COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON HOUSING, NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT AND THE HOMELESS City Hall, Room 400 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, June 3, 2025 1:00 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCIL PRESIDENT KENYATTA JOHNSON COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILWOMAN KATHERINE GILMORE-RICHARDSON COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL COUNCILMAN CURTIS J. JONES, JR. COUNCILMAN NICOLAS O'ROURKE COUNCILMAN JEFFREY J. YOUNG, JR. COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS MS. JONES, CLERK P R O C E E D I N G CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Good afternoon, everyone. I now note that the hour has come and this hearing is called to order. This is a 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 Nos. 250329, 250330 and 250331. Ms. Jones, would you please call the roll?
Chair Gauthier CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Present. Thank you, Ms. Jones. Joining us also is Minority Whip Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke. All right. All right. All right. Let's get started. We all love Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke. Let's -- but let's move this process along. I note for the record that a quorum of this committee is present and this hearing is called to order. Good afternoon. It is wonderful, truly wonderful to see so many people here in this chamber. Thank you for getting involved with your local government. As a renter myself, I know how important it is to make sure every renter in the city of Philadelphia has access to affordable, stable and safe housing. We are not here talking about would be nices or cherries on top, but we are talking about fundamentals, things that frankly should be the basic necessity that anyone who pays to live somewhere should be guaranteed. If you do not have a safe home, nothing else matters. We know this. So when we talk about our affordable housing crisis, we cannot forget about the tens of thousands of Philadelphians who are living in units with a leaky roof, with raccoons and possums scurrying across the roof with appliances that only work half the time. Of course, we need to build, but 40 percent of rental properties in our city are in need of repair, and we will never solve our affordable housing crisis without bringing these homes back into good condition. I applaud Minority Whip Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke for coming up with a legislative package that rewards landlords who comply with the local law and do well by doing good while holding negligent landlords accountable. Government's No. 1 priority is to keep people safe, and this is what today's hearing is about. Do any of the committee members have opening comments? VICE CHAIR LANDAU: I just wanted to say -- CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Vice Chair Landau. VICE CHAIR LANDAU: Good afternoon, everybody. I just wanted to also just lend my voice to what we're talking about at being an incredibly important issue of making sure that people have safe and healthy homes to live in. There is -- as someone who used to run the City's Fair Housing Commission, and as a former tenant lawyer, I saw time and time again of people living in very, very poor conditions that needed repairs. And this -- this package of bills is our first step, a big step, a leap towards getting ourselves to a place where everybody can feel safe and healthy in their home. And we also -- as we've been focusing a lot on the cost of moving lately, it is essential that if people can stay in the homes they're in now, let's do that because moving, sure, costs a lot, and we want people to be able to stay in their communities, become a part of the neighborhood, a part of the fabric of the communities, let's do everything we can to make sure that we -- that people are safe and healthy in their homes. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you so much. Councilmember Jones.
So I love Nicolas O'Rourke, too, and I'm not ashamed to say it. It was Nicolas O'Rourke among other members that accompanied me, along with Driscoll, along with Landau up to a place called Brith Sholom. We toured that facility and saw how people lived, many of whom are in protected classes such as veterans, people with disabilities, people who were seniors that were living the fourth quarter of their life in horrid conditions. What is important to me is that even though there were laws on the books, there was no enforcement. That people got fined and that insidious owners ignored those fines and said that we'll take out loans, take the value out of the property, and let people figure it out. These packages are an answer to a lot of that. And so therefore, with some work on the details, we are going to figure this out on behalf of the people. So thank you, Nick. Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you so much. And now we'll move to our bill sponsor, Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke for work for any opening comments.
Good afternoon, Chair Gauthier, Vice Chair Landau, members of the housing committee, members of listening public. Actually, good afternoon. I come before you today with, if I'm honest, righteous conviction to fight for safe healthy homes in the city of Philadelphia, not by myself, not in isolation, not as an individual, but shoulder to shoulder with working class people, responsible landlords, union members, healthcare workers, faith leaders, all. Allow me to begin not just as a policy advocate and organizer, but also now as a father. My son, Augustine Leslie O'Rourke was born just last week. He is in the NICU. He is fighting for his health. And I should be with my family right now. I deserve to be with my family right now. But last night I was told something that stopped me in my tracks, that if I didn't come here to defend the Safe Healthy Homes Act, that these bills would not receive a vote. I was forced to make an impossible choice, but here I am, because I am not an individual; I am one of the people, because too many people have sacrificed already too much for us to give up on this now, because this movement is bigger than any individual, any one person, any one of us, and because I believe that safe, healthy homes are a human right and not a privilege. Listen, I know that I am not the only person who has made sacrifices to be here. The chambers reveal it as such, more than 70 members, 7-0 members of the public have signed up to testify in support of these bills: Tenants, landlords, union members, nurses, social workers, immigrants, faith leaders. That is an unprecedented number of people who have taken off work, who have arranged childcare of their own, who have coordinated transportation to be in this place and showed up to support these bills. I see you all. I'm grateful for you all. I'm empowered because of you all. I'm encouraged because of you all. I honor you all and I fight beside every single one of you. Due to time constraints -- due to time constraints, public comment has been limited. Not everyone who signed up will get to speak today. But make no mistake, the people are powerful and your needs are holy. And when the people speak with one voice, it is the voice of moral authority. Everybody from the mayor's office to public commenters has said it plainly, has said it clearly, has said it repeatedly, we are in the midst of a housing crisis. That we have profound power over a human need and that we must act. Not we should; we got to. Today, we'll hear painful truths. We'll hear stories of tenants living without heat, children sick from mold, elders climbing stairs in buildings with no 11 rails, with no lights. These are not isolated cases either. These aren't individual islands on themselves. These are symptoms of a broken system. We'll also hear from those opposing these bills that they're far too burdensome, that they're far too broad. I have one response to such claims. These bills simply will not apply to the vast majority of landlords. The policies laid out today are designed to address the most egregious cases of negligent property management as defined already by our city charter. It's already defined as such. It's addressing those persons. This is not anti-landlord legislation. This is anti-neglect legislation. This is anti-squalor legislation. This is pro-dignity legislation. We are not regulating the occasional L&I violation. We are confronting chronic willful disregard, disgraceful disregard for human life. So in closing, I'd like to thank the deeply committed homeowners, the tenants and organizers of Philly Thrive and OnePA Renters United Philadelphia for your willingness to fight -- to fight for yourselves, your willingness to fight for your neighbors, for sharing the essence of grassroots democracy with my team and with me. Your passion, your persistence, your power are the only way a democracy worth its name will persist. Thank you.
I thank the members of the committee that have taken their time to be present today. Let the records show the people are watching, the people are ready, and the people will not wait. Thank you, Madam Chair. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you so much, Councilmember. Thank you so much, Councilmember, for the passion and the conviction that you bring to this work. Ms. Jones, will you now read the title of the bills.
Bill No. 20 250329. An ordinance amending chapter 9-3900 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Property Licenses and Owner Accountability to clarify licensing requirements, authorize the department to create a proactive inspection program, require public reporting related to code compliance, and established remedies, damages and protections for tenants, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 25033O. An ordinance amending chapter 9-800 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Landlord and Tenant to modify the requirements related to good cause for ending a tenancy, add protections against retaliation and harassment for tenants and tenant organizations, specify tenants' rights related to the implied warranty of habitability, and provide a legal presumption related to breaches of the implied warranty of habitability, create a tenant right to organize, specify deadlines for asserting claims, and establish and enhance enforcement mechanism, remedies, damages, and protections, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250331. An ordinance amending chapter 9-800 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Landlord and Tenant to hereby authorize the creation of an anti- displacement fund to establish violations for displacement and to authorize the Department of Planning and Development to administer the Anti-Displacement Fund and amending section 8-505, entitled Cease Operations Order to add notice requirements, all under certain terms and conditions. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Okay. Will the clerk please call the first panel of witnesses to testify on the resolution? I am going to ask -- we have a very packed agenda today. I'm going to ask witnesses to summarize their testimony and be concise. We are setting a timer for four minutes for every witness. Please help me -- help me in order to move this hearing along. Ms. Jones?
On our first panel, we have Sarah Adamo, Randy Duque, John Mondlak. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Good afternoon. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. I guess we can go with L&I first.
Do you have a preference of who goes first? CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: It doesn't matter. Go ahead.
Good afternoon, Chairperson Gauthier and members of the Housing, Neighborhood Development and the Homeless Committee. My name is Sarah Adamo and I am the Director of Zoning and Legislation for the Department of Licenses and Inspections Quality of Life. I'm here today to provide testimony on Bill No. 250329 introduced by Councilmember O'Rourke. As amended, this bill 12 proposes to create additional protections and notifications associated with tenant -- with tenants of properties that have rental licenses. The administration strongly supports the spirit of this bill and recognizes the importance of safe and healthy housing for Philadelphia residents. It is critical to encourage property owners to maintain their properties in a way that prevents the displacement of residents whenever possible. The administration does have concerns about this bill in its current form and believes that additional amendments and discussions are necessary to ensure the ordinance can be effectively enforced. Due to -- due to the tight timeline ahead of the hearing, we were unable to review the latest amendments received this morning as thoroughly as we would've preferred. Given that these changes will impact over 80,000 licenses and all renters in the city, we believe that it is critical that we review these changes thoroughly to ensure that there are no unintended consequences and the department is able to actualize the changes. E. Initiative is currently -- is under current consideration by City Council, we have committed to increasing the housing stock, especially affordable housing across the city. We believe that as written, there are potentially several unintended consequences that could reduce our affordable housing stock in our city, driving good acting landlords out of the market and increasing the number of rentals who will operate without a rental license. We have worked with Council over the years to streamline the rental renewal process and as the bill stands, it will have the opposite effect of what City Council has recommended. We are committed to working with Council to address these concerns and to help advance this and future legislation so that we can achieve the bill's intended goals. To highlight a few of the administration's concerns -- and please note these are based on the version of the bill that was sent to us yesterday, so it may not be a hundred percent accurate to the most recent amendment. Much of the bill 10 that's currently written would be impossible for the department to operationalize. Most notably 9-39014D, which requires the department to provide notice to tenants when a rental license is suspended or not renewed after 30 days. We recognize that this is a key component. This provision is a key component to the legislation and respectfully urge Council to allow time for us to develop a practical and implementable solution. The bill also requires that during application for a new or renewed rental license, an applicant's self-report that certain habitability standards are met. This application modification would require change to eCLIPSE, which could not -- could not be effective immediately. The application change would not take place until after the WebUI project is completed and would need to be added to a queue of changes. Furthermore, due to the volume of licenses that are impacted, any change that impacts rental license renewals needs to be carefully considered to minimize delays and confusion for license holders. There are several technical amendments and potential conflicts that have been flagged by L&I and law that needs to be addressed. And lastly, the implementation date would not be able to be met as there are several regulatory changes that need to be developed and implemented. As previously mentioned, we also need to make several updates to eCLIPSE, which would not be able to be done until 2027.
