not less every year since I am a good tenant? In all these years I have only been late on rent one time and never short. Why do my landlords have the right to charge as much as they want but I don't have the right to decent housing? This hearing is about corporate landlords who are price gouging and raising the rent way too high on myself and others and using a software program called RealPage to help them do it. My landlord Carnation Street Ventures may or may not be using RealPage. We don't know, but we do know that they are raising the rent way too high on tenants like myself. I urge you to pass this legislation before you so that we can get the rent under control. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. I'm really sorry to hear what you're going through but I thank you for sharing your story and for your advocacy. Mr. Jones, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hi. Hey, good afternoon, everybody. I'm Tyrone Jones. I am a tenant and also a member of Renters United One PA. I just want to apologize ahead of time. I do have a speech impediment so stay with me a little bit if I stutter.
Take your time. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No 22 apologies.
All righty. I'm here to speak up for tenants and also myself of corporate landlords in Philadelphia. When it comes to -- when it comes to Odin, they are known for putting band- aids on situations that need fixes and repairs. We know -- I know this for a fact because I live in an Odin property for over eight years, eight years too long. During that time I noticed deteriorating situations due to the lack of maintenance in the building. One time the pipes under my bathroom burst due to the rusting of the sink. And due to the rusting, the hot water valve bust and was flooding. I called the emergency line of the maintenance as I was supposed to and I had to wait over two days for them to -- for anyone to show up. But they stopped the leak but didn't fix the sink. But two days is too long for an immediate action, so I called a friend to manually shut off the hot water valve. And because of that, he got second-degree burns. Over three years Odin ignored some of my work orders and not repaired the sink. It took me joining Renters United One PA and delivering a petition in June to Odin's CEO Phil Balderston, me and Ms. Lori here this past June for Odin to finally fix my sink after three years of (inaudible). Another time a very close friend of mine that I call a brother was visiting when my bathroom ceiling collapsed on him and he went to the hospital and sustained permanent nerve damage. And this ceiling started leaking back in 2021 and which once again work orders that were constantly ignored, that small problem turned into a big problem. Because of Odin's negligence and greed, my friend still suffers today. Not only my friend but me, because now I have to deal with a hole in my ceiling that they refuse to fix. Odin expects us to pay for these faulty utilities in these units by overcharging tenants on utilities that should be included in their lease. For example, no tenant should pay for gas if it states that it's the owner's responsibility on the lease. For instance, I was once charged nearly $1,000 in one month. Let me reiterate that. I was charged nearly $1,000 in one month for electricity when I first moved in. That is insane. For a one-bedroom apartment $1,000? That seems like that's a whole building to me. And I'm still paying off to this day and I shouldn't have to be paying that. Does that seem weird to you? Let's be clear here, Odin along with other corporate landlords make more profit when they do not invest in their properties or the well-being of their tenants. It is no surprise to me that a corporation like Odin uses RealPage software to manage utility bills at some properties. Tenants who are aware of renters' rights and look at their leases can be mindful that Odin or other corporate landlords uses RealPage, but it's not always clear. RealPage doesn't seem to make an effort to make themselves known to tenants. Why is that? What are they really hiding? So my question is what is so real about RealPage. Because they are a profit-driven corporation, Odin can't be trusted to be a good landlord and we need a quality, affordable, clean and healthy social housing for all people because housing is a human right. It should be and would be. Me along with other members here are here to support Councilman O'Rourke to ban RealPage and rent price fixing and to urge the Committee to help pass this bill as soon as you can. Thank you for your time.
Very sorry to hear about all of the experiences with the quality of your unit, but it's really important that you came to share your story. Thank you.
Ms. Peterson, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Lori Peterson. Thank you to the City Council Housing Committee for including us today for holding this hearing about this important bill. My name is Lori and I'm a member of One PA Renters United Philadelphia. I am a mother and a grandmother and a retired City employee. I rent from Odin Properties, one of the largest corporate landlords in our city. I have lived in the Odin building, Mount West in Oak Lane for the past five years and these are the worst conditions I have ever lived in my life. I have lived here because I can't afford anywhere else. I feel like I'm in a prison in my own home and I'm paying for it. Odin calls this affordable housing but nobody can afford it because the rent they are charging here is ridiculous. Plus I pay utilities and I am being unfairly charged for my utilities every month. My landlord uses RealPage for utilities and I'm on a fixed income and cannot afford this. They are not even showing me my real utility usage. One month I was in the hospital for the entire month and was not even home and they still billed me $67 for my water bill that month. I was charged for water that I know I didn't use and that was not the first time. I don't even drink the water in my own apartment because in the morning the water stinks. I drink bottled water and somehow they are still charging me $60 for water. It is unfair and inaccurate to just make up a number to charge us for utilities, which it seems like RealPage is doing. Odin and RealPage are robbing us and they're okay with it. Well, I'm not. During the winter my gas bill is also high. And my lease says that the gas is also determined by RealPage. I also have no control over the temperature in my own home. If I'm paying for my heat and you're billing me for it, why can't I control it. And we are well on our way into the cold months, which means we will get even higher water and gas bills. When I called Odin to ask about my inaccurate water utility bills, one person passes it off to the next. Nobody wants to explain anything. I have called so many programs to ask for utility support and support for seniors and they all told me that my utility statement was not a bill and they cannot help me pay it. Even on a fixed income I manage to pay my high rent and utilities on time every month and then I still have to live with horrible conditions in my apartment because corporate landlords like Odin do not provide the tenants with quality housing. How is this okay for me to have to pay the rent and not have a renovated apartment. I've had to deal with broken toilets and floor tiles and serious leaks. The entire time I have been here there have been horrible infestations and a lack of pest control. I've called every week for over two years for an exterminator and I'm still living overrun by roaches and it's getting worse, not better. I did everything I could. I put in work orders, spoke to my property manager, even asked to change apartments. I did not know what else I can do until I came to One PA Renters United Philadelphia. Through our collective action, we won meetings with Odin's CEO and won some repairs and we are just getting started. Odin has not controlled my cockroach infestation and continues to overcharge on rent and utilities while claiming to be so-called quality affordable housing providers. Philip Balderston and all the Odin Property executives do not live in situations like we do. They do not live with roaches, leaks, broken elevators or any of the situation that their tenants live in. We have the same right to quality dignified housing as they do. And yet they raise my rent every single year with no 14 improvement, and they use tools like RealPage to profit even more off the low-income seniors and disability tenants like me. They stand by RealPage. Then when will landlords stand by affordable quality housing. We are calling on City Council to prioritize the needs of low-income renters over corporate greed.
Thank you to the Housing Committee and all the Councilmembers who have already sponsored Bill 240823. We hope all Councilmembers support this important legislation as one step to put people over profit. Thank you again for your patience and help us with this. Appreciate it. )
Thank you so much for your testimony and it's good to hear about the strides that you're making in your organizing efforts. Mr. Pitts, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Yes. Good morning, everybody. My name is Shawmar Pitts. Thank you for having us here today and I thank all three of you for coming up here and being brave to actually tell everybody what's going on in our city. So I had some written stuff but after hearing them testify I don't even think I could hold it together to be able to even read something from a paper when I see my fellow community members and residents of this city struggling like this. And we're here today because we have a brave Councilman who has brung legislation before us that would benefit us really so. And I know for a fact that there will be pushback by corporate people who want to make money. They're going to come and they're going to say this is a bad idea because it's going to cost this and it's going to cost that, but what they have no consideration for is the people that you see sitting here right now. They don't consider them, right. And I have people in my community, Sister Sonia. Sister Sonia couldn't be here this morning because she's out canvassing trying to make something happen for the betterment of our community so she couldn't be at two places at one time. But similar to my sisters and my brothers sitting here, she diligently paid her rent monthly, every month, never late, never short. And the landlord wouldn't make repairs. And I'm not talking about small repairs. I'm talking about big things. Like, for instance, during the heat wave she didn't have any electric, so no 15 refrigerator, no stove and no 16 air-conditioning during the heat wave, right. But she has to pay her rent on time every month like clockwork. So now when we ask why would we bring this legislation, why? Because the corporate landlords, they don't stop. They don't have consideration when it comes time to actually just putting us out there and grind us down to the bone. They don't care about us, so we got to get out in front of it because we know they'll go through everything that they can do to exploit people like this on a fixed income. They want you -- they looking at it. They know how much you make. You got to tell them how much you make. So now we're going to try to get every dime out of that that we can and we going use an algorithm to do it to make it easy for us. We got to get out in front of them and we have to stand up to the pressure because they coming, they are coming. When they say that bill was in committee, they're going to come to our Councilpeople and say don't support that bill 22 because I've seen it happen in my district. Councilmember Gauthier came with the bill. My Councilperson was the co-sponsor of the bill. When the bill passed, my District exempt. The bill going to benefit us. Why we exempt? Why the developers don't have to follow that bill for public land for public good? Why they don't have to do that? You were the co-sponsor of the bill. Now, I know what happened. I know exactly what happened. The developers came and said, yo, man, don't do that, we need this, we trying to make our money, and he agreed. And now, we bought that so we can't let that happen in this situation. So what we're here for is we're eager to see your leadership on this matter and just take care of us for once. That's all. That's all we asking for. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you so much, Mr. Pitts. Powerful as always. Just to clarify for the Committee, Mr. Pitts is talking about the public land for the public benefit bill which has -- my colleague from the 4th stayed in that bill so -- but obviously people have their own reasons for what they think is appropriate for their Districts. But I do appreciate your testimony and all of you for sharing your stories. Are there any questions or comments from members of the Committee?