Considering the potential significant impacts on renters and the city resources required to achieve the goals of this legislation, we believe that further amendments are necessary to develop effective legislation. We respectfully request that this bill be held, so that we can continue working through these concerns and ensure the legislation functions as intended. Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on behalf of the Department of Licenses and Inspections Quality of Life. I'm happy to answer any questions at this time. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you for your testimony. Whomever wants to go next, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon, Chairperson Gauthier, and members of the Committee on Housing and Neighborhood Development and the Homeless. My name is John Mondlak and I serve as the first deputy and chief of staff in the Department of Planning and Development, and I'm here to testify on Bill 250331 introduced by Councilmember O'Rourke. Bill 250331 would allow the creation of an anti-displacement fund for residential tenants who cannot stay in their homes because the building they live in has been closed down due to cease operations order. And we appreciate that this bill recognizes the very thorny problem in code enforcement. While it's common to call for stricter code enforcement on rental properties, few acknowledge that stricter code enforcement may require the rental property to be ceased and that when residential properties are ceased, tenants lose their homes. In addition, we welcome the amendment -- the amendment to Bill 20 250331, clarifying that the city is to provide notice to tenants 10 days in advance of executing a cease operations order unless doing so would endanger the tenant's health and safety. Today, a cease operations order in a landlord tenant context is issued as a penalty of last resort. Typically, cease violation orders are issued only when the landlord has been cited repeatedly for significant violations of the city code provision that govern the standards of safety and functionality for the rental properties and has failed to remedy these violations. Under Bill 250331, a cease operations order executed against the landlord property would no 18 longer just be a penalty. For the first time it would be a separate violation in and of itself. The administration's understanding is that the rationale for creating a cease operations violation is a mechanism to force bad landlords to pay for the harm they have caused. The dollars would presumably go into an anti- displacement fund. Having bad landlords pay into the fund is just unfair. Given the length and complexity of code enforcement process, however, we're concerned about the efficacy of using violations as a source of revenue. We are also concerned about the unintended effects creating a new violation it could have on the city's small landlords. Cease operation orders causing tenants to be relocated can be caused by circumstances well beyond the control of a landlord, such as a water main breach, breach of fire, a natural disaster or construction on an adjacent property. Being subject to a violation, actually, a separate violation for each displaced resident just as their properties are being damaged through no fault of their own could be a disincentive to operate rental housing. The amendment to the bill respect -- that was circulated a couple days ago, specifies a cease operation order only occurs when the property is ceased due to the owner's negligent or fault in helping with this regard. However, it may not be enough to retain landlords who are contemplating dropping out of the rental market and some may prefer to avoid the risk of being judged inaccurately as negligent or at fault. Given the shortage of affordable housing in Philadelphia, we are concerned about any potential loss of rental units from good landlords. The Mayor is committed to a bold, historic and unprecedented vision to build, preserve, and restore 30,000 units of housing in Philadelphia. And in order to ensure that we meet this goal, we need to avoid reducing our housing stock and decreasing the number of affordable units as good acting landlords exist in the market. We appreciate the opportunity to testify today and respectfully requesting that this bill be held in committee to work through the concerns and we're happy to answer any questions you may have. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you so much.
Good afternoon, Chairperson Gauthier and Members of the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and the Homeless. My name is Randy Duque. I am the acting executive director of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations and Fair Housing Commission. I'm here to testify on Bill No. 250330 introduced by Councilmember O'Rourke. The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations or PCHR is the city's official civil rights and peacemaking agency. We enforce an important set of laws that prevent discrimination and promote equality. Within the PCHR is a separate commission that works to ensure renters have safe places to live and decent living conditions while landlords abide by landlord tenant laws through the enforcement of the city's fair housing ordinance. This commission is known as the Fair Housing Commission. The Fair Housing Commission or FHC is comprised of five members who are appointed by the mayor and serve as volunteers on a weekly basis. The commissioners conduct hearings to decide complaints and investigate unfair rental practices in properties. The FHC's work is supported by a small team of city staff, and together they process over 500 cases annually. As introduced, Bill 250330 aims to expand residential renter protections by preventing landlords from retaliating or refusing or to renew or lease to a tenant without good cause and adding tenant harassment and tentative collective actions expansions that apply to renters' rights in general. While we appreciate the spirit of the legislation as introduced -- as introduced, the legislation raises several concerns that we believe will negatively impact the good acting housing providers across the city at a time that the administration's committed to addressing the housing crisis facing our city through Mayor Parker's Home Initiative. Several sections of this legislation leave definitions and interpretations too ambiguous, making the intent unclear through phrases such as timely manner, reasonable notice, or an abuse of government process, which due to vagueness will make almost every landlord-tenant issue disputable such as a repair taking longer than expected. This legislation also creates duplicative requirements of already existing laws leading to confusion, not only for housing providers but for attorneys, judges and our commission to interpret. This would lead directly to the Fair Housing Commission to be overloaded with cases due to the significant increases of potential violations by a housing provider that would seriously strain our capacity. For instance, extending a good cause to any lease alone would significantly expand the eligibility of those who can file with Fair Housing Commission under this provision where such cases, typically, are handled in municipal court. Furthermore, adding the tenant harassment section to the Fair Housing ordinance massively broadens this type of violations heard by the FHC as practically any landlord-tenant dispute would fall into one of the provisions in the section, effectively making us a de facto in municipal court. There is also potential for provisions in this bill to be misused, for example, while we agree with the importance of for tenants to have the right to organize as listed in section 9814, it would prohibit a landlord from taking any action if another tenant complains if they feel they are being harassed by organizers or unsafe because a non-resident is knocking on their door. Finally, some of the provisions are currently in the Fair Housing ordinance such as the provision under tenant harassment on retaliation -- retaliating against, threatening or interfering with tenants or tenant organizers 90413K, which is already covered under section 98042 on retaliation.
We appreciate some of the most recent additions to this bill, such as adding Section 980415D to give the Fair Housing Commission permissive jurisdiction, but still see a potential strain on the services as they are benefits for a tenant to file with us, such as no 9 cost service and not needing a lawyer to fully participate in our processes. We respect -- we respectfully request that this legislation be held in committee to address these concerns to ensure we are achieving the goals of this legislation without negatively impacting those good acting housing providers desperately needed across our city. And I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thanks to all of you for your testimony, but more importantly, for the work that you do on behalf of the city every day. I'm going to -- wait a minute. I'm going to recognize members first. I'm going to -- we have to get through the hearing folks. We have to get through the hearing. I'm going to take a card from -- I'm going to take a card from our Council President's book. I'm going to ask that we minimize booing towards testimony. I'm going to ask that we keep the noise level down in chambers because that's how we'll get through this hearing, right? And, you know, you all are here for the legislative process and they're going to -- you're -- you showed up in mass to show your support, and that's a strong statement. But people are going to say things that you like and they're going to say things that you don't like and that's how we get through it at the end of the day. So thank you very much. I want to note, for the record, the presence of Councilmember Mark Squilla and Deputy Majority Whip Councilmember Cindy Bass. Thank you for joining us, both of you. I want to start with a question for the panel and then I'll open to members and then the bill 16 sponsor. So I understand, you know, all of what you all kind of addressed your concerns around capacity and, sort of, the administrative functions that you would have to expand in order to carry these bills forward, and that you're asking for more time to work on language and amendments. But I do want to just note that we are embarking upon a historic investment in housing and building and preserving affordable housing. I, for one, and I know I'm not alone in Council, I'm cheering for the mayor to get that full $800 million. I think it's amazing that this is her number one priority. But I think we have to admit that what minority Whip O'Rourke is bringing to the floor is a timely conversation. We're not going to be able to get to 30,000 units if we don't make sure our existing housing is in good shape. So for L&I, I know that the Councilmember has tried to propose an increase in your funding in order -- and to acknowledge that you would have to greatly expand your capacity. So for L&I, I want you to talk about how the million in propose L&I funding that's a part of this campaign could help with those capacity concerns that you listed. And then for the other two departments, I hear your concerns, but I'm hopeful that this will be a conversation that's not just about no, given the importance of everything that the Councilmember is trying to do and that this can instead be a conversation that is about getting to, yes. So I'd like for you to follow up -- I'd like for you to follow up your concerns with your thoughts on how we can get those concerns addressed in concert with the Councilmember. So we could start with L&I.
Good afternoon, committee members. My name is Bridget Collins-Greenwald. I'm the commissioner of the L&I Licenses and Inspections Quality of Life department. Good afternoon. So I think the question was -- I was walking up and I heard it. I think the question was the $10 million figure that's been thrown around. So what L&I proposes to do -- and we have been working with the councilman's office on this and various other offices on this -- is to develop a proactive inspection program. As I stated during our budget hearing, we're in the preliminary process of that. We're looking at all different kinds of things -- ways to make that happen: incentivizing good landlords, doing proactive inspections on new licenses, giving -- doing virtual inspections, which we just launched two days ago, so we're going to see how that works out. So we have a number of various things that are going to go along with this pro action proactive inspection program. So the 8 million that is proposed, we've said 9 we're not really sure where that 10 number comes from because we haven't even put the plan together yet. So what we do plan to do is come up with a number that we say, hey, if this is what we're going to do, here's the full-fledged program, proactive inspection program, and here's what it'll cost and here's what it'll look like and here's the measures we'll have and here's what we plan to get on. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: And I would love for you to talk about timeline. Because this is -- this is not just a philosophical conversation. This is life and death. Like, I've had people die in my district because of the condition of their property. So I'd love to hear you talk -- I would love to hear you give some more specificity around your timeline in doing these things that I know that you know are necessary.