Thank you so much to all of you. Thank you. (Applause.)
Will the Clerk please call the next panel of witnesses to testify?
Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon. My name is Raymond Huxen. I own a small four apartment building in South Philadelphia. In 2010 I was married and had a daughter and decided to bet on Philadelphia and where it was going. My wife and I opened a business on the west side of Broad Street in South Philadelphia. At the time my friends thought I was crazy to even walk on the west side of Broad Street, much less open a business. In 2014 we doubled down on our bet by buying the building. It housed our business. My wife is a teacher. m. and rides the Broad Street Line from South Philadelphia to the end of the line to go to Central High School. Her Robotics team has won back-to-back world championships and we've really settled into our community. When we purchased our building in 2014, it included the space that housed our business and also four one-bedroom apartments. We knew a little about being landlords, but we're going to learn a lot more in on-the-job training. Over the years we've had bad tenants and good tenants. We've had to replace furnaces, do countless repairs and all the other things that go with renting places for people to live. Of course the upside of the relationship is that those people write us a check each month. And while we have had -- while we need those checks to keep the building afloat. Insurance, taxes, maintenance, vacancy, squatting tenants who don't pay, increasing utilities, repointing bricks on a building and all the other expenses we haven't even discovered yet are always going to be there, so we need to get those rent checks on time and the more we get, the more we have for our own expenses. We aren't in the business of running a charity so the profit is important to my family helping us enjoy a better life, but we believe the relationship with our tenants isn't a one-way relationship and it shouldn't be an antagonistic one. Part of being a landlord in renting space is to make some extra money from the people that live in the apartments. But when we bet on Philadelphia in 2014 and bought the building, Philadelphia has shown we made a good bet. There needs to be another part of the relationship and that part is engaging in our community. We usually do a little research when we look for a new tenant. We may check Zillow or just get on a broad range of apartments of rents in the area and then we pick something on the low end of the average. We don't want to try to squeeze every dollar from each of our tenants. The selfish reason for this is that we have had difficult tenants. We would much rather ask a little less and be very selective about who we have live in our space. The result is that we have very little turnover. We haven't had a problem with a tenant in a number of years. If there's a problem, they tell us and we fix it as soon as possible. My wife and I have been texted at 10:30 at night that a window came down when they were opening it and the glass fell in and broke, and we went there at 10:30, we cleaned it up, we closed up the window and we had somebody fixing it the next day. This is the way we think tenants and landlords should work together. Anyway, so the tenants don't ask small things for us so we make the relationship easy and mutually beneficial. If we viewed our relationship with them as antagonistic and tried to squeeze every penny we could get out of them, they would know that they could treat us in an antagonistic way too and try to squeeze any value they could get from us and they should. So this approach works very well for us. The byproduct is that when we do have a vacancy, word goes out and the problem isn't filling it. It's having to tell the people that we had to choose someone else. The other element for us is that this space is an investment in our community. Our tenants are people and they're trying to build their own lives and have their own successes and find a way to progress and improve their own futures.
As a member of the community of Philadelphia, we view the success of other members of the community as a good thing for all of us. The more people who have the resources to invest in themselves and their own futures to be able to enjoy our city and want to be part of the growth of the Philadelphia, the better. It isn't necessary to us as landlords nor do I think it's important to most of the small landlords to have a vast database with all the rental information in the country or even just our city. Using an algorithm to review and constantly update the maximum rent is just another way to keep inching the rents higher and higher. Trying to find the perfect number to squeeze people so that they can barely make ends meet and have to sacrifice investing in their future or enjoying the small luxury of life just to maintain a place to live isn't in the long-term best interest of our community. Small landlords are part of the community. If the community fails, we suffer with it. The problem with the landlords that are mass industry landlords who have no connection to the community, yet own hundreds or even thousands of units within the community, they are large businesses who have a single purpose of generating the maximum revenue regardless of the impact on the community that generates the actual revenue. They swoop in to buy so much of a market that they can control it to set and reset prices of rent in the market. If these communities fail, they can just sell off the assets as a profit and move on to do it over and over again. They will share all the information they can so an algorithm spits out the perfect highest number to charge with no regard for any longer-term view of the impact on the community and the people who live in it. They use then the number to set the market rate. They do it over and over setting and resetting the number higher and higher forcing tenants to pay a higher and higher percentage of their income just to keep a roof over their heads. Fixing prices by a small group with a disproportionate amount of knowledge and control of the market has always been against the best interest of the majority of the community. This is especially true in this case where most of the people trying to fix prices don't live in the community at all, just use it to generate revenue. My wife and I are much more interested in being a part of a long-term good and growth of Philadelphia than trying to squeeze every penny from it. So thank you for your time. )
Thank you so much for your testimony. First, I can never miss an opportunity to point out that I went to Central like your daughter, 255. And next, I wanted to thank you for being a good landlord and thank you for being here to hold other landlords accountable for their practices.
Are there any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? (No response.)
All right. I want to point out that we also have written testimony from several people, including Christopher Mattioli from the Greater Philadelphia Association of Realtors, Steven Chintaman from the Pennsylvania Apartment Association and Garrett O'Dwyer from the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations. We will now move on to the public comment list. We ask that all commenters limit their testimony to two minutes. And if you have submitted written testimony, please summarize. Ms. Jones, can you please call the names of the first three commenters.
Reverend Daniel Eisenberg, Shirla Smith, Gail Banks, Jonathan Briggs. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Good afternoon. How are you doing? Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Shirla Smith. Well, great afternoon to those who know me with the other hearing. I'm here basically representing the Brewerytown Sharswood area as well as --
-- Philadelphia. I am here I guess you could say as a testimony behind the fact that I worked for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the last 30 years. And at one point, people looked at me like, oh, she makes a lot of money, she can afford to do this, she can afford to do that, until tragedy hits you. You never know. I've probably helped raise -- I don't know who are the people behind me, but I served them and gave great service to them in the field that I was in. I'll just say the Department of Public Welfare service, social service, so I knew what being on that side of the table was like, and I'm helping and helping and helping. I had tragedy. Now, I'm on the same side of the table that they are. And now, affordable housing isn't what it seemed to be as I was helping. There's so many doors that are closed. You walk in. You can afford this amount at one point. Then I'm forced to retired. Income becomes half and you can't afford and they're saying, well, we still want our rent. And where do I go to get affordable, you know. And then landlords are -- not all landlords, obviously for the gentleman that spoke before us. I'm like -- however, I am so off script because this is not me. Okay. So I apologize, but my two minutes, let me put my glasses on so I can see what I did write down as a script. Landlord's being -- I've been at the location I am for almost years and now 17 I'm unable to afford it. But for 18 the last 20 years, as some of the 19 people who spoke previous, there 20 has been no changes. Now, the rent is up. Because my building or my bedroom window faces Center City and it skyrocketed $500 per month, but income went down more than half, you know, twice as much as the rent increase. Anyhow I'm going to read the script. I worked for the state, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for years, 30 years. And now, I'm on a fixed income, forced to retire. I did everything right. Currently with the rising costs of housing across the city, I am meeting obstacle after obstacle to secure safe, long-term housing because of constantly increasing rental fees. Many people like myself cannot afford to have rent constantly increasing. The City needs to take care of us, the people who have been here, who have worked here and continue to call this city home. It's just so much. It's so much. And certain things were just unforeseeable. We did not know, you know. Tomorrow I get a phone call from the doctor saying you have cancer today and then the next obstacle and then it continues. Not to say that everyone doesn't experience life, but when your income takes a drastic drop and you didn't understand what happened and you knock on the door and ask for a landlord, can I apply for this apartment and they say, oh, no. 10 And let alone I've seen vouchers and Section 8 vouchers and they are determining, oh, well, we'll help you move in that neighborhood. Well, what about the neighborhood that I want to live in or what happened to the -- I used to live in this neighborhood, I can't live here anymore, you know. I am from Philly. I love my city. And I'm looking at two Councilmembers that do know that they see me everywhere. I support just about everything Philadelphia. I even call my name Shirladelphia because I want people to know I love you all. I've loved them all since I worked for them. Now, I'm trying to get folks to work for me. I just need the help.