So our timeline is, as some of you are aware, we're waiting on a research project to be completed, which will not be completed for a few months. We are working internally on putting something together. So while I don't have -- I'm going to give a ballpark figure. I think we could have a plan together within the next several months, by the end of the summer, which I believe is why we've asked for this to be held so we can work through those details which we've all acknowledged that the devil's in the details, right? So I think we could get something together by the end of the summer. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Okay. Thank you for your transparency around that. And then I'd love Planning and Development Human Relations, if you could just -- you know, you listed the concerns, but I want to hear you talk about how we get there with such an important effort and what the timing around that is and what you need to get there.
For us, a lot of it is like just trying to make sure that the -- this bill and these laws are airtight so that when people do have problems, there's no 23 extended litigation, no extended investigation. Because you're right, like, we -- like, people need remedy immediately. And as it stands now, like, the problem is like -- because it could be opened up to interpretation, it can go -- like, a case can go on for a longer amount of time than intended. So it's not really -- we're not against it. We just -- we want to make sure it's tighter. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Do you have a sense of what you need from a resource perspective?
With that, I mean, our Fair Housing Commission, as you heard, there's only five full-time staff and then we have volunteer commissioners. So capacity-wise, like, we would -- like, we would need to essentially expand the Fair Housing Commission in itself. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you.
I would just add that from Planning and Development, I don't -- I wouldn't say that there's a capacity issue. I think that as a lot of people know, we don't manage the temporary housing closely. That's Office of Emergency Management and Office of Homeless Services. So presumably -- but they -- presumably they would have the capacity to do that. For us, it's more about -- it's things like setting up the fund, the timing of it. If you have people that are displaced now because of maybe fault of the landlord, maybe not, they need resources now. And are we waiting around for somebody to get cited for something they did on their own fault, pay the citation, maybe there's a collection issue, maybe they fight it, maybe you don't get the money for six months. And so it's really about -- for me, it's what programs do OEM and OHS have that maybe aren't working, if that's the concern, because I separate the two and say, if people need help, let's sit down and figure out how to help them. And, yeah, separately, if there are bad landlords, let's make sure that they're paying for the damage that they're doing. But I don't -- it's the tying of -- together that I think creates the challenge and just the -- you know, creating of funds. Generally, the funding is done through the budgetary process and that's how the money flows. And if everybody just created funds for the things that were important to them, eventually that gets really challenging to manage the finances of it. So it's better to keep it altogether in the conversation of the budget. But I do think that if we don't have programs that help the people that need it, then we should make the programs or fix the programs and make sure they have the help that they need. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Well, we happen to be in the budget process. So from a resource perspective it's a timely moment. I'll open up for questions from members. I'll start with Councilmember Driscoll, and then Vice Chair Landau.
Well, thank you for your testimony. You know, I want to commend the maker of the bills. The spirit of the legislation is spot on. But we got to make sure this legislation is legal, enforceable, and of course you scared me with that 2027 number. But listen, today is -- to be honest, right, we're all here to try and get to the right spot. So I guess to get to Chair Guathier's concern, when there are these immediate before we can figure all this stuff out, including this year's budget which we are contemplating for the next couple weeks. What remedies are currently in place to make sure these life safety issues are addressed in a timely fashion?
So most of our inspections are done on a complaint basis. So when we receive complaints, they are prioritized according to what the complaint is. So something like no heat in the middle of winter, we're going to be out there immediately and make sure that, you know, the more egregious violations are addressed immediately. So that's L&I's role in that. And then when we come to the cases where people are displaced, that's when L&I is not necessarily involved in that process as much. And I don't know if either of you want -- have anything to -- but L&I's role is essentially a complaint based process of responding to violations.
But what happens when Member Jones, you know, brought us out to Brith Sholom and there were these registered complaints and there were life safety issues, how do we -- how do we get it right? And I know you -- it's a hardworking department and I, as the chair and the legislative oversight chair here for Council, I'm a fan of L&I, but I know we have more work to do. I just want to make sure this legislation's right, but I also want to make sure that not a day goes by where we're putting anybody at risk. And so, complaint driven, I get that that's the way it usually works, usually way it works with policing as well, but we also have preventive policing. So I guess what I'm asking you is that regardless of this bill, you know, that we pay attention to the preventive aspects of the violations so that we protect each and every resident in the city of Philadelphia. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: I have to agree with the Councilmember, and I think you all would agree. Complaint driven is not good enough. There's a host of reasons why tenants would feel -- could feel uncomfortable coming forward with complaints. So we have to be willing to address this with urgency. Vice Chair Landau. VICE CHAIR LANDAU: Thank you so much and thank you all for being here. We absolutely need you to be partners in this. So in order for this to be a success, we look forward to continuing to work with you in the future. I did want to get a little bit to L&I's complaint process. Do you have an idea of how many of the complaints that come to L&I are from tenants about repairs needed in their rental properties?
Almost all complaints for residential properties are for rental properties. So in most cases, they -- we are getting that information from the tenants. VICE CHAIR LANDAU: Do you know how many you get a year?
No. 11 VICE CHAIR LANDAU: And do you know what percentage of those calls, the complaints that come in, are for the more egregious issues?
I mean, we could get that information for you if you give us a list of what you would consider egregious. VICE CHAIR LANDAU: I think the question is --
Like, we can look it up by code violation. VICE CHAIR LANDAU: As somebody who worked for this city for so many years and now looking at it from a different perspective, I really see that there's so many different ways that we can work that we sometimes don't think about. So how are we looking at what's coming in, how to triage it, how to look at the metrics and look at the data and see what needs to happen on a more quick -- a quicker basis.
We can definitely get you the exact information that you're looking for. I will say this, that out of the cease operations we've done for the last year, so that would be our most egregious, seven percent of all of our ceases were for rental unit -- rental properties. The other were mostly for businesses, nuisance businesses and things of that -- like, so for us, egregious would, you know, be a cease. So percent of them, it's not a huge number. It's about 445 on the total ceases for the year. And -- so whatever that math is, I'm going to say I knew it, when I came in here, maybe 36 --
-- 31 were rental properties. And to add on to what Sarah said a minute ago, a majority -- a vast majority of the complaints that we do get in -- are -- for interior inspections are for rental properties. Okay. So exterior's a little bit different, but interior is rental. So we'll get you that exact number when we get, you know -- VICE CHAIR LANDAU: I think what I'm -- what I'm trying to say is that there is a way that we can look at the data of what has -- what's -- I hope through eCLIPSE we can look at the data about what the complaints are for the rental properties and try to handle those on a basis that we never get to a cease operations level. And the -- just to add something about proactive inspections, we have no 9 idea if the person who got to the level of living in a property where they had cease operations, did they -- had they called L&I over and over again or did they never call L&I? And I just say there's -- the reason for proactive inspections is to make sure that we never get to that place, and that that would be the beauty of it. But while we're talking about cease operations, I did have a question of, what steps do you take now for the tenants when you have a cease operations order and tell tenants they need to leave the property?
So we issue an intent to cease before we would cease the property, unless something is completely egregious, like there was a fire or something that was completely damaged by flood or something like that. So we issue an intent to cease which is usually a 30-day notice to the tenants, and they have 30 days to -- 30 days for the landlord to comply, or the property owner to comply the violation. If it's that bad and they cannot, then we would have to cease the property. So it's typically a 30-day window. VICE CHAIR LANDAU: And last question really about communication and technology. I'm concerned to hear eCLIPSE took us so many years to get it, and now to hear that it would take years to update it to get new systems in there, I wanted to -- can you please talk a little bit about updating eCLIPSE and also communication to landlords and tenants? How do you know that when a landlord gets a -- you issue a violation for a landlord that that landlord actually saw the violation. Is there any outreach that's done? Could you do any outreach to them? Could you also pick up the phone and make a phone call to make sure that they received it? Thank you so much.
Sure. So, part -- the date that Sarah gave is -- it's a date that I know it seems a little crazy, 2027, but here's what happens with the eCLIPSE system. So right now we're in the process of this WebUI process, which I know we've probably talked about as nauseam to city council. But for those who don't know what that is, that's going to make ECLIPSE more accessible on the front end to our license -- our license holders and our end users. So that is taking place right now. Because that is taking place, anything else that is touching eCLIPSE on the public end on that front end, we are -- we've put in a queue. So they're -- we call them enhancements. Okay? So we're working on WebUI that should be done sometime in the fall. I think the last date -- I think it's October, end of October of 2020 -- of this year. So once that's done, we have this whole list of projects that are in the queue that are -- that we all consider mission- critical. So what we would have to do is see 2027 is where we're out to in these enhancements. So if this was something that we said, okay, we're going to re prioritize and this will go in, in, you know, March of 2026 or whatever, you know, whatever that is, that's what would have to happen, but that's the way the eCLIPSE system works. So it does work, but after this enhancement that we have, like, I'm going to call them like mini enhancements that we do along the way to just keep improving the system. VICE CHAIR LANDAU: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you. Councilmember Jones, or -- yeah, Councilmember Jones, Councilmember Bass, Councilmember Squilla.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Quick question. How many rental licenses did we issue last year? MD. ADAMO: We have 80 -- I'll just use this one. We have 80,000 active rental licenses.
And we all acknowledge that there's some people operating under the radar that don't bother to stop in and get a rental license. What is your estimate of the number of those kinds of units?
I don't know if we have an actual estimate. I would assume the majority of those are probably single family.
Okay. But can you get to the chair what the rough estimate is of people that hang a shingle never bother to stop in City Hall that we don't know about? So you may not have it now, but that is something that we need to find out a number of. Now, how many L&I inspections did we make last year?
We could get back to you with an exact number, but Renee over here saying at least 10,000 so that -- and they're all different disciplines of inspections. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Can you repeat that? Sorry.
I said I'm not exactly sure, but Renee said a good estimate is 10,000.
And out of those 10,000, roughly, how many resulted in a cease, close the door --
All right. If this bill is passed, how many inspections can you make a year where we preemptively inspect? What's your estimate?
I don't believe this bill is attached to funding. So I don't know the answer to that. This bill is, as it is, isn't -- there's no funding attached to it unless I'm missing out. So --
So what we were trying to do though, was -- CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Point of information.
-- come up with that -CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Point of information. I just want to -- obviously, we're in the negotiation process, but I do want to note that the campaign does include or is proposing $10 million in funding.