Thank you so much, Ms. Smith, for sharing your testimony and thanks for all the good that you do in the community. It's really good to see you today. We do have quite a long list of commenters so I'm going to kind of be a little strict about the two minutes and you'll hear -- I'm going to interject and let you know when the two minutes is up. But please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hi. My name is Gail Banks. I live at 5418 Sansom Street in West Philadelphia. My landlord is Emmie Beamer who lives in Texas. I pay a realtor while my neighbors pay her. She refuses to fix anything but raised the rent on me last year by $100 a month. In February -- and might do it again this February coming. With the things that are going in the city, I won't be surprised if she do. The window in my dining room does not close the hallway. Lights do not work properly what makes it dangerous at night, and the fire extinguishers are all out of date. She refuses to replace them. There are too many landlords in Philadelphia like mine, landlords who raise the rent every year, which does nothing to improve the housing. And some of the landlords use the software too called RealPage or other means to communicate and hike up the price of the rent. This is illegal, unfair and unjust. I don't know if my landlord is purposely communicating with other landlords to hike up the rent, but I do know the rent is too high and the effort is the same on tenants. I'm asking the members of the Committee to support Councilman O'Rourke's bill and help to pass it this year. Thank you and God bless. Also, with that being said in my community alone, I have seven different landlords that are slumlords and I'm trying to get more people in my neighborhood to come along with me, Renters Rights, One PA, to fight the difference of what are we going through. Thank you and may God bless y'all. (Applause.)
May God bless you too. Thank you for your testimony and for the organizing work that you're doing.
Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hello, everyone. My name is Jonathan Briggs and I am a member of One PA, Renters United Philadelphia from West Philadelphia, born and raised, in the playgrounds where I spent most of my days. Anyway I'm in support of Bill 240823 because a couple years ago when I was renting in Frankford I had to leave because I couldn't afford my rent. My rent was increased by 10 percent and I also had an extra fee, like a utility fee for my electricity and a pet fee. That was another extra $150 along with the 975 that I was paying for rent already. So I couldn't afford to stay. So I wind up moving. After that, the only place I could find that I could afford to move was back in West Philly with the slumlord who rented me a place that was just band-aided up. I didn't know that the place was in horrible condition. About a week, week and a half after I moved in, I started having a leak in my bedroom wall that grew into my wall corroding in on itself. Started getting black mold and mushrooms. I had a big stream coming down my wall. I had to be hospitalized because I couldn't breathe. It also came to the point where my landlord illegally, when I was sitting here trying to work, trying to make my money, trying to just live my life, you know, like everybody here has lives, everybody here has goals and everything, ambitions that they want to do, but I'm coming home from a 12-hour shift and I find out that my pet has been murdered, drowned in a bathtub by the only other person who has a key to my apartment. My apartment was ransacked and then I still wind up getting kicked out. After that the next day when I confronted him about what he did, he decided to pull a gun out on me and then called the cops on me. Now, I'm homeless. I'm still, you know, staying with my mom but I'm not staying with my mom. And it's hard with inflation. I have to sell food stamps because just to make ends meet. Now, I have no money to buy food. I got medical bills that I still got to pay off. It's getting ridiculous. It's crazy. And we shouldn't have to struggle like this. It's already hard enough just living today. Like, I at least want to be able to come to my safe haven and not have to worry about am I going to be able to afford my rent this month or what are they going to do to the electricity. Are they going to raise my rent, are they going to -- am I going to be getting evicted, wrongfully evicted or what's going to happen. I shouldn't have to be worrying about -- nobody here should have to be worrying about where they're going to be laying their heads at any point in time, especially not in your own home. But I hope all Councilmembers will vote in support of this bill and I thank everybody for showing up. Like Brother Stone said, this is a group of brave people and I'm actually glad to see that I'm not the only one that's feeling this way. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you so much for your testimony. And if there's anything that I or my office can do to help you, I want to extend that. And we can talk after the -- we don't have to talk now. We can talk after the hearing. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
I'm Daniel Eisenberg and I serve as the Pastor of St. John's Lutheran Church in Mayfair and I am also a member of POWER Interfaith. I'll start by talking a bit about the work that we've done in POWER over the last several months now. We've had over 700 one-to- one conversations with people of faith, Jews, Muslims, Christians, ethical humanists, Unitarian Universalists and all kinds of other people of faith and moral courage. And what we have found is that almost a third of the people that we've spoke to have missed a rent payment or been late on a rent payment, are worried daily about making their rent. This is a thing that is going on in our city. On the St. John's part of things where I serve as pastor, I actually have -- two members of my church right now that are facing eviction at the end of the week. A 50-year-old woman and her 80-year- old mother are looking, probably going to be homeless by the end of the week. They had been renting a place for over 10 years, almost to the day 10 years. And then last year they got a new landlord who looked at the market and thought that he could get a little bit more extra money out of them. Now, they couldn't afford their payments and now they are not going to have a place to live by the end of the week. And so, I am grateful for this bill. Let me see, I've heard it enough now, 240823. Yeah, I need no notes. But in all seriousness I am very grateful for this bill as just one of many of the ways that we need to address this housing accessibility and affordability crisis in order to make sure that the people that I love and the people that I serve, my fellow children of God, that they don't end up without a home. And so, I hope and pray that we all do what's right. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony and for your advocacy. And again, if there's anything that we can do for those tenants, let's talk after the hearing. We would love to help if we can. Thank you. Will the Clerk please call the next three commenters.
David Ôney or Oney, Nikki Andrews, Janet White. (No response.)
David Oney, Nikki Andrews, Janet White, Shiree Smith. (No response.)
Vivian Chang, Elizabeth Claire Houston and Winfield Thomas. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Good afternoon. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hello, everyone. My name is Nikki. I am a supporter of the bill 240823. And I know we all have been on script. I'm going to come off script just a bit and give a little bit of my testimony. I am a retiring nurse of 19 years. I'm 42 years old. I have two children, both in New York. One is on college campus right now. I am a survivor of domestic violence and I advocate now for those victims and survivors as well. And so, years ago when I got the strength to leave the situation that I was in, I was offered to go into a shelter with my children and to change my name and identity because my abuser was an officer and to go into protective custody. And I chose not to do that. I chose to stand and not run anymore. I stayed in some shelters. And as a result, I was given an opportunity to get housing. And they told me if I stayed in a shelter for a year that I would get housing. And I refused to do that because I worked. I was from Cheltenham area, Mt. Airy area, and I knew what it was to be a working- class family and to work for what you wanted. And so, I saved and I got enough money to move my children into a safe environment and into Hill. And so, here I am today. And I am a renter and a member of One PA, Renters United of Philadelphia. I've been renting from a large corporate landlord Jude DeMarco's(ph) office for nearly 10 years. And since then I've been in that property, I've had my rent raised quite a few times over those years without prior notice. Just recently my rent was raised yet again. I've worked as a nurse throughout the pandemic so you can imagine COVID units and I was the one of the people that -- by the grace of God I've never lost a patient in 19 years because I knew I was working in my gift. I was working in healing so I didn't walk away when a lot of people left because of COVID or got laid off because they had to get the vaccine. And so, my rent has been raised so many times. But even in a demanding field, the medical field where we know are in demand, right, the medical field is always in demand but the wages just don't match the economy. Yes, you don't have to say Amen, just say mm-hmm, right. And I have a family to take care of. And again, like I said I have a daughter -- I dropped out of school to have my first child, my son at 17, but we got my daughter on a college campus, university. She graduated with a 4.0 and got a a full ride. (Applause.)