So I know that there's a $10 million number that's been -- that's been put out there. I don't know where that stands with negotiations and budget. I'm not, you know, in those negotiations. But I do know that we had said we are working on our own proactive rental inspection program. And we do not know the cost yet because it won't just be inspections. There will be these virtual inspections, there will be incentives for good landlords, ones that are in compliance. That's why we were asking to work through all the details on these.
So at some point you will provide the author this bill, the chair of this committee with those particulars. Because what I will not do is pass an unfunded mandate, meaning they go out here and do good, but we're not going to give you bricks nor straw to get things done. That is unfair to you and unfair to those people in this room. So we need a comprehensive ask of us so that we can address it through the budget. That's No. 1. The next question I will ask, out of the universe of properties that are in the city of Philadelphia, define for me the number in your estimation that you would call egregious and what makes them egregious?
So the number I'm providing of egregious properties are the numbers that we cease. So that's the same number, 445. So if it gets to that egregious point where we have to do a cease operation, that is the most egregious. Now, we do have different layers of violations as you know that we work -- our main goal is to get people into compliance, right? That is what our main goal is, to have people in the compliance and are adherent to the code. And that's what we work to do.
So you can do approximately 400 inspections currently a year, correct?
Can you, under your current financial and staffing conditions, do approximately 400? CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: She said 10,000.
No, we do a lot more. We gave an estimate of about 10,000.
Okay. So if you were to define and add the pre-inspection point, you have an idea of who is the worst of the worst. And if we could find a list of those worst of worst, could we prioritize them?
Yes. So we actually are working from a list that we worked with OnePA and Renters Unite on. So we have a list of four, what we would consider maybe egregious -- maybe I want to -- I shouldn't say that -- four landlords that we were given their information. We are actually researching all of that, and, yes, the plan is to do proactive inspections of those properties.
My -- so I want to switch back to two properties: One, Brith Sholom, and one, in my district, we did a walk around. And we walked around and there was a lady sitting on her porch. I don't know if Marvin Robinson was with me on that walk around. It was on 56th Street, right near Stewart. And what was interesting was it was cold and she was sitting on her porch and she told me that she was sunning because it was colder in her house than it was on her porch. And what we looked at next to her was a ceiling that had partially collapsed. And she talked about the raccoons that ran through it. As a result of that -- brought tears to my eyes when I saw it, we passed Bill No. 210205. And what that is, is an urgent repair bill that says that if you go in and see what's going on, you or PHDC could make the repairs and that we put the lien of those costs of those repairs on the property. The reason I raised this, this was never funded. So you don't have to worry. It's not your fault. This body, this last administration never put a dime in it. So I warned people that we passed things and often don't put the money to back it up. Had we had money in this program, we could have went in Brith Sholom, we could have fixed the egregious renovations and put a lien on the property. Thus, when they sold that property for $23 million, they would've had to pay us back. We need to look at these kinds of things, Member O'Rourke, to put teeth financially. You were there, you saw what it was -- and I got to -- I got to close out. But as we look at how to amend and do things, I want you to consider this. Thank you, Madam Chair. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you so much. We're going to do Councilmember Bass, Councilmember Squilla. We're going to hear comments and questions from our bill 21 sponsor, and then we're going to try to move to panel number 2. Councilmember Bass.
Thank you, Madam Chair. So I just had a couple of questions, or actually more like statements because I think Councilman Jones really asked a lot of the questions that I wanted to ask in terms of the number of landlords and really how big the universe is that, you know, that we're talking about here. And it sounds like if we have 80,000 active licenses affecting 210,000 units, you know, the -- and the number of landlords who have active violations, can you give us a number on that right now? Like roughly?
I cannot give you a number on that right now. I do know that four are at the top, you know what I mean? There's the top four that we're prioritizing. So --
So I was given a number -- I was given a number from somewhere, and I can't remember where exactly, but that there were actively about 800 really egregious landlords without standing violations right now.
And yeah, I've heard that number too. I don't know where that number came from.
So if someone is willing to give me that information, I would act on it. But the information I was given by OnePA and Renters Unite were four separate landlords, and that's what we're working on right now.
Okay. So, if -- this is my thought, if the number is 800 and, you know, how do we get in front of those -- you know, whatever that number is right now, with having a number of landlords affecting a number of rental properties and making sure that we can address those units within the next 30 days, 60 days. Like, what would something like that take as we're here now before budget season? Because, you know, while I commend the author of the bill, my concern is that we have the potential, if we don't get this right, to create the biggest housing problem crisis. If it's big now, we could make it worse if we don't do it the right way. And so when Councilman Jones, you know, talked about, you know, unfunded mandates, you know, listen, my thought is, if the money is right, then the deal is real. If there's no money involved, then there's no possibility that this is going to be real. And that's, you know, just being completely transparent. If we don't put money in, then we're just sitting here talking. It doesn't matter what we pass. If the money's not there to make it real, then it doesn't really move the needle in terms of addressing these issues. And, you know, again, I have a great amount of concern for displacement that if folks are waiting on us to be able to do inspections before they can move in, then we as a city of Philadelphia have the potential to create a significant housing crisis even far and beyond what -- where we are right now. So enforcement has been a longstanding issue with the city. I've talked about enforcement for many years now as we talk about nuisance businesses and other nuisance, you know, issues in our community, quality of life issues. And we just still haven't been able to, you know, move this any further down the line than where we started at, you know, years ago. It's very small in terms of the amount of change that we've been able to make and the enforcement that we've been able to get. So, you know, I don't know if you have a response in terms of how do we build up to getting that enforcement. I think that my colleagues have already asked that, but I just don't -- you know, I'm not really clear as to what the enforcement would look like and how do we scale to it. Because again, this is a -- you know, it's a -- it's a great idea. But if we don't have the enforcement, if we don't have the funding, then, you know, it's going nowhere. So --
Agreed. Agreed a thousand percent. So I think as far as the enforcement is concerned, that's where we're trying to get the numbers together for what does this proactive program look like. I don't think it looks like inspecting 210,000 properties in the city because some are -- these properties are fine. I think to your point, if there were 800 or 600 or 400, or whatever it is, I think we'd hone in on them. So we would use -- we would use technology, we would use GIS, we would use data that we have, you know, in the 311 system and that -- so we would correlate all that data, come up with what we have in our eCLIPSE system and say, okay, here's where we're going to focus, right? And the department of L&I -- the first time I was around an L&I, had a program like that, you might remember, it was back -- God, probably about years ago. And that's exactly what the department did. It honed in, it took -- it took data from like the housing trust fund. It took data from -- oh no, the reinvestment fund, I'm sorry. Reinvestment fund, it overlaid it with violations and it said, okay, here's some areas of the city where we're seeing the most -- the most violations. And that's like what we plan on doing, using technology to hone in on where we really need to be. And then landlords that are doing the right thing and these small mom and pop landlords that have, you know, one in two -- one in two properties that they own and are trying to do the right thing, we're not focusing on them. We're focusing on these ones that have the most violations and the most egregious. And I did want to give one pitch just real quick for -- I know Councilman Jones' bill did not pass, you know, with the funded, the unfunded mandate. But I mean, the program that PHDC does have, the RIF program, the rental assistant fund --
And we work with -- we work with PHDC on that. Rachel that runs that plan and Dave Thomas, they're wonderful. They've already given out over 8 million -- almost $9 million to small rental landlords.
So what -- so can you give us an idea if they've given out $8 or $9 million? What has been the number of applicants for that funding?
I don't know the number of applicants, but I can tell you I pulled some data out from them. They gave out 350 loans. This is in a year -- in a year and a half, 350 loans, $8.7 million. So what they do, they give forgivable loans an upwards of $50,000. So this would handle the woman who's -- you know, the raccoons were getting and things like that, if her landlord had had the opportunity to go for that funding. So I just wanted to give a pitch that there is a fund out there and it's really well maintained, really well managed by Rachel Mulbry and her crew. And -- so there is that for -- I don't know if you guys give stuff out, we had said we work with them on, if we got the most egregious or we got, hey, here's these, we're going to refer you over to PHDC and have a formal process. Right now, it's very informal, but we're formalizing that. So we're going to say, if we see X, Y, and Z, we're going to send this landlord -- we're going to talk to the landlord and say, hey, go see PHDC and we'll work together to try to get you -- these things fixed so you can keep your property and the tenants can have a good place to live.
Very good. And one last question, which is: what are other cities doing? What are -- what are they doing in, you know, cities nearby, you know, like Wilmington and Trenton and Newark and, you know, what -- are -- is anyone else doing anything similar to this or anything that we should be doing.
So there's -- so we are doing this research project with a whole bunch of different municipalities. We're looking at Milwaukee is doing some good things.
We're looking at Baltimore is doing some good things. DC is doing some good things. So what we're doing is we're taking little pieces of each of them and saying, how do they work here? Like, what are the best practices and how would they work here, and how can we make a really well-rounded program. That's what we want to have. We want to have a multifaceted program, like, you know what I mean, where we're giving information.
Where we're doing enforcement, we're -- you know, all the -- all the good things to make a successful program.
As you finish your research, can you provide the information to the chair and the committee?
Thank you so much. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you, Councilmember Bass. I do have to say I'm surprised at some of the data points we don't have for today. So I would ask that you all -- I would ask that you all, within the next week, if you could get, you know, specifics on inspections, chronic offenders, like kind of the things that have been asked throughout the hearing, if we could have that in the next week to the sponsor as well as to myself, we would be very appreciative. I want to note the presence of Council President -- he doesn't want me to note his presence. Okay. I want to note that Council President Kenyatta Johnson is in the room. Councilmember Squilla, and then our bill sponsor.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for answering a lot of these questions. And I think I heard that there was 80,000 rental licenses that the city has and 400,000 units?
80,000 rental -- active rental licenses and 210,000 units.
So you have -- some licenses have multiple units on them?
What happens in the case of this, where if we have one rental unit that is -- has a problem and we need to cease that one, all the units would then go away; is that correct? If you were to --
We could do a partial cease operations. But I think part of the -- as I was saying, the devil's in the details, I'm not sure how that works with this piece of legislation, because if we have to do a cease, do we do it -- do we suspend the license and then that person has no license for all of their units, even though some of them might be fine. You know what I mean? So I think, like, that's -- I think that's what our overarching theme is. We keep coming back to, is like, if we had a little bit more time to go over the details, I think we can come up with a strong piece of legislation.
Because what I'm hearing is that you're basically in favor of it, but you have some concerns on language and issues like this.
Because my other question, like, obviously PHA housing and other ones that, you know, we have some issues with violations on those and we know they have some big properties that have multiple units under one rental license.
And if we remove that rental license, I'm just curious how we do that. And --
For PHA, we don't -- we don't do inspections for PHA, right? Well, we do. I'm sorry. I thought we didn't do those inspections. I'm sorry. Yeah, sorry about that.
But I think we have to figure out how that rental license -- how, in this legislation, that rental license worked. Because I wouldn't want to have one unit that's not usable and then we wouldn't be able to use any of the units in that building because (indiscernible).
-- you know, group of amendments we got. And then there was the thing about the renewal, right, so if you got a renewal, right, that was something that was going to hold things up. Because now there's another provision in there. I think this is the Councilwoman Bass's point. There's another provision in there that it wouldn't be automatic if you -- you know, like, right now, if you get a rental license and you have no 24 violations, it's automatic. You go in for it, you pay your money and you get it. If there's another provision put in there, it's not going to be automatic. So now there's another step, there would be a check box or something like that. So then it's going to hold up renewal licenses for people that don't have any violations. So that's something we wanted to walk through too.
All right. Because the goal is to make sure every property is safe and everybody has a safe house, and a safe place to live.
And so it just sounds like with these questions and concerns, you're still not sure how the bill would be regulated or enforced?
That's -- yeah, that's our concern. We're completely in agreement with the spirit of the law. We complete -- you know, we completely want people to obviously have safe homes and we want people to live in. We want landlords and owners and everyone to be co-compliant. We just have some -- we have questions and we would like to work through them before something will become law and then we have something that maybe isn't operationally enforceable for us or legal.
Okay. Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you, Councilmember Squilla. Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke, and then we'll wrap this panel.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciated the question around what other cities are doing from Member Bass, and I appreciated also the response being good things. But to put a pin on what good things are, to clarify what that means is they're doing proactive rental inspections, which is the thing that we're trying to bring about here. What has already come up has been a lot of questions around, you know, Member Jones's point around, you know, bricks without straw, creating legislation that does not have any money. Member Bass's phrase around, if there's not an -- if the money's not real, then the deal's not real, heard, which is the reason why we are -- in terms of timeline, why this is happening conglomerately with the actual budget process. Why we have been asking through the budget process, well before the budget process even started, to advocate for the $10 million that is necessary, and that we have also heard others say it is necessary in order to be able to do any of this work. Even without it, L&I could use that sort of money, which -- so that's why it's so important. If we do not have that money given, then the next time we would be able to actually get a bite at this apple would be the next budget process in 2026. And so the idea is to have that right now to get this done now. That having been said, I don't actually have questions, but I just want to acknowledge and thank the administration for their detailed feedback and the degrees that they have brought those details. We've been in these conversations about rental repairs for over a year now. I've only been in this -- a member of this body for about a year and five months. And we have worked hard to incorporate all the feedback from the Law Department, from License and Inspections, from the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, and DPD. We introduced these bills on April 10th. We sent them to the administration on April 8th. That's 42 days to date. We did not receive written feedback from any departments until Wednesday. Wednesday. We worked hard. My team, who I'm extremely proud of, worked extremely hard over the weekend to comprehensively address each concern and believe that we have done so. Your testimony today responds to previous drafts and issues, as you mentioned -- I believe Sarah mentioned at the beginning that they hadn't seen necessarily today's or whatever's amendments. We -- you responded to previous drafts and issues that we actually have resolved, including L&I's primary concern is with Bill 14 250329, subsection 939014D regarding L&I notice of tenants. This has been removed. It's been removed from the bill. It should not be a concern. It's not even a thing to amend. It's been taken out. Our amendments to 250330 gives FHC optional jurisdiction. So there should be no calls for concern. You have optional jurisdiction on this. Our amendment to 250331 only applies penalties to landlords who are negligent or at fault. Very focused, very tight, very specific. There are no remaining issues that we have received from law that have not actually been addressed. That only leaves at this point the implementation date as the administration's remaining relevant concern, which we are happy to change for relevant sections. In fact, I believe I heard somebody say end of summer fits -- that actually fits our timeline for this legislation. This bill just authorizes L&I to start a program actually by 2030 on their timeline. We're not telling L&I how to design the program. We're just saying we need this and we're authorizing you to be able to go forward and do this as we make sure that we get the money to make sure that it actually happens. Thank you, Madam Chair. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's move forward with the conversation. Let's move forward with the conversation. Thank you so much, Councilmember O'Rourke, for those important clarifications. I want to allow the administration to respond to the council member's points.
But I also want to take a moment to acknowledge the presence of our majority whip, Councilmember Isaiah Thomas. I would love for you all to respond to what the Councilmember noted.
So the -- so I heard the Councilmember say some things were taken out of the bill. We got amendments Sunday night, and we reviewed them all day yesterday and we sent them back. And then I guess amendments came over this morning about 9:00, and we looked at -- I mean, we looked at them. I mean, that's was four hours before the hearing started. So that's what we're saying. We don't even -- how could we have thoughtfully reviewed something we got four hours before the hearing?
If I may, if -- again, it's been 42 days since this has been submitted to the administration. If the idea is that we wait literally till Wednesday to get responses back at -- a month and some change, then who is the one that's actually not actually following up or doing their due diligence to get things addressed and done? We have done -- we have given ample time. And with the ample time -- with the ample time that has been given, my team has been extremely responsive to make sure that you got it back in time. So the idea that you're out of time is not necessarily a thing that we have done. It's a thing that seems to be on the other side here. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you, Councilmember. I'm going to ask again, I know everybody's so passionate about this is such an important issue, but we have to keep the noise level down or we won't be able to have a real discussion. So I'm going to -- one last opportunity to sort of respond to those concerns. And then I'm going to ask that we move to the next panel.
I know we provided comments on our fifth amendment and that's what we provided and that's what this testimony is based on. So that's -- I'm going to just leave it at that. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you. And I know there'll be a lot of conversation to continue moving this discussion forward. I want to thank all of you for your testimony and your participation today. Will the clerk please call the next panel of witnesses. And if you all could -- I'm going to make a request. I know everybody's busy, but if our partners for the admin can stick around if possible so that you can hear the conversation, I think that we'd be grateful. Will the clerk please call the next panel?
On panel 2, we have Melissa Monds, Sonya Sanders, Theresa Howell. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Good afternoon to all of you. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm going to remind, you know, that -- our witnesses that, you know, I want you to summarize your testimony. I took a little liberty with our partners from the administration because they have to implement whatever comes out of this committee. So it was important to take that time and to, you know, have the back and forth with them. But I'm going to ask you all to please give your testimony in four minutes and when we reach that mark, I'm going to kind of nudge you along, and if you could help me, I would be so appreciative. So can you please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony?
Hi, my name is Sonya Sanders. I'm from Philly Thrive and I'm 52 years old, longtime resident of Grays Ferry. And I'm here to give my testimony. My experience started -- I live in Grays Ferry, of course, all my life in South Philadelphia. I live at 1433 South 32nd Street for 28 years. In this house I lived in, I had no consistent water, I had to go down to my neighbor's house to actually get buckets of water to bring down to my house so me and my son and my husband at the time, Ray, who passed away, could be able to use the bathroom and to be able to wash and to flush our toilets. The pipes were so old in my house. Long before I lived there, it's the same house that was built, I guess, like 100 years old. The pipes were just that old. These were lead-filled pipes. So these pipes would bust in the basement. And when we go to flush the toilet, of course, the waste would go downstairs. Can you imagine the smell in our home? You know, we had no electric during these heat waves. No refrigerator, of course, because there was no electric and no AC. So we were hot, hot and smelling feces. We had raccoons also. Another Philly Thrive member here, Crystal Heath, had -- her roof was broke, and because of that raccoons went in. I live a few doors from her. So the raccoons dug their way down to my house and dug in my house. I remember that during -- on the ceiling, we used to see little wet spots, and that was the raccoon's waste, you know, over top of us. We smelled that as well. So we smelled sewer versus, you know, raccoon feces. It was uninhabitable where we lived. When we lived here, we felt like squatters. We lived so bad, we felt like we were squatters. But unlike squatters, we paid our rent. But we had a landlord that refused to do the work. We are here fighting, fighting to be heard, fighting to be listened to. And it -- the fight didn't just start here. The fight has been going on for years in my home. You see, because I tried L&I, I tried the landlord time after time again. I tried speaking out, but no one would hear me. So the fight didn't start here. But now that we are here and someone is finally listening, we are asking you to hear us, hear us, hear what we're saying, hearing that we're suffering, hearing that when we leave here and go home, that we're still suffering, okay? We're still going home to homes that need help. Whereas though, you can go to sleep in your -- in your bed, but there's no bugs crawling on you. You know, but there's bugs crawling on us. You know, you can -- you can go home and have running water and bathe. But while you're bathing, remember there's people like us who cannot bathe, who are home and cannot bathe their children. I have an autistic son at home that's years old. You know, 18 he heard Nicolas O'Rourke had showed 19 a video of me speaking last time 20 here. I wasn't going to come today. 21 I was debating not to come. You 22 know, my son heard it and said, mom, 23 I'm embarrassed. He said, I'm 24 embarrassed because we're not going to get any help. No one's listening to that. No one cares. But I'm here to say someone's going to hear, someone's going to listen, someone's going to hear us, someone's going to make the difference, and that's why we're here. I want you to remember each face here, because of each face here is like 500 people at home still suffering. Say yes, and they will suffer no longer. That's why we want to vote, yes, and they'll suffer no longer. We only need the word yes. It's as simple as saying yes, that you will not suffer anymore. Yes, that you'll not go home and you can have a bath and your bathroom and it should work. L&I should do their job. Yes, they should. We're asking you say, yes, this has to stop. Yes, it should stop. I'm here to speak for those who can't speak for themselves and for those that can't come here today. It needs to stop. We are hurting and suffering. Our health needs -- we need people that take our health seriously. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you.
Thank you so much. I'm very -- I'm very sorry that you had to experience such harrowing conditions, but I'm glad that you came here today. It's really important. Thank you. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
My name is Melissa Monds. Before -- I'm basically going to read my testimony so I make sure I get everything. I want to address, Councilmember O'Rourke. Thank you for your sacrifice, sir. You've giving up being with your son at this moment means the world to me because I am a mother and a grandmother and I cannot visit my own grandchildren and children because of the health condition, because of my testimony today. So I greatly appreciate your sacrifice. My name is Melissa Bonds. I am a mother and a grandmother, and I have lived in Philadelphia since October, 2007. I'm here today to speak in strong support of the Safe and Healthy Homes Act. I've experienced homelessness, I've slept in storage units and under loading docks. But it was an apartment owned by Odin Properties in the Frankford section 21 of Philadelphia that made me sick as I am today. I moved in on September 3rd, 2019. I was denied a walk- through prior to signing my lease, so I took photos the day I moved in. One of the things I noticed was a gap in the floor of the bedroom where mice could run through freely. I had just come from a homeless shelter, so I was desperate to have my own place. But even those of us -- even those of us who were recently homeless deserve safe and healthy homes. So many things happened in that apartment. In October, 2019, water began leaking in the bathroom. A light fixture eventually fell and shattered on the toilet. In March, 2020, the toilet started overflowing with sewage and trash, including cigarette butts. And I don't even smoke. So that tells me that was someone else's waste flowing into my apartment for an entire weekend because my emergency calls went unanswered. I dealt with human feces right outside my door and trash piled up in hallways because property management stopped paying for removal. This led to severe roach and mouse infestation. I reported all of these issues, but nothing was ever done. In 2024, I joined Renters United and we've pushed for L&I inspectors to visit the building. They confirmed what we already knew; multiple pest violations among other hazards. This is why proactive inspections of rental units are so necessary so that tenants don't have to live in these conditions while waiting for someone to finally listen. My apartment made me sick. In July of 2023 -- it was actually Tuesday, July 11th, 2023 to be exact, I woke up unable to breathe. I thought I was just congested, and a hot shower would help, but it didn't. I could not take in a full deep breath. I went to the hospital and ended up in the hospital for nine days with pneumonia. My doctor told me my living conditions were most likely the cause. He was quite shocked. When I came home, his question to me was, how did you catch pneumonia? This is my primary care doctor that has taken care of me for years. I believe you have a copy of the letter in front of you that he wrote. Later that year, I underwent allergy testing and found out that I am fatally allergic to mice and cockroaches, both of which are present in my apartment. Since then, I've been diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, chronic heart failure, and chronic respiratory failure. Because of my health, I can't travel to see my children or grandchildren. I've become reclusive, not because I want to, but because every time I get sick, it puts me at serious risk. And going in public definitely puts me at risk of picking up everything. This has taken a major toll on my mental health. During the pandemic, I contributed to a book titled The Power of Mental Wealth alongside well-known voices like Les Brown, Johnny Wimbrey, and Heather Monahan. As a published author, I have spoken openly about the importance of mental resilience. But even with everything I have learned and shared, the conditions I was forced to live in broke me down physically, emotionally, and mentally. I truly believe that if the Safe Healthy Homes Act had been in place, I might never have gotten sick.
Pre-inspections, tenant protections, and relocation assistance could have prevented the long-term damage to my health and quality of life. Please, pass this legislation. And it's not just for me, or my grandchildren, or my children, it's for the people you can't hear, because they suffered in silence and died. It's for the people that are afraid that L&I is going to come shut down the building, if they find out how bad it is. It's for the people that are just plain afraid. So I beg you, please don't wait. If you got to do it, if you got to go back and fix this and do that, please, put it in place. Please, put the money behind it. Please, give them the $10 million they need. Please, give them the $10 million they need for relocation. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you --
And everyone deserves to live in a safe and healthy home, not just those two who can afford to fight for it. Thank you for your time, your commitment to making housing safer for all Philadelphians. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you so much for your testimony, but also for being here today. We can see and hear how much of a sacrifice that is and we appreciate you. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hi, good afternoon. My name is Theresa Howell. I'm with OnePA's Renters United to Councilman Gauthier, Rue Landau, Driscoll, and the other ones that left. Hello, how are you? Nick, I love you, and I thank God for you. You are in my prayers, your family is in my prayers, and, honey, God got you. God got you. Everything's going to be okay. Okay. So I've been in my home for 11 years. I rent from a landlord that owns over 500 properties. He doesn't follow the law at all. He does exactly what he wants to do, which is not make repairs. But the moment that you say, I'm going to speak out, I'm going to speak up, here comes the retaliation. Like, he literally locked me in my house. He tied a rope from my railing outside to my front door and literally locked me in my house, because I was speaking about the conditions in which I was living in. Well, I don't scare that easy, because if I did, I wouldn't be here now. I don't scare at all. If I can live in those conditions, there's no possible way I can't speak up about it. None whatsoever. I'm speaking for the folks like Melissa. I'm speaking for the folks that is shut in and shut down, and can't speak, but they are dying in silence. They're not living in silence; they're dying in silence. And it's ridiculous. We need to catch up with the 21st century, people. Other cities, other states are doing it. They have proactive inspections and it works. We deserve it. We work -- we pay taxes in this city and we deserve the same thing everybody else deserves in this city. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you to all of you for your testimony, and for being brave and sharing your stories. Are there any questions or comments from members of the committee? I have a question, and I'll move to the bill 16 sponsor. Ma'am, you talked about dealing with L&I, I want to hear what has that been like? Those of you who reached out to L&I, or any, you know, other city agencies, the Human Relations, what has that process been like for all of you as you've been experiencing these substandard conditions?
I'll say that when I reached out to L&I, I'm going to honestly say, I'm still waiting for a response. I can't tell you what it's like, because they ain't respond yet. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you. I mean, it's important for us to know that. And I know coming out of this committee, we'll do some follow up and make sure that you get a response.
My experience with L&I -- my first experience was prior to Odin, the landlord was -- didn't even have a renter's license, and it was completely corrupt. And I was one of those tenants that was given the 10 days to move, because L&I said I could not live in the property. So, of course, when I moved into Odin, that fear was already there. Multiple L&I reports had gone in. Nameless, a couple of them weren't named. I pretty much experienced the same that Sonya had experienced, no response. The only response I got from L&I was after Renters United had come around with me. I'd gone around with them, went to a couple of meetings, and they did get an inspector to come out and he did continue to follow up once he -- once he was assigned to my specific situation, and that unit continued to fail all of those inspections as well. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: And I think I can guess the answer to this, but I wanted to ask you, when you were given 10 days to vacate the property, was there any assistance from the city in finding somewhere else to live?
Can I finish my speech? I wasn't done. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Oh, I thought you were finished. I'm so sorry. You ended at such a powerful point. I thought it was done. Go ahead.
You get my message, passionate. It's just passion. Okay. So where was I? I won't be long. I promise I won't be long. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Okay.
But it's just a couple of points that I -- that I have to say. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Proceed.
Okay. During my time organizing, I've come to discover that so many renters have problems -- are having -- are having the same problems or worse issues than I have. The affordable option that we are usually left in are the predatory landlords. We don't have the options that a lot of other people have. So I'll ask a question, since my options are limited, and so many other Philadelphians options are limited, because we are on fixed incomes, does that mean that we are not entitled, or we are entitled to less because we don't have the same income as people with higher incomes? Do we not deserve safe, healthy homes to raise our children and our grandchildren? I have a couple questions for the audience, if you don't mind. I won't be long. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: But wait a minute. We can't -- the audience is not going to be able to respond to you --
This is just a raise -- a raise of hand. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: So you could just get them out, but there's no means of, you know, everybody who speaks has to be on record, and we don't -- we're not set up for that today. So you could just read your questions out.
Okay. Who here has someone in their life who they love who is a renter? Who here has ever had to deal with infestations like cockroaches, mice, rats, bed bugs? Who here has ever lived with mold or leaks? Who here has ever had winter without enough heat or hot water? Who here has ever needed a repair and got a patchwork job, or had to wait too long to get help? This is why we need the Rights to Repair Bill. Now I have to -- I have to say this last part. Voting for the Safe and Healthy Homes should be a no-brainer for Council, but we know that we are here in this room, and corporate landlords, lobbyists who are trying to kill the bill. Groups like Philadelphia -- Pennsylvania Apartment Association claims to represent the concerns of small landlords, but their board -- their board and members include the largest landlords in the country, like Greystar and Morgan, which one owns 800,000 properties and the other owns a hundred thousand properties. Properties who they own hundreds and thousands. Their members also includes groups like Odin Properties, which we know is a piece of crap. These lobbyists have the audacity to claim that these bills will be bad for renters. I'm here to tell you everything in the Safe Home -- Safe Healthy Homes Act was written based on the living experiences that we have, that we deal with on a daily basis. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you.
The last thing I want to talk about is retaliation. I've already -- CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Can you summarize.
-- spoke about retaliation. I also want to say Bridget Greenwald came up here and said that we -- that there are only four -- that we gave her four names of landlords that are bad. She asked for four names. That's not the entire list. The list is a lot longer than that, so please, don't believe that it's just four. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for your testimony, and this we clearly have to finish this conversation with the administration, so we will be expecting that they respond to what you've requested. Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I will just say that I think the people's voices have spoken. I think that the stories speak for themselves. I appreciate the point made about living experiences being articulated here. We see them in our office as your needs. Your experiences are your lived real-life, not hypothetical, not of a textbook, not something that you heard on social media, you live it every single day. In our office, our mantra is to treat the people's needs as holy. Your needs are holy, and that is the reason why we continue to fight for what you need so that you can live better. Everyone deserves to be able to live better. I also just want to simply say, several folks have said, even members of the committee have all -- have said this. And I think it's important that we say it in society. I love you, too. Thank you very, very much. We need more of that, and it's out of love that I continue to do this work. Thank you for your advocacy.
Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you, Councilmember. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you for being here today and for your advocacy. Will the clerk please call the next panel of witnesses to testify?
Paul Cohen, Steve Chintaman. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are going to try for four minutes. When we reach four minutes, I'm going to nudge you to, kind of, move it along and summarize. Please help me, I would appreciate that. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony, whichever one of you who wants to go first.
Good afternoon, Chairwoman Gauthier, sponsors, Councilmember O'Rourke, and the members of the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development, and The Homeless. My name is Steven Chintaman, and I'm the VP of Government Affairs for the Pennsylvania Apartment Association, representing over 305,000 units and 316 property management companies across the Commonwealth. Locally here in Philadelphia, we represent over 38,000 units and 49 property management companies. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to testify on bills 250329, 250330, and 250331. At the Pennsylvania Apartment Association, we are deeply committed to holding bad actors accountable and supporting policies that protect residents. We believe these bills impose broad-sweeping regulations that unfairly burden all housing providers regardless of their compliance record. This approach risks creating new challenges without effectively addressing the root issues. Our members consistently strive to uphold legal standards and provide quality housing, but overregulation can have serious consequences. Many of the provisions outlined in the -- in the original bills duplicate existing protections under landlord tenant eviction and fair housing laws, and may go well beyond what is practical or enforceable. The unattended result is often increased operational costs, a shrinking housing supply, and reduced flexibility for both housing providers and residents. We've heard today from L&I about concerns about operational capacity. The department of L&I currently lacks the capacity to enforce the proposed measures effectively. With limited staffing and resources, even routine approvals for minor repairs often face delays of 30 to 60 days. Delays beyond the control of the housing provider. The Mayor's office has already committed to strengthening L&I through the budget process. It would be prudent to allow time for these improvements before layering on new regulatory burdens. With regards to Bill 15 250329, the original version of the bill, Right to Repairs, our major concerns are focused on the immediate license suspension for unresolved violations and also with the phase proactive inspections by 2030. Mandatory inspection laws impose considerable financial and administrative burdens, especially on small providers. These proper -- these policies disproportionately target multi-family properties while often exempting others creating an uneven playing field. Costs associated with compliance are frequently passed down to renters. A more effective approach would be a complaint-based inspection system that targets problem properties without penalizing responsible owners. With regards to bill 250330, the Right to Safety bill, the original version of the bill, again, while tenant protections are important, good cause eviction rules can severely limit a housing provider's ability to manage properties and address disruptive behavior. These policies may deter investment and worsen the city's housing shortage. In addition, proposals that alter fundamental contractual relationships between tenants and landlords, such as forced negotiations or rigid lease terms have the potential to destabilize the rental market. We urge the Council to instead focus on sustainable measures that support both tenants and housing providers, such as increasing housing supply, enhancing rental assistance programs, and improving enforcement of existing laws. As we evaluate these proposals, we ask the Council to hold these bills. Let's have more time to collaborate and look at some of the root issues we're trying to address here. We thank you for your time and consideration. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: All right. All right. All right. Proceed.
Thank you. And I will try to summarize my testimony, make it as quick as possible. Good afternoon, Chairwoman and members of the Committee. My name is Paul Cohen. I am the General Counsel for HAPCO Philadelphia, which is the largest membership organization for low to moderate income housing. Basically, representing your mom-and-pops who Councilmember Jones calls your onesies and twosies. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today and for being on the panel, I do appreciate that. We are all on the same side. I'm going to -- I'm going to tell you the universe, okay? So we are all trying to go after bad landlords. We're totally against bad landlords. And believe it or not, I'm going to hear is boos this whole time, but we love tenants. We love tenants. They are our -- go ahead, laugh. They're our customers, okay? We do not go after good tenants. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Hey, hey, I'm going to ask for -- I'm going to ask that we have quiet, we have to -- a hearing means we hear everybody's perspective. So I'm going to ask that we allow that the process to proceed.
Thank you, Chairwoman. We need to work together. We are all for working with Council, we're all for working with tenants. We want to be behind tenants, good tenants. We need laws that can actually go after bad landlords. Unfortunately, see this? This is a book I put together of all the laws in the city of Philadelphia that a landlord -- look how thick this is. That a landlord needs to comply with in the city of Philadelphia. And I'm going to -- I'm going to tell you what so what, I'm going to tell you, okay? The problem is that we have all these laws, but we're still hearing, there's still problems. I've been doing this for 41 years. And everyone comes up and says, "Oh, I'm going to have a new law, and this is going to solve the problem." You know what, if you came up with a law and said to me, "This bill is going to be the last bill, because this solves the problem," guess what? I'll figure out a way to vote for this bill and support this bill, okay? If this is the last bill that we're going to see. But unfortunately, it's not. Because this bill, unfortunately, is not the answer. And I know everyone will hear -- a lot of people here wanted to hear that this is the bill. Unfortunately, it's not. This bill's not going to solve the problem. The biggest problem that we have in the city of Philadelphia is unlicensed landlords, right? Because what happens is, if you're an unlicensed landlord, you fly under the radar. So L&I doesn't even know that you exist. So you want to talk about having proactive inspections, L&I can't inspect the unit they don't know the existence out there. The key is to go after all those unlicensed, and Councilmember Squilla had asked the question -- I think it was Jones, had asked the question and saying, how many units are out there that are unlicensed? I've been asking for that question for years, okay? I believe, and 5 this is just a belief from what I've 6 hear, and you hear the rumors, it's 7 around 40,000 units. That's a lot 8 of units, and that's a lot of 9 problems. 10 And we've talked about over 11 the years ways to go after those 12 landlords, that's the problem. The 13 other problem is when you pass a 14 bill that goes after good landlords 15 with unintended consequences in the bill, it ends up affecting good landlords. What you end up doing is having those landlords spend extra money, and guess who that money is ultimately passed on to? Unfortunately, that goes to the tenants. Do I still have some time? Okay. I just want to address some of the -- if I could, I want to address some of the questions that were asked during the hearing, so maybe I can help Council with regard to that, if I can respond to those questions. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Go ahead, briefly.
I appreciate that. Okay. One of the questions was if there's a cease act that is issued against one of the units, and let's say you have a 50-unit building, and there's a cease act against one of the units, yes, it does act as a cease act as to all the 50 units. So if there's one license -- one unit that's not in compliance under this bill, all 50 units would be unlicensed. They wouldn't be able to get it, and then what ends up happening is notices goes out under this bill to all the tenants that you don't have to pay the rent, and now you have a landlord who's not collecting the rental 50 units, guess what's going to happen? That whole building is going to go in the disrepair. So we can work on trying to figure out a way to make this common-sense bill that works for everybody. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: I'm going to thank you. Thank you for --
One last thing I do want to mention. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Yes.
Just that when we talk about this industry and how over regulated this industry is, okay, you have to consider -- have to consider that in order to be a landlord, okay, and that's part of the problem is that these are the comments that you're getting when you're trying to -- CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Okay. Please summarize --
-- to do the right thing. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: -- and conclude your testimony. Okay.
In order to be a landlord, you have to get a commercial license, a rental license, a certificate of rental suitability, a lead paint certification, lead pipe certification, bed bug certification, Partners for Good Housing brochure, bed bug brochure. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you.
-- good housing evictions. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you so much. Thank you. No, I don't think -- sorry. I allowed you to continue because I thought it was something additive. I don't think that we have to go through and list all the things that a landlord has to -- has to get. So, please, thank you for your testimony. I have a question, and then I'm going to open up to members of the committee and the bill sponsor. So I understand that, you know, our primary concern for both of your organizations is that you believe that the bills don't take more of a targeted approach to address what you see as isolated incidents of poor housing conditions. While we -- I think we all can agree that most landlords are not bad actors, most landlords are trying to do the right thing by their tenants. The most egregious offenders among landlords have significant impact across the city and sometimes deadly impacts even. So I have a figure in front of me that says that the Federal Reserve Bank has found that 40 percent of rental properties in Philadelphia have outstanding repair needs. Can -- so I want you both to talk to us about what evidence you have to support that poor housing conditions or, you know, units needing repairs are a rare occurrence in Philadelphia. And just to address Mr. Chintemen, what you noted earlier, I think all of us agree that the complaint-based system, it's not adequate. There's a huge power imbalance between tenants and landlords. And for a variety of reasons, fear of retaliation, not having faith in the city. There are a number of reasons that people aren't going to bring forward complaints about their units. So I think we have to move the discussion further to talk about what proactive inspections can look like. So can you please both address, you know, what do you think about that Federal reserve figure and how it relates to your understanding of the landscape, and how can you be a positive part of moving us to a place where we need to be, where every tenant has safe and healthy housing?
The law current -- as it currently exists, has the protections that you're talking about. The problem with the current law is enforcement. The current law is not being enforced. If the current law was being enforced, a lot of these things wouldn't be a problem. What you're asking now is for additional penalties, it doesn't help with the enforcement. That's the biggest problem with this bill. You're not helping the enforcement, which is where it really needs to be. And the enforcement needs to be with your landlords that are not licensed. They're the ones that are getting away from murder. And one of the women that testified talked about that, was living in an unlicensed unit. That's a problem.
So if we could address that, that would solve that problem. And as far as this bill 22 goes, it doesn't help to solve the problem. It's just going to create more problem for good landlords that might get caught up in this, for example, when one unit is cited in a 50-unit building. That's going to hurt a good landlord. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you.
That's not going to help. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Okay. PAA, I'd love to hear you respond to those questions.
Yes. So thank you for the question, Chairwoman. We have housing providers here as a part of our association, and I know that they will be providing public comment later on, so I would, definitely, ask that we revisit that question with them in terms of how do we address more proactive behavior in terms of the inspections. But I also think -- and we've had multiple conversations with, you know, with Council and with Council staffers regarding this point, but I think we need more of an approach, not just on our legislative body to accomplish this goal, but the courts need to get involved here as well. The District Attorney's Office needs to take a more proactive approach with this. If we have a bad actor, if we have a bad housing provider, go after them, penalize them. But in some instances, we don't -- we're not seeing that. We're not seeing that at all in certain isolated incidents. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you. Vice Chair Landau. VICE CHAIR LANDAU: Thank you. Thank you both so much for being here. It's going to be a long day with a lot of testimony, but we really appreciate hearing from you. I, kind of, first of all, for the record, would like to recognize there's a lot of great landlords out there, okay? Very important to say that.
Thank you. VICE CHAIR LANDAU: But I think right now is a time that we, kind of, set the record straight about some of what was said. Not every instance of poor conditions of a property, of a place that needs tremendous repairs is like Brith Sholom that hits the news, and we all know it. And you're going to hear story, after story, after story of this today. And in my years of doing this work, I have seen horrifying conditions in people's rental properties that it's -- it's not that they don't exist, because they never hit the news, they exist, they affect people's lives, like the stories that you're hearing today, and we cannot -- we will not have those erased. So I want to start there. The second thing I want to talk about is how even in your written testimony, Steve from PAA, that you talk about the cost associated with running the business of being a landlord. It is -- in your testimony you talked about these are costs that could get passed down to the tenant, even the repair costs could get passed down to the tenant, landlords are business people and have certain obligations. And just like all the business people in this city, they -- yes, you have to get a rental license, yes, you have to get a certificate of rental suitability, yes, you have to get a lead certification. You must do these things for a lot of reasons to do this, including so the city of Philadelphia knows who you are, knows who to contact if there's an emergency, pay your taxes on the income that you're receiving, and a variety of other things. So we appreciate the landlords, the 80,000 licenses that we now have and the landlords are following the law. When I first started working at Community Legal Services in 1998, landlords never got rental licenses. They only got the license two weeks before they wanted to file 22 a complaint in municipal court. They were receiving all the money, they were putting it in their pockets, didn't pay taxes on it, L&I didn't know who to call if something was falling down, but now, we have 80,000 rental licenses in the city of Philadelphia on, what was it? 400 and -- 214,000 properties. That's tremendous. So that is progress. That also comes from the organizing of the tenants coming together and demanding these things. There are absolutely unlicensed landlords out there, but I want to be really clear that landlords with licenses also have repair issues. And I don't want to start talking about the unknown quantity of people we -- who are not here, who we don't know about as the only ones they're being a problem. So it's very important that we set the record straight on this. This is not -- when you have to get a license in the city of Philadelphia, or commercial activity license in the city, you don't pass that cost off to a tenant. Just like a restaurant is not -- a restaurant has to get licenses, and has to get health inspections and all of these things because you're a business person in the city of Philadelphia and we appreciate the business that you're -- that you have here, including especially the small mom-and-pop landlords. These bills are literally about -- some of it is about memorializing some state laws into local law, some of this is about strengthening systems, there is absolutely work that we need to do to work with L&I to get them as up to speed and as close to 2025-2026 as possible, so they can continue going out and doing the inspections and memorializing the notes from their inspections, and then if needed, also taking people to court and having landlords actually comply with the judgments that are entered against them in code enforcement court. All of these things are definitely things that have to happen. But I want to be really clear, this isn't just a rip up and tear up these bills, like they are not needed. There is so much in here that is needed. That's it. I have no questions. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Councilmember Driscoll.
Well, thank you for your testimony. Earlier, L&I had testified about complaint-driven inspections, and we all agree that, you know, we need to do more than that. I've seen in my district a lot of renters that -- or not renters, landlords that are not -- unlicensed. You know, they don't have the -- all the license. And that's, again, complaint-driven. I only know it if somebody brings it to my attention. But we suspect that there is a lot out there. In your industry, I mean, do you have any sense in the city of Philadelphia, how many -- how many we're dealing with here?
And the reason I ask that is because once -- if we can identify them, and get them to be compliant, we could use -- that can bring a lot more money and revenue in to address the enforcement issues that we're all talking about today.
We estimate it's about 40,000 units. And one of the ways, and we talked about this years ago, where we said, all the 4 city has to do is cross reference 5 with the water bills. Where are the 6 water bills going? If it's not 7 going to the property, it's going to 8 some other address. That's a rental 9 property. Look to see if there's a 10 license. It's a simple fix. The city has the capacity to do that, but I don't know why they won't do it.
That's a -- and we'll look into that. So any other utilities or the water bill? That's, I guess, that's the easiest one, right?
Well, the utilities are generally put in the tenant's name. The easy one is the water bill, because the water bill 23 is a -- it's a municipal utility. So that goes to the -- yeah, it acts as a lien on the property, it goes to the property. So you would know from the water bill generally speaking.
I mean, I think that's one way of doing it. But for instance, my utilities in my home now, I'm not a renter, but my wife had the utilities in her name -- her maiden name before, and so she still gets building in her maiden name, and for years she's been married to as a 15 Driscoll -- 16
Now the key -- 17 the key is what address it goes 18 though. Not the name it's in the 19 address. Is it going to the 20 property address, or is it going to 21 some other addresses you know? 22
23 No, no, no, it goes to my home. So 24 -- but that was just, she never changed it. But then, anyway, that could be -- it's part --
-- it's part of the investigative process, but I like -- I like that as a suggestion and we'll certainly try and figure out a way to do that, because I think there's a lot of -- if it's 40,000 that you're talking about here, you know, that's a lot of money that we can use for bolstering L&I, so your testimony was very valuable today. Thank you.
Thank you. And if I -- if I just might say that we're willing to work with City Council, we want to work with City Council. We're all in this together. We don't -- we don't like bad landlords. Bad landlords hurt good landlords. They make it very difficult for good landlords to operate. We're all forgoing after bad landlords, it's the unintended consequences that become a concern. VICE CHAIR LANDAU: Paul, we've known each other for so many years, and I want to tell you that I do, personally, appreciate the ideas that you come up with. And it is absolutely true that we want the bad landlords to stop being the bad landlords. So there are -- keep bringing the ideas, because we want to -- we want to keep working with you. As vice chair, I am calling on the bill sponsor, Councilmember Nick O'Rourke.
Thank you, Madam Vice Chair, and thank you to the panelists that are here speaking. Mr. Cohen, you mentioned as Member Landau just said -- Vice Chair just said that we are all not in favor of bad landlords and we want to get -- we want to make sure that those are addressed. Do you support the portion of this legislation that actually increases penalties for unlicensed landlords?
You have to look at the bill in its totality and look at what penalties that we're talking about, and who -- and who it's going to actually affect.
I take that as a no. And so this is the reason why --
No, as a general -- as a general rule, if you just -- pardon me, I'm sorry.
And, excuse me, if I could take my time. Thank you. There are a number of members that do not have faith in what's being stated here, a number of, excuse me, members of the community that didn't have faith here in what you are saying, because we start to get real abstract and ambiguous about what we do and don't support when we're talking about the letter of the law that we're trying to put into place now. You made a comment about, you know, if this bill was the final -- was the bill 11 that could just solve it all, then I'd find a way to be in support of it. The unfortunate reality is that is not how lawmaking works. No 16 where in society do you find the magic marker or the magic bullet law that spelled abracadabra, and it resolves all the problems all at once. That is why we have a process, that is the reason why we have to back and forth, that is the reason why we have to do what you have to say, to take in consideration, that's why there are multiple members on the committee who ask questions -- who ask questions from their -- from their line of thinking, from their particular advantage points, from their districts, because they have unique vantages by which to come and crack this nut. And so the idea that somehow, if this thing is in everything that you, in particular, the business person has in favor as opposed to addressing the concerns of the lived experience of the people of the community, that, to me, does not seem like you're operating in good faith, which only goes to further the lack of trust that people would have in what you're saying. I would also mention that there is no provision. You said something that wasn't true. There is no provision that revokes a rental license for an entire building if one unit has a violation. Saying those sorts of things only, again, causes more distrust in the process, because the fact is it's not -- it's just not true. Mr. Chintemen, I apologize if I didn't say your name correctly. Please forgive me, Steve, if that's appropriate. Your testimony, I believe, centered on your concerns that added regulation will drive up cost for landlords and tenants without producing the intended benefits. However, there is significant evidence to the contrary. Plentiful research demonstrates that these types of programs have been extremely successful across the country in cities like Rochester, Syracuse, Greensboro, North Carolina, and Washington, DC. So I want to talk about what evidence you have for your conclusion. The only evidence that you have shared comes from a white paper written by your own partner organization, the National Apartment Association. We -- my team -- my team looked into that paper, and your evidence comes, exclusively, from a single study from Milwaukee written more than years ago, which simply 17 found that there was inconclusive 18 evidence for the impact of proactive 19 inspections, specifically, in 20 Milwaukee. My question is: what credible evidence can you point to, beyond personal anecdotes, sir, that this legislative package is a real risk to the industry when we've talked about how to focus this on bad landlords, that we all agree need to be addressed?
Councilman, thank you -- thank you for that question. I can -- I will definitely -- we have more research. I can definitely provide that to your office. So just give some time, I can share that after this meeting. But also, I would also add, as Paul indicated, and that what you're going to hear from our other housing providers that are here, it's the totality of everything, right? It's how these bills are going to be enforced in a practical manner, and we just don't see that it's going to have that impact, that it's going to hold those bad actors accountable. We think that if given time, let's have further conversations about this, and we can figure out a way that we can find a balanced approach and not hold the good actors also under the same breath. It's like we keep penalizing the good actors.
Thank you for your response. And again, to be very clear, we have been specific and repeated this. I've done this months ago when the people were interviewing me about this question. We are not here to get -- these bills apply by the letter of the law to people who are egregious offenders. We're not -- it's not an arbitrary willy-nilly, kind of, application of the law. The idea is to address, again, what we apparently agree needs to be addressed, bad landlords, and there is definition within law to address that, which is the reason why we're focusing it. You said -- or that there was a claim here coming from you that rather than blanket inspections, we support a more effective and balanced solution, complaint-based inspection programs that address real documented issues without imposing unnecessary burdens on compliant housing providers. Philadelphia currently operates a complaint-based inspection program, and it fails. Research conducted by Pew confirmed that Philadelphia has no 18 program for regularly inspecting properties. Instead, it makes physical examinations only in response to formal complaints. As a result, only about seven percent, as I believe we heard already, of the city's rental unions get inspected each year. "Under the current system, though, landlords are not required to complete an inspection to receive a license or a certificate of rental suitability." To reiterate, the PAA is arguing in favor of our current broken status quo. That is not helpful, I believe, to addressing the concerns that people have raised here. I want to come back to you, Mr. Cohen. I don't know if you lifted it up or not, but I, you know, and I think Member Landau lifted this. We require that restaurants and other businesses post business licenses and credentials to prove that health and safety requirements are met. What makes landlords special that they should not have to post their licenses and credentials?
His mic -- I'm sorry, his mic is not on. I'm sorry. Sorry, Mr. Cohen, hold on. Go ahead, try now.
Thank you. If a landlord has a 50-unit building, he has one license for the 50 units, so you're not going to have a license posted in every single unit. And if there's a violation against one of those units, it's a violation against the license, and the license is for 50 units, so it will affect all 50 of those units. So if you have one violation, and it could be whatever that violation is against that unit, all 50 units under this bill will now get notified that they don't pay the rent, and the landlord's not going to be able to have the money to make the repairs to that one unit, because now he doesn't have the money coming in the rent. There are laws already on the books. They're there now, and they're not being enforced. CHAIRWOMAN GAUTHIER: Thank you.
So to have more laws that aren't going to be enforced is not the answer. You can have all the law -- all the enforced -- all the additional penalties you want, it's not going to change the facts.