Yeah. Glory be to God. And so, the rent goes up, but it does not match the repair, the attention to the repairs that we request often times from my landlord or the quality of our homes, right. And it's unfortunate. Like other large corporate landlords, Jude DiMarco neglects our rights to quality housing. I haven't seen many repairs in that 10-year span. I use my own money. Again, I know what it is to work to have something nice and to go out and get it. And so, often times I won't even call the office. I'll just use my own money. When I say use my own money, I'm calling in contractors. I'm not talking about replacing batteries. I'm not talking about replacing fire extinguishers. I'm talking about my own money to get what needs to be done because I want a safe dwelling for myself and for my children. And it's just been gross negligence over the years. My family and I have suffered because the repairs have not been done in a timely fashion and they just haven't been addressed. The violations such as we've endured leaky roofs, infestation to the dwelling, compromised foundation, holes where you can, you know, again raised in Cheltenham. I moved to Frankford and my mom was like, are you out of your mind, you don't know what you're getting yourself into. But I'm a praying mother for the entire city, you know. And so, it's draining. It's really draining. Plumbing issues, backed-up sewage that I have to wait weeks and weeks for. I heard somebody testify and say that they missed a holiday. I went through the same thing where my entire dining room ceiling where I've been waiting months, months, not weeks, months for them to come out and just fix the ceiling. And the response and the pushback is very, very nasty. It's almost like -- yeah. That's just some of the things that we fight for a better community and economy. Why come home -- years 8 in a nursing field, I did doubles 9 after doubles after doubles to come 10 home and it not even be peaceful or 11 my children not be safe, yeah. So 12 I don't know whether my landlord 13 uses RealPage because obviously 14 they don't even have to tell us 15 when we sign the contract. It's 16 not in the law that they have to 17 dispose that information to their 18 customers or their consumers, so to 19 speak, their tenants. And so, I don't even know.
If you can just take the next 30 seconds and wrap up.
But we should have access to that information, you know. I don't know. What I do know is corporate landlords should not be getting away with this tool, having this tool, RealPage, using it to abuse the private data and to raise rents ridiculously at vast amounts by this algorithm. It's inhumane and it should be exposed and it should be stopped. (Applause.)
I want to close by saying I'm very grateful, very, very grateful for everyone here, all of you Councilmembers that are here and everyone here that's sharing their story. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you for sharing your story and thank you for all of your service during COVID and beyond. Can the next public commenter please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Great. My name is Vivian Chang. I'm the Executive Director of Asian Americans United. We're based in Chinatown North and I'm a renter who lives in Chinatown North. So just like everyone else here, I've heard too many horror stories and seen too many horror stories of renters being mistreated by landlords, right. Folks paying out the nose, way more than they can afford for a dwelling that's just not up to par. Similarly I had a landlord where tiles fell down in our bathtub and for a month, we were just -- we had no idea what to do. We were like this is an unhealthy living situation, right. It was not -- anyway, it was bad. And so, related to that is this power that predatory landlords have over us, right. They can fix the prices. They can do a lot of things under our current laws, so that's why I speak in support of this bill, right, because they're already taking 30, 40, 50 percent of our wages. And for what, for nothing. So we need to take back the power for the people, for the renters, for folks who are working and just trying to survive and make sure that they can't keep pushing prices up, taking more than their fair share and make sure that this is a city for all of us. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you so much for your testimony and for sharing your story here today. Can the next public commenter please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Yeah. My name is Winfield Thomas. I'm with Brewerytown Sharswood Neighborhood Coalition. I'm with Sunshine Unlimited but our Home Equity Action Team. We support this bill 9 and we thank Councilman O'Rourke for bringing this bill. And we think that the City of Philadelphia needs true affordable housing. In fact, all housing should be already affordable. Taking note from cities across this nation we need prevention and a city that cares for its residents, especially long-term residents. And again, we thank you for being able to have this voice this afternoon.
Thank you so much for your testimony and for your advocacy. (Applause.)
Hello. My name is Claire and I am a Philadelphia resident, a renter --
Newsome. Elizabeth Claire Newsome. I go by Claire. My parents wanted to make it as confusing as possible I guess. And I am a Philadelphia resident. I am a renter. I'm a cyber security policy writer and I am a former anti-trust scholar. And I say former because anti-trust broke my heart. And I'm here to give three lessons that I learned the hard way so hopefully Philadelphia does not have to also learn that the hard way. I am in support of this bill. And I think that anti-trust is useful in its purpose of ensuring that markets stay fair. But there are some things that as a society we don't want to leave to just anti-trust. While this bill will address some of the anti- competitive harms, there is supporting reasons why we should do it. Take for example monopsony in the employment market, so it's monopoly but on the purchasing side. We don't leave that to anti- trust law. Instead we have employment law. Instead we have labor law and there's a whole bunch of other ways we regulate labor markets because we understand that this is humans and that we want as a society to say and how humans re able to survive outside of just leaving it up to a market even if there are ways to make that market more healthy. The second lesson I learned the hard way is that once there's a certain level of consolidation, it is hard to unring that bell. Take, for example, Amazon and the book marketplace. You see there are very few book markets left. Amazon did escape a lot of the most severe anti-trust regulation and litigation around their activities in the book marketplace. And yet they were still able to completely dominate the market in a matter of about years. 9 And bringing that back to 10 the housing market, you can look around and just see the consolidation of the housing market in the luxury buildings that are being built. And what that means is less space for higher prices and the renting algorithm will only make that issue worse. And then my -- oh, it will also then drive about the small landlords, the mom-and-pop landlords, the human element that is really important to -- as we heard testimony earlier, that's really important to the renter's ability to acknowledge their humanity. I'm sure we don't want to be online with customer support. As hard as it is to get repairs in the current space, I'm sure we don't want to be online with an automated customer support just to get our stuff fixed. And the last thing that I learned from my time in the anti-trust space is that at the end of the day corporations really do rely on governments to regulate them. And I know that sounds counterintuitive. I'm sure you hear a lot of corporate representatives here fighting against regulation. But as a policy writer, I understand that it's really hard to do the right thing unless there's a regulation encouraging a corporation to do said right thing. I work in cyber security. Cyber security is a hot topic. Cyber security is a highly regulated area and yet there are best practices that it's hard to get even my most well-resourced clients to execute. And that is often times as we saw with the crowd strike situation, which was what took down a lot of critical infrastructure for about a day, you know, security best practices would have been helpful. And even the most well-resourced organizations didn't necessarily follow through on that. And so --
Yes, I'm wrapping it up. And so, I think that it is in the best interest of even those who may challenge this bill because it will really encourage them to do the right thing. It will encourage them to have a reason to respect the humanity of the people who are living with them and it will encourage them to share the market space with other small landlords. Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much. Thanks to you all. Thank you for coming here today. (Applause.)
Just a real quick comment. Councilmember Rue Landau. While I don't know if corporations are necessarily going to appreciate regulation, I would say that having clear guidelines is certainly helpful for them to do their work and the big corporations have big lawyers and they will figure out what the guidelines are and they will get their clients to follow the guidelines. And also, just an overarching comment for everybody here. I have a background in housing law and I'm the current Chair of the Technology Committee. And so, this is the intersection of both of them. But I do want to remind everybody for the tenants, it's breaking my heart to hear your stories. I want to dig in so badly, but I would like to remind you to go to Phillytenant.org as a first start. There's a helpline. There's lots of resources. Please everyone go there to start, Phillytenant.org. If you have more questions, come to our offices because we really want to make sure that you're living in the healthiest, safest, most affordable way possible.
Thank you for that, Councilmember Landau. Is there any one else that wishes to testify on this bill? (No response.)
Seeing no one else here to testify on the bill, this concludes the public hearing. We will now go into a public meeting to consider the action to be taken on the bill 7 heard today. Can the Clerk please call the roll.
Present. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Landau for a motion on the amendment to Bill No. 7 240823.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I offer an amendment to Bill No. 240823. A copy of the amendment has been circulated to all members of the Committee. I move that the amendment to Bill No. 240823 be approved. (Duly seconded.)
It has been moved and properly seconded that the amendment to Bill 21 No. 240823 be approved. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the motion carries. And the amendment to Bill 6 No. 240823 has been approved. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Landau for a motion on Bill No. 240823 as amended.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that Bill No. 240823 as amended be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit first reading of this bill at the next session of Council. (Duly seconded.)
It has been moved and properly seconded that Bill No. 240823 as amended be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit first reading of this bill at the next session of Council. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the motion carries. (Applause.)
Bill No. 240823 as amended will be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation with a request that the rules of Council be suspended to permit first reading at the next session of Council. This concludes the business of the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless today. Thank you all very much for your participation. (Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless concluded at 4:05 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL