Committees on Housing and Licenses and Inspections, March 18, 2025

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA JOINT COMMITTEES ON HOUSING, NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT & THE HOMELESS AND LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, March 18, 2025 10:12 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER, CHAIR COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL, CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILWOMAN KATHERINE GILMORE RICHARDSON COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR. COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS

240267 - - -

Good morning. (Good morning.)

I now note that the hour has come and this hearing is called to order. This is the public hearing of the Joint City Council Committees on Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless and Licenses and Inspections. The purpose of this public hearing is to hear testimony on Resolution No. 15 240267. Ms. Jones, would you please call the roll.

Councilmember Phillips.

Present.

Councilmember Bass.

Present.

Councilmember Jones.

Present.

Vice-Chair Landau.

Present.

Chair Driscoll.

Present.

Chair Gauthier.

Present. Thank you, Ms. Jones. I note for the record that a quorum of this Committee is present and this hearing is called to order. I'm excited to be leading today's hearing alongside Chairman Mike Driscoll and Minority Whip Nicolas O'Rourke, who is on his way. Last week, we were right here in this room as Mayor Parker announced her proposal to spend $800 million on housing initiatives. I could not be more excited because Philly's affordable housing crisis is primarily a funding issue. The City already has several programs that successfully create and preserve affordable housing, but their budgets are just too small to meet the need. This is especially true when it comes to our rental housing stock. As a District Councilmember and a renter myself, every day I see how Philadelphians struggle between a rock and a hard place. Should vulnerable renters continue to live in unhealthy or even unsafe conditions because the rent is good or take their chances on the market where they know they won't be able to find an affordable place to live? Let me be clear, this is not a choice that anyone should have to make. And while greedy corporate landlords force renters into this deplorable situation, the truth is that the City's lackluster enforcement of the rental code enables it. That is why we are here today to reaffirm how important it is to use our once- in-a-generation $800 million investment in housing to repair and maintain our rental housing stock. Philadelphia is one of the only major cities that does not regularly inspect its rental units. Think about what kind of message that sends to landlords and tenants. Corporate landlords who get rich off of our constituents must be held accountable to the legal standards mandated by Council. And tenants need to know that their city will protect them. This is not just a theoretical concern for my office. A few years ago one of the apartment buildings in our District had a fire, followed a year later by a monoxide leak that killed one of the tenants. And when we investigated this building, we found that despite egregious safety concerns, residents did not call L&I to report many of the issues because of the fear of retaliation in some cases and a simple lack of information in others. Proactive inspections might have saved a life and would have definitely saved an entire apartment building from sudden and traumatic displacement. But proactive inspections alone are not enough because we know that mom-and-pop landlords often struggle to afford repairs while keeping the rents low. And that's why programs like the Rental Improvement Fund, a targeted investment that uplifts community- oriented small landlords, keeps vulnerable residents in high- quality homes and pushes back against gentrification and is a very important program. When we launched this program in my Council District in August 2023, we heard from neighborhood landlords like Steve Hawkins in Garden Court. With our help, Steve fixed his roof and installed new floors, ceiling fans, countertops, tiles, toilets and windows without meaningfully raising the rent. I look forward to today's discussion and learning more about how we can use a carrotand-stick approach to uplift those who want to do well by doing good, while also holding corporate landlords who take advantage of vulnerable renters accountable. Thank you so much. Chair Driscoll.

Thank you, Madam Chairman. (Applause.)

And, yes, I think she does deserve a round of applause. And this has to be one of our top priorities this year and this joint hearing is so important, and I'm really looking forward to our testimony today. So thank you for your leadership.

Thank you. Do any of my colleagues have opening remarks? Councilmember Phillips.

Thank you, Chair Gauthier. This is indeed an important subject matter in the city of Philadelphia and we certainly have to find ways to address it. One of the things I'll say is that even in our District in the city -- hold on. I'm just looking for what I had -- no, it was right here. Oh, it sure was. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Teamwork, right, we got teamwork. But yes, good morning, colleagues, advocates and neighbors throughout the city. As a representative of the 9th District, I've seen firsthand the consequences of a system that fails to protect renters. In 2022 the residents of Lindley Towers in the Logan Section 23 of our District right here in the 9th were forced from their homes after a partial building collapsed. More than 100 of our neighbors were displaced losing not only their homes but their sense of stability. So this tragedy actually could have been very preventable. The City has since filed a lawsuit against the building's owner, Lindley Tower Realty Company, which continued to rent apartments despite its rental license expiring in 2021. For years, residents reported hazardous conditions but their complaints were unanswered even after the collapse. Some were pressured to sign agreements, waiving their rights in exchange for temporary housing. So this is exactly why we need stronger rental code enforcement and proactive inspections. Philadelphia is one of the few major cities without a regular rental inspection program, leaving thousands of tenants vulnerable to unsafe living conditions. Right now only about 7% of the City's rental units get inspected each year. Meaning landlords who cut corners and ignore maintenance issues go unchecked until disaster strikes. And even most recently in the Northeast part of Philadelphia, there was a fire that took place in which three of our residents died in a fire. And the daughter who was not there that evening where the fire took place who survived said that they kept complaining to the landlord about all of the hazardous conditions in that home. So what could have imagined if there was a regular check of some of these spaces, then maybe that family would have survived. So with that being said, these bad actors are giving our city a bad name. We need policies to distinguish between those who exploit the system and those who follow the rules. We want to support good developers and landlords who invest in our communities and uphold high standards for their properties. And I sincerely, I mean this wholeheartedly, I want to thank Councilmember O'Rourke and Councilmember Landau for introducing this very, very, very important legislation. Thank you so much. Your leadership is essential in making sure we take real steps towards improving rental housing conditions in our city. And for me, I really want them to continue to take this head-on. So again, I look forward to working with all of you to make this a reality. Lindley Towers and other places in our city should never happen. Let's get to work. Thank you. I appreciate you. (Applause.)

Thank you. Vice-Chair Landau.

Thank you. Thank you so much, and thank you everybody who came out today. We can't wait to hear how you're going to lend your voices to this effort, this joint effort, that is really a culmination of all of our work that we've been doing to improve housing and affordable housing here in the city of Philadelphia as well as trying to really aid L&I to be the strongest entity it can be to work towards making sure that our housing is safe and accessible for Philadelphians. I've been doing this work for a very long time and I have -- well, long ago representing tenants, low-income tenants in Landlord Tenant Court, I still see now some of the same exact trends and things that I saw through the late '90s on, their repairs, with tenants complaining about repairs, the issues are not fixed and suddenly either a disaster happens or the tenant has to move out or the tenant exercises their rights, and suddenly the landlord tries to evict. We've put a lot of new fundamental ways that we are handling housing in there, so there's between good cause eviction and even getting the eCLIPSE program up at L&I that took so many years to make it happen where we can actually see any outstanding code violations on a property. We've made so many steps and strides in the process, but we are still not where we need to be. There are ways in which we can standardize this work and make it so that every place that people are renting is safe and accessible. I want to add that, you know, we normalize inspections for businesses all the time. You have a restaurant, the Health Department is coming out once a year to check on you. If your facade is falling off of your business, you better believe L&I is coming out there or you better believe CLIP is right around the corner to give you a ticket. Why is it that we have not yet normalized just inspections of your rental housing? It's a business. This is part of running a business here in Philadelphia. (Applause.)

Let's make this happen. Once we normalize this, once landlords know that as business people, the City will be inspecting to make sure just the basic fundamentals are safe and healthy for people to live there. Then go ahead, you can go forward and do your business and people will have safe and great places to live. So I just want to underscore the moment we are here right now with this joint committee hearing, the fact that we all are together at the same time, the fact that the City is coming to the table, we appreciate you so much. The fact that the tenant advocates are saying we will no longer have a Lindley Court or any other place like that in the city of Philadelphia that will basically fall down on tenants. There are ways we can fix this. And I think this is the moment, this is the time and I'm so excited to get started. Thank you. (Applause.)

Councilmember Jones.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. And thank you, Member Driscoll, Co-Chair. I'm from the 4th District, Councilman there. And there are two-and-a-half developments I want to bring to your attention. One is called Brith Sholom. The other is called the Pavilion, and the other was Penn Wynne. Member Driscoll, Member O'Rourke -- and who else was with us -- went and toured that facility. And I remember that day. When we went, it brought tears literally to my eyes as seniors and veterans and people with disabilities had to live in that kind of condition. Brought tears to my eyes and I am not the crying type. What I also remember was Member Driscoll and I stood in front of a apartment unit that had crime tape on it because they had found one of the tenants, Madam Chair, dead, had been dead for like three days. No one checking on that. That's a whole other aspect of it. So this legislation is important. I want to talk about one other unintended consequences as a freshman when I first got here. I was rah-rah, gung-ho, kick the door in, where's that landlord. There was a sewer pipe on Gainor Road that had broken in a renter's house. They called me up and said, we can't live like this, this is bad, come help us. And in doing so, I called L&I. And in doing so, I made her homeless. We have to be intentional about how we structure these things so that as we go about our business trying to do good, that we do no harm, that we do no 9 harm. So with that, I look forward to the discussions. And with that, I look forward to being supportive. Thank you.

Thank You. Deputy Whip Bass.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I just really wanted to echo the sentiments that have been already spoken. There's no 21 shortage of properties and issues with rental properties, there is no 23 shortage here in the city of Philadelphia. Although it's not every landlord, one landlord who is operating in a way that is unacceptable is one too many. And so, I just really look forward to hearing from L&I, my good friend, Bridget Collins- Greenwald -- hi, Bridget -- who I know is working very hard and who is very caring and concerned about these issue. But we've had just such a difficult time for years with enforcement. And so, I'm really looking forward to hearing what are we going to do differently. How, are we going to tackle this problem finally, how are we going to really get in front of it so that we do so in a meaningful way so that we're not here next year or the year after or the year after talking about the same thing. We've had this conversation, it feels like, many times now. And just talking about landlords who are not living up to the expectation, the responsibility and that I believe puts us as a city, the City of Philadelphia, in harm's way in terms of being liable for folks who are not being responsible landlords. When we put people's safety in jeopardy, when a landlord does it and we don't inspect, we're responsible. So I'm looking forward to hearing more about what we can do to really address what is happening now and how we can prevent it so we don't have this conversation again in the future. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. (Applause.)

Thank you. Ms. Jones, will you now read the title of the resolution.

Resolution 2 240267, authorizing the Joint Committees on Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless and Licenses and Inspections to hold hearings to examine the conditions of rental housing, rental code enforcement and the need for rental repairs throughout the City of Philadelphia.

I want to acknowledge the presence of Minority Whip Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke who is also the sponsor of the legislation. Councilmember, do you want to give remarks? I know you're catching your breath.

Thank you, Madam Chair. (Applause.)

Good morning. I quickly want to -- (Good morning.)

Good morning to everyone that is here, so grateful to see folks. I am safe in his arms on this morning. I want to thank every testifier, commenter and guest in the room today that has made it here before I did. I want to thank Chair Driscoll and as well as Rue Landau for your leadership of the Committee on Licenses and Inspections and to Chair Gauthier for leading this hearing as you lead the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless. We're here to talk about rental housing and the issues that tenants are facing in Philadelphia. In other words, we're here to continue a conversation that's been taking place in these halls in this room for decades upon decades upon decades. There are newer elements of this housing crisis, like algorithmic rent pricing. But some of the main concerns we're here to address are literally older than all of us in this room right now. Unimaginable or I should say unmanageable rents, poor maintenance, the impact of unsafe housing. ,These are some unfortunate mainstays of urban life. And because these challenges have been with us for so long, we can say with confidence that misalignment or misunderstanding only goes so far as an explanation. At the end of the day, it is a question of power. From landlord-tenant relationships to the state institutions that set the rules for both parties, organized realtors to organized renters, these issues are so often settled on which group has the capacity to act or not act. So I'm particularly grateful to see organized tenants ready to take on issues of rental code enforcement -- (Applause.)

-- or the state of rental repairs because my colleagues and I can certainly agree that our landlords are quite organized. Today we're going to talk about what people need to make a house feel like a home and what it takes to ensure that nobody is denied that chance to call where they live home. What's clear is, in some cases, that will require proactive action from local government. In every system there is a baseline, an average standard. And if the history of urban democracy has taught us anything at all, it's that a baseline standard for housing conditions won't be set if those elected to represent the people don't do it. It's on us, on this Council and these two committees in particular to hold the line on setting a legal standard for safe, healthy homes. Otherwise, it turns into a race to the bottom for the least responsible bad actor landlords out there. Sadly, we know what that race can lead to. We'll hear about it from some of the panelists today. But I wanted to submit one example for the record. Some of you know the name Jah'Nae Campbell. Some may not. 375 days ago, Jah'Nae, age 12, breathed her last breath. She had asthma which wasn't the problem. Her problem and her family's problem was a negligent landlord. Over two years of ignored repair slips and service requests from her mother Essie weren't enough for their landlord to address the structural leaks in their apartment. And because of that negligence, the mildew and the mold that follows leaks also went unchecked. Essie's complaints to L&I -- and this is not a call-out, these are just the facts -- didn't make a difference either. In fact, rampant mold is still not a legal cause for a rental habitability violation under our current law. And that's just one of many issues to act on in the coming years. And so, 375 days ago years of living in an unsafe home caught up with one of the children who were supposed to be this city's future. Jah'Nae suffered a fatal asthma attack. And I pray that her memory is a blessing to her loved ones. So for my colleagues, you're going to hear some sizable numbers from some of the folks in attendance today. And you'll soon see some legislation from my office that intends to address many of these issues. Because this race to the bottom, as it were, is in fact costing lives and degrading the quality of life. It's an engine of dysfunction in the life of our city. We're only going to raise our baseline if and when the bad landlords out there actually feel some heat from the work that we do in here. To that I say, let's fire it up and let's get on with this hearing. Thank you so much for your patience and obliging, Madam Chair and Mr. Chair. (Applause.)

Thank you, Councilmember O'Rourke. I'd like to acknowledge the presence of Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson. Majority Leader, did you want to make any opening comments?

No. Thank you.

Thank you so much. The Clerk will please call the first panel of witnesses to testify on the resolution.

Madam Chair, the first witness will be testifying virtually. The name is Keith David Parsons.

Hello. Are you there and connected, Mr. Parsons?

Yes, I am here. Can y'all hear me?

Wonderful. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Keith David Parsons. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good morning, City of Philadelphia City Councilmembers and staff. I am Keith David Parsons, the Strategic Enforcement Administrator for the District of Columbia, Department of Buildings. I'm pleased to appear before you virtually today to discuss proactive housing code inspections and compliance as implemented by the District. But first, I would like to thank Councilmember-At-Large Nicolas O'Rourke for the invitation to speak to you today. I would also like to thank my agency's Director, Brian J. Hanlon, and my mayor, the Honorable Muriel E. Bowser. The (inaudible) Proactive Inspection and Alternative Resolutions programs I'm about to describe are thanks to their vision and leadership. The District of Columbia Department of Buildings was once part of a larger district agency called the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs or DCRA, which was functionally similar to the Department of Licenses and Inspections in Philadelphia. However, on October 1, 2022, DCRA was split by law into two successor agencies. DOB retained the zoning, permitting, construction compliance, housing and property maintenance code and vacant building regulation functions. The licensing, corporate registration, vending registration and consumer protection functions fell to the other half of the agency, which became known as the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, or DLCP. DOB and DLCP remain close and both still play a part in the regulation of multi-family housing in the district. DLCP issues the licenses and DOB conducts the associated inspections. Today DOB has almost 40 housing code inspectors with jurisdiction over the nearly 300,000 residential addresses listed in the district's Master Address Repository. Many of these inspectors respond to customer complaints, but my testimony today will highlight DOB's proactive inspections program. More than half of the residential units in the District, about 180,000, are licensed multi- family apartment buildings with three or more units. As a condition of their licensure, these properties must participate in the proactive inspections program. Smaller properties of one or two units are inspected when they receive their basic business license to rent. As the name suggests, instead of waiting for a tenant to report a complaint to DOB, the Proactive Inspections Program proactively schedules inspections of licensed properties using a risk-based algorithm to target our efforts. The Proactive team is relatively small, with only 9 inspectors and conducts more than 16,000 inspections over the course of the year. At this speed, the universe of licensed units would take more than 10 years to inspect. That is why targeting inspections with the algorithm is so important. The current version of the algorithm incorporates information like the age of the building or the time since it was last fully renovated, when DOB last inspected and the results of that inspection and information about ownership structure. The algorithm is also important for another reason, fairness. When the Proactive Program was started by DCRA in 2009 it was conducted by random selection of licensed properties. However, property owners wanted to feel like their practices in the specific condition of their buildings helped control whether and when they were inspected. By using data about past inspection outcomes, since 2018 the algorithm puts some of the power in property owners' hands. When a property is identified for inspection, DOB gives the property owner and management company 60 days to prepare. This allows DOB to prepare as well by posting information about the upcoming inspection on our website and physically notifying the tenants on location. DOB solicits and collects tenant consent forms for each unit to be inspected to preserve the tenant's right to autonomy over their homes. DOB's goals is to achieve 100% coverage of units in the building.

While this doesn't always happen, especially with large buildings, aggregate coverage routinely exceeds 50%, giving a good picture about the state of the property. At the scheduled time, DOB sends an inspector to perform all the inspections scheduled. Based on our experience, DOB has discovered that it is quicker to send only one or at most two inspectors and have them work the building until complete as opposed to trying to do an entire building in one day with a larger team. At the end of the Proactive inspection, any violations found are converted into infractions and served on the property owner, similar to what happens with the complaint-based inspection. However, DOB has another program in place that works hand- in-hand to deal with larger properties and larger number of outstanding violations, the Alternative Resolution Team or ART. ART is a program that accelerates abatement violations and relieves congestion in the District's Administrative Court. ART is a small but mighty team of 5 that works to settle and dismiss fines outside the courtroom if abatement of violations is confirmed. They are highly successful, resolving an average of about 200 cases per week. By comparison, the team of 5 agency attorneys as well as 6 multiple administrative law judges 7 and support staff can still only take 50 or so cases to trial each week. ART has been critical for reducing DOB's queue of cases for adjudication. In addition, ART is empowered to consider all the facts and circumstances to arrive at a fair outcome for tenants and property owners. They are uniquely situated to consider complex issues like tenant interference, hardship due to fire or illness or other personal issues. To further streamline the alternative resolution process, DOB has two other powerful tools worth mentioning. gov. This landlord violations tool allows any property owner to search their address or name and find every item that DOB expects to be corrected and every outstanding fine. The property owner can then submit electronic abatement evidence using a special portal that is reviewed by expert inspectors. Where that evidence shows violations are clearly abated, the case is referred to ART. If there is any question about the electronic evidence or an inperson re-inspection is scheduled, then an inperson re-inspection is scheduled and only after that confirmed abatement is the case referred to ART. Using these tools, DOB confirmed abatement of 35,399 violations in Fiscal Year '24, of which 32,646 were housing code violations. 62%. This was one of the highest rates in the agency. gov. In conclusion, proactive housing inspections have been a key part of the District's toolkit to help maintain our stock of multi- family housing and make sure tenants are receiving the conditions required by law. As an early adopter of this relatively novel approach, the District of Columbia and Mayor Bowser's administration are pleased to offer any assistance and information we can provide to Philadelphia and other sister cities interested in charting this course. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. )

Thank you so much, Mr. Parsons. We appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to share about the work in D.C. It's certainly impressive. Please do hang on for questions at the conclusion of the panel. Will the Clerk please call the remaining witnesses for this panel.

That was it for the virtual and we'll move on to the inperson.

Can you call -- can we call Panel or 1.5.

Sure. We're going to go to Commissioner Bridget Collins-Greenwald and Rachel Mulbry. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Good morning, Commissioner. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Good morning, Chairs Gauthier and Driscoll and members of the Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless and the Licenses and Inspections Committees. My name is Bridget Collins-Greenwald and I serve as the Commissioner of Licenses and Inspections on the quality-of-life side. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today on Resolution No. 240267, introduced by Councilmembers O'Rourke and Landau, which authorizes these Joint Committees on Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless and Licenses and Inspections to hold public hearings to examine the conditions of rental housing, rental code enforcement and the need for rental repairs throughout the City of Philadelphia. The safety and well- being of Philadelphia residents is our highest priority. Housing is not just a fundamental necessity. It is the foundation of public health, economic stability and community well-being. Yet as this resolution underscores, some Philadelphians are living in rental units that are not in compliance with the Philadelphia codes which can pose serious concerns for their health and safety. The mission of quality of life is to responsibly and respectfully serve the community of Philadelphia by providing quality code, education and enforcement services. We are transparent, we are approachable and we embrace positivity to make the city the safest, cleanest and greenest large city in the country with economic opportunity for all. Education and enforcement of the property maintenance code is part of that larger mission. Currently, our enforcement efforts are complaint- driven. Meaning, an inspection is triggered by a complaint that we receive from the public. When we respond to complaints, our goal is to achieve compliance without displacing residents unless absolutely necessary. However, this is not always possible. The goal is to take a more proactive role in the rental property inspection process. We welcome the opportunity to collaborate with City Council. Expanding the Department's authority to take stronger enforcement action against repeat offenders would deter negligent landlord behavior, allowing us to create better accountability in the rental market. At the same time, we recognize that enforcement should not place undue burdens on the responsible small landlords who are committed to maintaining safe housing. In conclusion, our agency supports efforts to enhance rental code enforcement and improve housing conditions across Philadelphia. Every resident deserves a safe and healthy home. We look forward to working with City Council, landlords, tenants and the community stakeholders to develop practical solutions that protect renters while fostering a fair and accountable rental market. I welcome any questions you may have or turn it over to --

Thank you. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Good morning. My name is Rachel Mulbry. Chairs Gauthier and Driscoll and members of the Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless and Licenses Committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify this morning. As I mentioned, my name is Rachel Mulbry and I'm the Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives at the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation or PHDC here to testify on Resolution 4 240267. In my role, I manage both home repair and rental assistance programs so I'm familiar with how closely tied together housing affordability and housing quality are. Today I'd like to share some background and early successes from PHDC's Rental Improvement Fund. The Rental Improvement Fund is the City's most recent and largest attempt to support Philadelphia's small landlords to make needed repairs and improvements. We generally define a small landlord, sometimes referred to as a mom-and-pop landlord, as someone who owns no 23 more than 5 rental properties or 15 units. RAF is funded by the Neighborhood Preservation Initiative and makes forgivable loans of up to $25,000 per property to small landlords in exchange for a 10-year commitment to keeping their rents affordable. We do this work because we believe that quality shouldn't be sacrificed for affordability nor affordability for quality. 2 million in repairs. For comparison, RAF makes about as many loans on an annual basis as all private banks make to small scale and rental investors for home improvement in Philadelphia according to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data from 2022 and 2023. In order to achieve this kind of reach and scale, we have built a program that meets these landlords where they are. We know that landlords often need support in making the kinds of repairs that will enable them to get a rental license or better property insurance policy, which is why we don't require rental license or full insurance policy upfront from landlords who can't get them. Our inspectors do a full property walkthrough to help landlords develop a scope of work that addresses health and safety issues at a reasonable cost. We're especially focused on the types of repairs and improvements that will have the biggest impact on tenant health and well-being, including energy bills that so many households in Philly struggle to afford. Some of the most common repairs we've seen so far are the essential ones: Roofing, electrical upgrades, plumbing and HVAC. We also see plenty of requests for new flooring, kitchen and bathroom upgrades, which we are happy to approve since we believe tenants in affordable units deserve updated amenities too. As the program has grown, we've developed more rigorous practices for guiding landlords through the building code and zoning requirements so that repairs are completed with the right level of oversight from our partners at the Department of Licenses and Inspections. We know that with the resources we have been given comes the responsibility to help shift some of the culture around small scale construction in Philly. That's why we insist on detailed scopes of work, using licensed contractors and proper permitting. RAF is a high-touch program, but we know that there are so many benefits to bringing current practices in line with city rules. Our team can handle upwards of 50 applications a month with our current capacity and we have a structure that can scale. That's all thanks to PHDC's inhouse team of unionized loan processors and inspectors and knowledgeable program leadership. To support applicants, we have weekly information sessions, a realtime application status page and a phone hotline staffed five days a week, and we're always exploring new and revised loan products to better meet the need, including one we plan to launch soon that will finance more expensive repair work at unoccupied rental properties and encourage more energy-efficiency improvements.

The Rental Improvement Fund is viable thanks to cross- agency partnership and open lines of communication. One of the many ways that we partner is around applicant referrals. For example, the Eviction Diversion Program refers landlords to RAF when repair issues come up during mediation, and the Philadelphia Housing Authority refers landlords who fail their inspections. We also have great relationships at L&I, Revenue, Commerce, Health and Homeless Services. Lastly, we are lucky to have the support from expert researchers on the Health Department's Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention Team who are leading an evaluation of RAF's impact in collaboration with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the Housing Initiative at Penn. That evaluation is positioning us to better understand impacts to tenant health and well- being as well as the ways our assistance helps small landlords stay financially stable. Building and growing the Rental Improvement Fund over the last years has truly been a team effort. And I look forward to discussing the ways it can continue to serve the City's goals to improve both rental housing quality and affordability in the years to come. Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. )

That's great work. Thank you so much for speaking about it this morning. I think I inadvertently squished two of our panels. So right now we're going to take a regional approach and we're going to ask questions of our partners in D.C. and the Administration at the same time. I would like to start with a question for Mr. Parsons. I'm sorry if I missed this in the testimony, but can you speak about when D.C. started its program and about the cost, the budget, cost?

Yes, certainly. So the first version of the program dates all the way back to 2009. The version that works mostly the way I was describing is more from 2018. Let me see. I don't have my budget numbers on hand, but it's primarily supported by about $300,000 in contract support and an additional perhaps six FTEs. So it's not a super expensive program. It's not even the majority of the housing program, if we're just talking about proactive inspections.

Thank you so much. If you weren't able and if you get clearance from the powers that be in D.C., it would be great if you could share with us some detailed cost information. We're in budget. And so, we have a desire to do this, but it's also timely for us and we would love to look at those numbers if you're able.

Yeah, I will at least look at the -- we have public budget numbers and I will put Councilmember O'Rourke's staff in touch with those links so you guys can review those.

Thank you. Question for the Commissioner before we open it to other members: I know that you have been thinking about this issue because we've talked about it offline. Can you talk about how you're thinking about approaching it and what some of the obstacles have been? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So you may remember when I came in here last year when I first started in this position last May, I guess it was, we talked about doing proactive rental inspections. I met with Councilman O'Rourke's staff several times, Kate and his team, which was awesome, met with Renters United, and we thought, what are good ways we can go about this. We thought we could hit the ground running with virtual inspections as a good start. It's given us -- we've had some hiccups along the way I can safely say now that we are starting that program. We are doing a small pilot. We think that is going to take some of the burden off of physically going out to a place and actually inspecting it but ensuring that there's still safety involved. So that is one idea that we've had. We have talked about -- so what we have done as a whole in the Department of L&I QOL since the split, we completely restructured. So the way it was set up before, before the Mayor Parker split is what I'm talking about, there's two parts of L&I now, the Quality of Life and then the Inspection, Safety and Compliance. What we did on our end, on the code enforcement end, was we have now dedicated teams that do business education and enforcement, fire inspections, nuisance property. We have a Nuisance Property Unit and a Property Maintenance Unit and a Vacant Property Unit. So all those were kind of all consolidated before so it wasn't allowing us to get to really the heart of the matter in any of them because our inspectors were really spaced out. And I will say this from an inspector standpoint, when they would get a fire inspection complaint versus say a vacant property complaint or maybe a business-only complaint, they always went with fire, which I totally get, because it's a safety thing. By splitting those units up, it's actually allowing our Property Maintenance Unit to actually focus on housing. So that's rental, you know, these rental landlord-tenant issues that we're seeing. So I think that is a very proactive good step. That started at the end of the summer. So I think we're seeing benefits from that already. Hitting all the properties that are out there as rental properties, to put in perspective at this moment, we have 810,000 active rental licenses. So I just wanted to put that number out there just for information for everyone.

Thank you so much. I'd like to acknowledge the presence of Councilmember Mark Squilla. Chair Driscoll, do you have any --

Commissioner, do we have any sense of how many properties are renting without a rental license? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So we don't -- we have estimates. We have an estimate that we think there are between 250 and 310,000 rental properties. So without a license, we're not really sure. I mean, there have been estimates thrown around by different agencies. We are working with Pew right now to actually kind of hone in on that to see where we're at. We're not there yet, but just to kind of get us better numbers from what we have right now.

And how do you typically -- how's it reported to you? Does it come through the Council's offices that that you have somebody in the neighborhood that is operating illegally? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So 311 and Council offices. So probably everyone here has probably gotten in touch with our office to tell us about a rental property in their District. 311 is still the way we're receiving them now until we get into this more proactive phase that I'm talking about. We're handling things through 311 and Council offices.

Okay. Because I'm very concerned. I think the number's high. So thank you.

Minority Whip Councilmember O'Rourke.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And again, thank you to Mr. Parsons, Ms. Griswald and also to Ms. Mulbry. I appreciate you all for your testimony today. I'm going to start with you, Mr. Parsons. You stated that your proactive team of nine inspectors is able to conduct more than 16,000 proactive inspections over the course of a year and you use your algorithm to target the buildings that are most likely in need of inspection. Can you share anything else about how comprehensive this inspection coverage is?

Certainly. So the way it works is that if the algorithm targets a building, then it gets put on the 60-day timeline that I described. So we post it on the website. We let the owner and management company know that they are on the list and we're showing up about two months later. Then we go and we prepare and attempt to inspect every unit and the common areas of the building. So we will sort of do the background work to try to inspect the entire building. And we will also solicit through the management company and through posting the building the express consent of each of the occupants of the units to let us in and let us do the inspection. The actual penetration of the building depends on how many people say yes because we're not at this point using any sort of legal authority to force an inspection if someone does not consent to it in this context, but we're trying to inspect basically the entire building every time. And depending on the building and what the folks who live in it want, we tend to get more or less.

And using your algorithm approach, is this team of nine sufficient to cover the roughly 190,000 rental households in D.C. or is there an ideal amount of inspectors that you don't yet have resources for?

Well, that depends, Councilmember, entirely on the speed that you want to get through it. Right now we do -- as I said, we can cycle through over a number of years. There is a bill 13 that's unfunded right now that would make that cycle six years for all buildings. And the reason it's unfunded is because we would need more team members to make that timetable.

You said a current six-year cycle at the current state?

Six-year cycle is the standard and the bill 24 has been passed by our Council but not yet funded. So I would need more team members to go that fast.

Understood, more in order to get it done quicker. Okay. Can you explain more about how the Alternative Resolution Team is so effective at resolving violations? What kinds of actions are they taking to do this work so effectively?

Well, the first thing that is really effective is that we have plugged them in at the end of this abatement confirmation process. So a while ago, we redid our data so that we were tracking not just at a complaint level what's happening, but at the individual violation level. So the inspector goes out and every single thing that's broken gets noted in the data, and also we can track whether it's fixed. The Alternative Resolution 2 Team has sent every case once those things are fixed, which gives them a big baseline of cases to work with. In addition, we have been and found a lot of success with doing outreach. We've been analyzing our data and we will notice an owner or a property that has a lot of outstanding violations. The Alternative Resolution Team or others on our team will call them up and be like, do you know that you have 200 violations that the department buildings once prepared. And, you know, sometimes we get a lot of response. But ultimately, when we start talking to people about this, they will want to come into compliance. And so, that's another channel where we refer them to the Alternative Resolution Team. When people talk to us, solutions happen.

Thank you, Mr. Parsons. I'll just stay in our kind of truncated panel. I want to jump to you, Ms. Mulbry, if you don't mind. I think I heard you say that the Rental Improvement Fund makes about as many loans as all private banks make to small rental investors, that's correct?

On an annual basis, that's more or less correct. Yes.

That is amazing. Can you talk more about the scalability and the impact of the Rental Improvement Fund? I know a lot of us are concerned about how stricter enforcement will impact small landlords, but this program seems to be doing an amazing job at addressing those concerns.

I think one of the real strengths that we found is by building the infrastructure inhouse. It allows us to be really flexible. So we have our own team of inspectors, our own team of loan processors. We have attorneys that have helped us tweak again and again our mortgage and note. So as we better understand with time what extra levels of support landlords need or what issues we're running into during construction or during that affordability compliance period, we're able to change our processes, tweak them, make them more effective. And then the thing that becomes scalable is that we can do that with more staff for more landlords. As I mentioned, it will continue to be a high-touch program because we want to make sure that that both landlords and tenants are having a good experience. But by hiring more loan processors, more management and more inspectors, we could absolutely increase the volume above what we're doing now.

Thank you. Ms. Greenwald, do you have data on the annual number of cease operations orders that lead to orders to vacate? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: We do -- we have numbers on the number of properties that we've ceased businesses and residential properties. We don't keep track of if anyone is displaced. That's not something that we keep track of in our data.

Is it possible to keep track of it or where might we find information like that? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: I would have to get back to you on that. I'm not actually sure how we would do that. Since we do code enforcement, I'm not sure the next steps of if it goes -- I mean, when we vacate a residential property, OSH is involved with us. So I would assume they would probably have those numbers, but I don't want to speak for them so I'd have to get back to you on that.

Okay. Very good. All in all I want to thank you again for your presentations and your testimony today. Madam Chair.

Thank you so much. And I want to acknowledge the presence of Council President Kenyatta Johnson who I know cares a lot about this issue. Thank you for stepping in. Councilmember Phillips.

Thank you, Chairwoman. I just want to pose just a few questions to L&I in regards to the presentation from D.C. Now, that you've heard this presentation from Washington, D.C. and hopefully further conversations can be sparked as a result, is your department now thinking, you know, are you beginning to think of more of the possibility of a proactive approach to licenses and inspections for all rental properties? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So we have been talking through what it would look like to have a proactive approach. As I said, we restructured the department. And when we came in, what we did was we have business, we have fire and we have property maintenance, so we have established proactive fire inspections. So we do these auto repair shops that have been popping up -- the Council President is shaking his head -- all over the city. They've been very successful. We've met with each individual District Councilperson and done these corridor proactive inspections. These are proactive inspection programs that we have started. The next on our list is proactive rental inspections. So talking to the gentleman from D.C. would be, yes, absolutely helpful. As I did -- I might have mentioned earlier, I think I mentioned it really quickly, we are working with Pew to establish some best practices that can be implemented here, so I'm sure we'll be in touch with our colleague from D.C.

Yeah. I asked that question because I know in your testimony you mentioned that we are still taking complaints from the public. And if they complain, you make it a priority to go out and do the inspection. The only issue is that there are some very vengeful landlords in our city and a lot of folks are afraid to make those complaints. (Applause.)

And so, unfortunately that model no 18 longer works in our city. (Applause.)

I just want to add that if your team can provide additional information on what funding or resources would be needed to expand that in our city, I would be so happy to work with Councilmembers O'Rourke and Landau and of course the Housing Chairwoman Gauthier to make sure that we see fit to make this happen because it's clearly a significant problem. And I mean, if there's already a model that's being done, we can at least start there in our city. And then also, just the last two questions. Are there protections in place to ensure tenants can report violations without fear and retaliation and what penalties is this for landlords who fail to comply with the property maintenance code already sufficient tier future violations? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So any complaint put in is anonymous so we would never talk to the landlord so that anyone's protection is -- anyone's protected that calls and puts a complaint in no matter what it's for, through the 311 system and through your office, right, so their identities are protected. As for what happens when we do an inspection, we do very similar to what Washington D.C. does. We go out, we inspect. If there are violations, we issue those violations. We issue them to the property owner. We give them a certain amount of period to comply. So after that period, we go back out and we re-inspect. Depending what the issue is, some landlords come into compliance and then we just close the case. Some do not, we send them to court. Some are egregious enough that we would do an intent to cease, which will give you a little bit more time for a landlord to fix. And if you do not, then we do a complete cease. As we stated earlier, we hate to do something like that because it does displace people.

Yeah, and that's really important. And also, just as you know it's not technically anonymous in our city only because landlords know that if someone's coming out, someone told on them. And the only person that possibly told on them was the resident. (Applause.)

And so, I think we need to really immediately work on changing that. And this is also just my last comment. Are we, you know, with our city's enforcement, I know you don't know all the landlords that exist in our city, you have an approximate number, but I think this is also an opportunity to do something. I'm not sure how D.C. does it. You could talk about that, but there's community members, I live on a block and I can tell you how many people rent on my block. We can do a publicity to kind of understand to let community members know, like, please let us know who are all the renters, work with the neighbors, work with the community organizations and that way people who are not reporting that they're renting can be identified as these are rental properties. So I think community grassroots efforts as well as publicity stunts can help us identify all the renters in the city. Thank you, Chairwoman.

Thank you. Vice-Chair Landau.

Thank you so much. Thanks to all three of you. I had an order, but I'm going to go a little out of my order on which I wanted to go in so I can respond to my colleagues' questions about what happens next after inspections. As we know in Philadelphia, we have a Fair Housing ordinance that is enforced by the Fair Housing Commission, which makes retaliation against a tenant illegal. So that if L&I does come out to inspect or is notified about a property, the tenant is technically protected under the law and should file a complaint with the Fair Housing Commission. And this is important to note that it's whether the tenant called L&I and issued the complaint or whether another neighbor does. The landlord doesn't need to know who filed the complaint or who called L&I on the property, but that the tenant would be protected. First question for Commissioner Greenwald is, does L&I inform tenants of a property when there's been a complaint filed against the landlord with L&I -- sorry. Just let me try this again. Does L&I inform tenants in a property of the existence of the Fair Housing Commission and their rights to file a complaint to protect themselves from retaliation when L&I cites a property? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Okay. I thought so. I just wanted to confirm definitely. It should be on the notice of violation so it's on there. So do our inspectors actively tell them? No. I'm sure we could. That seems like a very simple change in process, but it is on the violation.

A lot of times the violations are coming to the property in the landlord's name and the tenants won't open the violations -- (Applause.) COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Gotcha. I'm totally following, yep. That seems like a very simple process, tweak on our end.

If L&I could even hand out a flyer and leave it on the table that day that says, we were here just so you know, your rights are protected. I'd be super happy to help you create that flyer with the Law Department as well. Thank you. (Applause.)

I want to go back to our friend from D.C. Thank you so much for being here because I wanted to set the stage with some of this. First, Mr. Parsons, can you tell us what your program looked like before you made this change? Curious if it was similar to Philadelphia. Also, do you have a checklist of what you're looking for when you do your proactive inspections? Is it a short list of your larger code, your health and housing code, or is it the full code? And also, do you have in general what your greatest findings are of the repair problems and properties?

Yeah. Thank you for those questions. So in the furthest back before times, the Department of Consumer Regulatory Affairs was fully complaint-based. And so, that would be just waiting and someone would reach out with a housing complaint and we would respond and inspect. That program still exists and it's a little more than -- in the most recent year, a little more than a third of our volume. The Proactive Program did sort of get started at a small scale in 2009 and has built up to the point where it is today where it's close to a third of the volume, a little bit less. And the other program, the BBL program, which is for the one- and two-family properties, I don't know for sure when that started. I don't have that information with me, but that is now also between 18 and 30% of the inspections we do. 19 That one has an 20 explicit -- the BBL has an explicit 21 physical checklist, but I think 22 it's on our website and available 23 of the things that the inspector is 24 looking for. That is somewhat more limited than the general complaint- based code inspections. The proactive doesn't have a physical list like that, but the team does concentrate on things like are there smoke detectors and is the egress in the building working correctly, right. Like they're focusing on the life safety issues in the building and making sure that everything is working on a larger scale. They are not as focused during the proactive process on chipped paint or the light. That's going to be more of a complaint-based issue because at that point there's the complainant is saying, I specifically told my landlord to fix this chipped paint, they haven't done it for two weeks and what not. Did I cover the whole question? You had a couple of things there.

Just in general or is there a theme of your findings? Have you found similar poor conditions or necessary repairs throughout?

Well, I think the theme I would say is that the Proactive Program does work in the sense that it identifies violations, and when they are abated they do not then have to be re-abated by complaint. If you go check out our dashboard if you wanted to, you could pull down all of the open violation data into a spreadsheet and play around with it to see what exactly we're finding. We do, do analyses of those items all the time. I don't have anything fun about that with me today, but that is something that we do, for sure.

Thank you so much. That was super helpful. Commissioner Greenwald, I over the years have noticed one place where we're failing in Philadelphia, which it sounds like DC is doing well, and it's really good communication between L&I and the landlords. I've always watched the Code Enforcement Court just being a place where landlords are kind of checking in, saying, oh, I've just learned of these repairs, I've got to go out and fix them. And that if we could do more proactive work, knocking on the door, calling the landlord, finding the landlord, saying, hey, just so you know we just have five violations on your property, we want you to fix them, we're here for you, there's PHDC right there, can give you a loan. Any kind of that communication that is not what landlords and tenants are both fearing are retaliation or punishment, if we could avoid the retaliation and punishment, I think that that would be a step in the right direction here. A lot of landlords really are worried about what's going to happen when I'm found out that I have all of these problems here. They probably are very untrustworthy that the government will come in and help them to fix this. And I think some of this really is marketing and communication. What brings me to you, Director Mulbry, what you're touching -- first of all, thank you for stepping in the shoes of the small banks that should be lending to our landlords anyway. Thank you very, very much. This is exactly what Philadelphia should do. The government should step in and say, if you guys aren't going to do this, we're going to take care of this. And I love that there's a program to help landlords make repairs on their properties. But I do know there's a lot of landlords who are scared to say, my place is in poor condition this thing, when you come in here, you're going to know that I have a problem. How do you handle that when talking to the landlords, to make them feel comfortable that you just want to be on their team and work on their side?

Yeah. So I think it's really important that -- again, we have very close relationships with L&I but that this program is housed at PHDC, which is a separate agency. We have a separate set of inspectors. And so, we can go out as a kind of impartial body and our inspectors are really knowledgeable and can provide advice. A lot of times we come across and work with landlords who know the property has issues but they aren't engineers or architects or contractors themselves. And so, it's really our inspectors who can help them understand what needs to be done. And then I'll reiterate the point that I made earlier, which is we try and set a really low bar entry. So again, we know that many folks when they come in the door are renting to tenants and don't have a rental license. We've all read the same reports. So we are happy to work with them knowing that by the time the repairs are complete, they absolutely do need to have that rental license in place. Same goes for property insurance coverage. So we try and set that bar really low, build that trust, have a single loan processor assigned who can kind of work them through the process and then make sure by the time we're signing off doing our final inspection, making our final payment, everything is where it should be. And then because we have this, the loan is forgiven over 10 years, we're checking back in every year to make sure to look at the leases, make sure they still property insurance coverage, check whether there's new code violations, make sure they still have a rental license to make sure that because of this financial commitment we're making, that those properties stay in good condition and following city regulations during the life of that loan.

Thank you. One last question, Commissioner Greenwald. It's about tech. We know that eCLIPSE took a long time to get started and then after it had been -- we've been using it for a while, many of us believe we need to move on. Is L&I staying with eCLIPSE? Are there any updates happening to it and how do we enhance the technology? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So we're in the process of actually enhancing eCLIPSE, right, as we speak. So hopefully, October of 2025 is when you should be seeing, so we're calling it WebUI. So it's more interactive. It's web-based. You'll be able to navigate it more easily. I think the first modules that were put together in eCLIPSE are a little clunky and I get why, it was the beginning of the implementation. So what we're doing now is going back and looking at those business modules, the license module, how you go in as the everyday citizen going in that doesn't use eCLIPSE as much. So I think you're going to see many improvements there. I also think it's going to be more intuitive to use. And there will be a whole communication plan around that like, hey, this is what you can do now in eCLIPSE. So, yes, we're in the process of enhancing as we speak.

Thank you all so much.

Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson.

I have two questions. Thank you so much, Madam Commissioner. And to all of you who have testified, and particularly the testimony we heard from Washington, D.C., I thought that was particularly helpful. I have just two quick questions. Have you all seen any correlations between multiple outstanding violations and property tax delinquency? And is there any correlation between Revenue and L&I that allows for data-sharing? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So to the first question, I do not know the answer to that so I could get you that information to see if there's any correlation between -- I would have to talk to Revenue to see how we could get that. So to that one, I don't know. The second one, do we correlate with Revenue? Yes, we do. So actually we're working on this process right now that I think everyone's going to be -- I don't want to let the cat out of the bag yet, but I think there's going to be some good things coming where we're going to see some good -- who has a license for what and how it corresponds to Revenue and it'll bring actually some people up to light that don't. And then some people that do will actually probably bring some more revenue into the city as well, so should be a good thing.

Right. And I ask because -- and I'll ask the second part to the question. But I ask because I'll call myself an accidental landlord after my parents passed away and left us with a house. And typically when you have a rental property or rental unit, you have to file 22 through the tax center to file all your tax information. And to me, that would be an indicator from a revenue perspective what information should be on file for you at L&I with all your proper licensing and even with health, with your lead paint test and all of those different certifications you need in order to even process the rental license under the City's website. So I wanted to ask that question. And then back to the multiple outstanding violations and the property tax delinquency. Sometimes there are property violations even if they're exterior as an example, that could be an indicator for other things that are happening from a co-violation perspective with the property overall. So I wasn't sure if you all were doing that. And then finally, I have to mention this. Relative to utilities, is there any way that you all work with the utility companies as an indicator to figure out which properties are actually rental units? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: We're actually working with the utility companies right now. We're actually starting something where we're going to be sharing data, so I think that's going to be really helpful.

Okay. Because that could be a definite indicator. Obviously, it's not helpful doing it with water, right. But doing it with an outside utility company and then making a comparison with the data that we have from a city perspective could help us to aggregate out that 250 to 310 number to get a better picture of where we are. And then finally, are you all working with or intending to work with an organization like Pew to help us get a better understanding or idea of where we are? I know they were exceedingly helpful when we worked on and continue to work on the tangled title issue in producing a report with a lot of research, a lot of data sharing, that sort of helped us lay the roadmap for how we are continuing to deal with tangled titles. Are you all planning to do that as it relates to this issue? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: We are indeed. We actually just started a relationship with Pew. We put in a concept and they accepted it. So actually --

Wow. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: -- yeah, we're just starting so we're really excited about that. So we should be getting some good information really soon. So actually, yeah, we're really excited to be starting that relationship.

Okay. That'll be awesome. And then finally, do -- I have several additional questions that I'm just going to submit for the record for your written response. Okay. But I wanted to make sure that the inspectors that are actually onsite that they have the language services available to interact with the constituents because that is another barrier -- (Applause.)

-- that we're facing. So just even from an education perspective with the inspectors as far as interacting with the residents, is that something that you all work on or have? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: We're working on that now. A lot of our materials are in multiple languages. All of our business materials are in I think every language that -- we think we've captured everyone that everyone in the city speaks, so our business languages are like that. We are actually putting -- we have multiple languages in some of our violation notices. We have also been working with is Google Translate the way to go when we're on scene, you know what I mean, or if that's something we can do. It actually works well, you know what I mean. So we're getting there with that, those types of interpretations.

Is there a pamphlet or a paper or something you can give out that has the translation already on the document when the inspectors go out onsite? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Yeah. So, yes, we're working on that. We've completed all the ones on the business end for business corridors. We're working on now all the ones on the property. And so, we have them in several languages but not all.

Okay. And then I'm sure we can share them in the utility bill notices and the notices that go out from the City as well. Particularly when they're first released and when they're initially finished, I think that would be helpful. And then of course, sharing it with us and we can get the information out with tabling and other events. We can share that information as well. Okay. All right. Thank you. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Can I make a plug for something really quick?

Yes. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So on our website, and this might be something that you may want to tell -- and I always call it the wrong name so let me make sure I call the right one -- the Partners for Good Housing, it's on our website --

Yes. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: -- familiar with it? It's excellent. It has a lot of information. That is in multiple languages too, but it is a really well-put-together document. Everyone's shaking their head. So good, everyone's --

I'm shaking my head because you have to give out the Partners for Good Housing if you have a rental license. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Yes, you do.

Every tenant, you have to have that. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Yes. So that is absolutely written in the code. But I mean just for you as Councilmembers too to just be able to share it with your staff because I find it -- or your constituents, not your staff -- well, and your staff. But I just find it an excellent document.

And I just want to thank you as a sidebar for the work that you all have been doing on the Commercial Corridor Project. I know we met about that recently and sort of doing the proactive inspections relative to a lot of these drug paraphernalia stores that are also causing many issues in our community. So I want to thank you for that and I look forward to the proactive work that you all will do on the residential side as well. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you so much. Question for you, Commissioner: I know that you're thinking about a proactive rental inspection pilot. I know that's connected to the relationship with Pew, but I want to know what can you tell us about how you're thinking about a pilot and what is just an estimated timeline? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So my estimated timeline and working with them is we just finalized some documentation. It's like a 15-week process, so I say give it (inaudible) I would say we're four months around, I would say just based on, you know, getting started and whatnot. Do I have some ideas? I have some ideas from what I've heard from fellow colleagues. But I actually would like to just do a deeper dive into them before I would make a recommendation publicly or how we're going to change some processes.

Okay. Got it. But 15 weeks, so three, four months we should be expecting to hear more from you on what this could look like in the City of Philadelphia. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Yeah, I think we'll get some information together and then we'll work -- obviously, we'll work with the Mayor's Office and the Managing Director's Office and our partners at PHDC to actually get something, you know, some good recommendations together. And hopefully, some are just like a process fix and then some will probably be a little bit larger I imagine. But hopefully, there's some low-hanging fruit and then more of the how do we get into this whole program and make it a systemic program, proactive inspection program. (Applause.)

Great. All right. I think Minority Whip O'Rourke has questions. I think Chair Driscoll, and then we're going to try to wrap up this regional panel. Go ahead, Minority Whip.

It was just a quick one. And thank you again, Mr. Parsons, for explaining what's going on in the city. Commissioner, they have a nine-person team. Curious to know how much money it would cost to hire a 10-inspector proactive inspection pilot team? If you can give a rough estimate while we're in budget season, that's good. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So I was doing the numbers when Mr. Parsons was talking. If he's doing -- he has a team of nine that gets to 16,000 a year, if I heard that correctly, right? Did I hear that? Yeah, okay. He's shaking his head yes. So they do about seven a day if you account for the work day, right. So we came up with a number. If we were to do all of them, okay, if we did all -- say we just go on the low end of the 250,000, right, 250,000 rental properties and we wanted to do 8 inspections a day, right. We would 9 need 110 inspectors to do that if 10 we did on annual basis. So that would include that's (inaudible) that space. That's an astronomical number. That's about $6.2 million annually plus all that other stuff that I just said. So what we would have to do I believe is stagger it the way they do. They do it on a six-year cycle it sounded, so it would have to be something like that. This is off the top of my head. I don't know if that's where we're going. But I think that would have to make sense just because of the way the numbers pan out.

You said 6.2 annually? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: That's if we did -- like if we did the 250,000 rental units that we think we have, right. And then the number of inspectors we would need to do 10 inspections a day would get you around 110 inspectors. That's times 60,000. This is just basic back-of-the- envelope math. That's an annual cost plus the cost of vehicles and space and equipment and all the other things you need. So this is just very back-of-the-envelope. So that's why I don't -- I don't know where that would take us, how many -- would that be annual, would it be every four years, would it be every five. It sounded like in D.C. they started off smaller and then they got there, which is exactly what I believe we would start off on a pilot and then grow, grow into that to make it scalable. So like Rachel's point of how they did their program.

Thank you for obliging me, Madam Chair. Thank you, Commissioner.

Thank you for that math. And I just want to say obviously budgets are about priorities, but $6.2 million is not astronomical, but -- (Applause.) COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: That was a caveat that (inaudible) --

I agree with starting off with a pilot and growing from there. Chair Driscoll.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner, do you know the aggregate number of noncompliant landlords that get referred to court? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: That were referred to court? I could get that. I do not have that off the top of my head.

Yeah, I'd like to see that. And if you could break it down -- this may be a big ask. But if you could break it down by Councilmanic District? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: I think we could.

Because we're thinking of a rapid response unit, you know, a pilot program, but your information would be very valuable to us. Thank you.

All right. So we're going to try to wrap this panel. I want to say thank you to all of our panelists, with a special thanks to Mr. Parsons. It has been invaluable to have you here sharing the work in Washington, D.C. And it sounds like our Commissioner and many other folks want to continue to talk to you so that we can implement something similar. So thank you so much for your help. And thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Director, for being here today. (Applause.)

Will the Clerk please call the next panel to testify.

Sherry Thomas, Katharine Nelson, Daisy Cruz. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Good morning. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to testify today in support of Resolution 240267. I'm Sherry Thomas. I'm an attorney and a Director of Housing and Habitability Initiative at Legal Clinic for the disabled. LCD is a direct legal services agency. We serve low-income individuals living with physical and mental health disabilities and we are partner in the Philadelphia Eviction Prevention Project. Thank you for recognizing that these issues of rental housing conditions, rental code enforcement and the need for rental repairs throughout Philadelphia is important to the health and safety of our people. These issues in particular are a pain point for renters and tenant advocates because it is one area of the law with the least effective legal remedies that actually don't protect the renter and, in fact, can serve to put the renter at a high risk of an eviction filing. When a renter experiences safety and habitability issues in their home, they have few legal options to address the issue if their landlord is not responsive. They can choose to repair the issue themselves and deduct from their rent. They can choose to withhold their rent to incentivize their landlord to make the repairs or they can choose to vacate the property. At any point, they can also call Licenses and Inspections. Out of these options, we see most renters decide to withhold their rent in order to incentivize their landlord. Repairing and deducting is often not a good option, especially for low-income renters, because they cannot put the money upfront to make major repairs. And vacating the property is also not really feasible for most because they have either just spent a ton of money just to get into the property with deposits and moving costs, and we also know that there's a lack of enough affordable rental properties and penalties for early lease termination, so it's not really feasible. However, withholding rent and calling L&I is still very risky and for some people, not possible. So I represent people with disabilities. Many of them are on SSI. SSI recipients in particular cannot hold more than $2,000 in their bank accounts without putting their SSI payment at risk. So they cannot withhold to incentivize their landlord because the remedy is just not doesn't realistically exist for them. For others, even though the law recognizes withholding rent as a valid way to incentivize a landlord to make repairs, it does not prevent a landlord from filing an eviction against them for unpaid rent. I do appreciate Councilmember Landau's remarks about the Fair Housing Commission. I appreciate them and acknowledge them. However, some renters don't know that that's an option. And if the landlord gets to court first and files against them, then it is no longer an option. They lose jurisdiction. So once a case is actually filed, a tenant has no 4 choice but to deal with it. And that means they are either defending themselves in court, they're defending themselves when it was a landlord who actually committed the first wrong or they need to reach an agreement with their landlord who is already hostile to them because they've filed these complaints. So in both scenarios, a very real outcome is an eviction. I'll give you an example. One LCD client withheld her rent for several months due to significant plumbing issues in her home. Her landlord took her to court for the sole reason of not paying her rent. She lived there for almost 15 years. And despite having saved the money, she withheld the money and she agreed to pay the landlord back in an amount that was found to be fair by the judge. Her landlord still insisted on moving forward with the eviction. In that case the judge did allow it and she was ordered evicted out of her home. That tenant followed the law to the letter as it exists in Philadelphia and it failed to protect her from eviction.

Another LCD client experienced flooding, including sewage, after her landlord failed to properly address plumbing issues. She called L&I. L&I came out. They issued numerous violations and they indeed found the property unfit for habitation. However, at the time of trial the violations were open for more than four months and the landlord's rental license was still active. The law currently does not let a judge evict a tenant if a rental license does not exist or if it's inactive, and they also don't let a judge award any money for back rent if that's the case. However, in this case, despite the property having violations that were open for four months and the property was deemed unfit, the active license allowed the judge to still award the landlord money and grant the eviction. At trial, she was found liable for the back rent and she was found evicted. If a tenant can't take the risk of going in front of the judge -- which sometimes you win, sometimes you lose -- they will need to make a binding agreement with their landlord to resolve the case. In my experience, and I think a lot of tenant advocates would say the same, most landlords will never agree to make repairs a part of that agreement. So this puts tenants in the position of either making agreements to stay in the property with no promises of repairs or agreeing to move out of the property on a timeline that the landlord has to agree to. This was the exact situation faced by another LCD client. She has a number of disabilities, including spinal cord injury, several mental health diagnoses and an autoimmune disorder. She lived in a subsidized unit but with significant repair issues, including mold, flooding, leaks and periods of no heat. However, because she was on a fixed income because of her disability, she couldn't take the risk of possibly losing her subsidized unit by taking her case to trial, as happened in my earlier examples. Her landlord also would not sign any agreements that included repairs so she was faced with possibly becoming homeless and losing her subsidized unit in front of a judge. So she signed an agreement that allowed her to stay in the home while making ongoing rent payments, plus a small amount towards her arrears. After the case was over, her landlord still refused to repair the issues and she continued to live with mold, clogged sinks, broken lights and problems with her electrical sockets. At that point, she decided to withhold her arrears while still paying her ongoing rent. However, her landlord took her back to court because she was now in breach of her agreement, and there a judge found that she should still be evicted because she withheld money under the agreement. And in the end, she lost her subsidy and she was evicted. Habitability issues are also really challenging to present in court once you get to that point because sometimes they just don't photograph well. For example, how do you adequately show that there's no heat in your property, that there's no hot water, that mold is affecting your breathing every day? How do you show a judge the experience of not knowing if your toilet is going to flush every time you use it, that your electricity is going out, it's spoiling your insulin and the food that you just bought? How can you show that your floors are warping, making it hard or impossible to get around your unit with a walker? These are just a few examples of the conditions that renters have come to us with. Sometimes a tenant's testimony can be supported though with L&I reports. But what you need is a judge to accept those things into evidence. So again, there's another obstacle. We check Atlas, which is the City's website for L&I reports, but those reports are not always uploaded there. If those reports are not available, then we will go there in person to L&I to try to get the reports. However, we're often rebuffed because as attorneys, we are not the property owner so they will not release those to us.

Another option is to subpoena an L&I inspector to come to court and testify. But in Municipal Court, where most evictions cases are filed and tenants are sometimes representing themselves, subpoenaing an L&I inspector is an additional hurdle to prove their case in front of a judge. The bottom line is once a complaining tenant gets to court, they're already finding themselves at a disadvantage. They've already gotten through all of the -- they're experiencing the retaliation in realtime. The current law that we have and the remedies that we have, they all really fall short in adequately protecting renters and they are some of the most vulnerable in our population. Renters are in a situation where exercising their rights may directly result in an eviction and many people continue to pay rent while living in unsafe conditions because the risk of complaining is just way too high. Philadelphia has made great progress in recognizing that housing is a human right and that keeping people in safe and affordable housing is a priority. We fully support this Joint Committee conducting these hearings and taking action. Unresponsive landlords can act with impunity if they're not held accountable by the current system. While tenants can try to exercise their rights, they still stand to lose more by complaining than their landlord stands to lose by not being responsive. And Councilmember O'Rourke mentioned earlier the power dynamic. It's a very real and unbalanced power dynamic and we're working towards making it more balanced, but it still remains imbalanced. It is crucial for our city to invest further into L&I and take other measures to keep landlords accountable, ideally before we get to the actual court filing and the eviction process. That is absolutely crucial. Investment is essential to protect vulnerable Philadelphians. Thank you and I'm open for any questions. )

Thank you so much for your testimony and for your great work at LCD. I saw our L&I staff react when you mentioned that you couldn't find the reports online. I'm assuming that that's something they're going to want to connect with you on offline. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Yes. Good morning. Actually, we're maybe at noon. Good afternoon. Are we close -- we're still morning. Good morning. I want to start by thanking Councilmembers Gauthier and Driscoll for chairing these committees and for holding these hearings today, and thank you to everyone on Council for being here and for your time and attention. I'm Dr. Katharine Nelson. I am the Assistant Director for Housing at the Center for Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity or CLiME based out of Rutgers Law School. I'm also an almost now 20-year resident of Philadelphia. And so, I've spent most of that time researching and thinking about housing and affordability here in Philadelphia and I'm drawing directly on that research in my comments here today. I'm here to testify about the state of rental housing conditions in our city and to ask you to take urgent action to proactively address worsening conditions for the safety and well- being of our residents. Philadelphia is blessed with a large but old housing stock. The median age of a home in Philadelphia is 75 years, so that means half of the buildings in this city are more than 75 years old. Half are newer. Older housing creates challenges, which we've talked about today and which I'll get to in a moment, but I want to start with this: Older housing is naturally-occurring affordable housing. The concept of filtering is one of the oldest and most widely-accepted concepts of housing economics. And it's this essentially, right: When homes are brand new, they command the highest prices and the highest rents. As they age and they deteriorate over time, they become more affordable as they get older. And therefore, in a healthy housing market, older buildings serve a crucial role housing lower-income populations. In Philadelphia, the median affordable home is about 33 years older than a more expensive home. So while we're focused today on the challenges of the City's housing quality, I ask you to also think about home repair and proactive rental enforcement as something that not just brings challenge but also brings opportunity for creating greater affordability in our city. (Applause.)

Our ability to leverage our housing stock of older homes for our lower-income residents requires that aging buildings receive necessary maintenance and upgrades. Here's what we know: Roughly 41% of Philadelphia renters live in homes that are in need of repairs. The repairs vary in scale and cost, but the average is roughly $3,000 per housing unit. Poor housing conditions include leaks, exposed electrical systems, insufficient heating and cooling systems, lead paint, mold, asbestos and pest infestations. And these substandard housing conditions are linked to a wide range of serious health concerns. This means poor rental housing is a public health problem. (Applause.)

Health conditions include respiratory infections, asthma, lead poisoning and physical injuries. We've heard directly from several I think eloquent voices telling the stories of real people to this effect. Water leaks lead to mold growth. This affects respiratory health. This can lead to asthma, to coughing, to wheezing. Cold indoor conditions are associated with higher blood pressure, respiratory conditions and depression. Substandard housing also is related to mental health, contributing to depression, anxiety and chronic stress and concentrations of substandard housing. Meaning, substandard housing units concentrated in a particular block or a particular neighborhood have been associated with higher rates of homicide and suicide at the community level. These health dangers impact everyone, but children, seniors and those with disabilities are particularly vulnerable as we just heard from Sherry Thomas, right. Seniors are more likely to experience life-altering accidents from falls. Children are particularly prone to developing chronic conditions. More than 40% of the risk of childhood asthma is attributable to exposure in the home. And here in Philly, 1 in 5 children has asthma, which is more than double the national rate. The need for repairs is not born equally. Low-income renters are most likely to live in homes with habitability issues. Three out of five low-income renter households with repair needs are headed by single women, almost half our households with children. The importance of responding to this connection is acute in Philadelphia. We are a high- poverty city with poor health outcomes. We have lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than the national average. So what can we do about this? The Federal Reserve estimates that the cost to repair all rental units in the Philadelphia area is about $900 million. We're never going to repair this all at once, but we are in a moment where the Mayor is introducing an $800 million housing investment that if we are strategic and smart about, could potentially put a large dent in that dollar figure. Two other promising options, which we've already heard a lot about today and which I think I encourage us to think about collectively, are, one, proactive inspections and, second, home repair programs working with and targeted to landlords. We just heard very eloquently from Ms. Mulbry about the incredible Rental Improvement Fund here in Philadelphia that sounds very promising and scalable. So I'll focus the remainder of my comments on proactive inspection which, as we've heard today, means inspecting units periodically and cycling through every unit in the city every certain number of years. Philadelphia currently relies on a complaint-driven system. Meaning, only those units where a complaint is lodged directly by a tenant or a neighbor is inspected. Complaint-driven systems are much less effective than proactive systems at inducing regular upkeep. Since landlords know everything is complaint- driven, tenants are often afraid to report habitability issues for fear of landlord reprisal and eviction, as we have heard today. Very often housing conditions therefore seriously deteriorate before the complaints are made and this leads to more costly repairs, it leads to more of our units becoming uninhabitable and it makes it harder for the City to understand the true magnitude of the repair problem and respond accordingly. Philadelphia has just 14 housing inspectors for the whole 15 city. And with such limited 16 resources, it is almost certainly 17 impossible to cycle through all the 18 rental units in the city on a 19 regular basis. But even a targeted proactive approach could be very impactful.

Inspectors could target particular landlords with a history of repairs, target particular parts of the city with concentrated repair needs and some portion of funds might go towards relocation funding for displaced tenants, while more serious repairs are required or when buildings are condemned. )

With my ending comments, I just want to remind the City about our Landmark Home Repair Program for low-income homeowners, the Basic Systems Home Repair Program or BSRP. It's been around for years. It's among 16 the oldest in the country and it is 17 absolutely a national model that 18 cities all over the country are 19 looking at. 20 We've just heard our Rental Improvement Fund is maybe on the way to doing something similar for renters. And I encourage you to take seriously today's challenge to protect the health and safety of our vulnerable Philadelphia renters by thinking about how we can intentionally and proactively shift to proactive inspections as a central plank in our response to the need. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Thank you so much for your testimony and your work. Ms. Cruz, good morning -- good afternoon.

Good afternoon now.

Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

My name is Daisy Cruz and I'm the District Leader for SEIU 32BJ, the MidAtlantic 1201 District. We represent over 10,000 members who work and live in Philadelphia. We represent a wide range of workers, from janitors to security officers, airport workers, bus drivers, bus aides and building and maintenance engineers. For many of them, being in a union has allowed them to have stable long-term incomes. Many of our members have been able to purchase homes or secure stable housing. However, the relentless rise in the living cost has made the dream of home ownership increasingly elusive for many. We often hear stories from our members who are forced to now rent, unable to afford a home of their own. We believe that it should be a privilege to live in Philadelphia that only the wealth can afford -- the wealthy can afford. (Applause.)

Our members are the heart and soul of the city. And as they work to keep it clean, running and safe, they deserve the chance to live in the city that they care deeply about and not have to completely break their bank to do so. People used to be able to afford reasonable spaces in reasonable neighborhoods, but they aren't affordable anymore. People who used to be able to afford their own apartments now have to have multiple roommates or rent rooms and houses where they are sharing common areas with strangers. Regrettably, the lack of better housing options has left our members vulnerable to exploitation by untrustworthy landlords who take advantage of their desperate need for shelter. Many small and pop owners are doing their best to recover from the economic effects of the pandemic. Those landlords are dealing with the struggles of regular folks and are often willing to work with their tenants. The bigger issue tends to be from larger companies that increase rents whenever possible, threaten evictions and often let critical repairs go neglected for long periods of time. Rental issues are quality-of-life issues. Housing instability is a significant hurdle to the physical and mental well- being of our community's residents. We've heard stories from new members trying to make it through probationary periods while in between housing to more tenured members who fall on hard times and struggle to maintain their employment while facing evictions. The instability makes already difficult situations all the more challenging. We're not a housing or rental organization aid, but we clearly care deeply about our members' stability -- disability of our members. We fight constantly to improve the quality of life in and around the city of Philadelphia and we want nothing more to see improvements in the state of the rental market in Philadelphia. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you so much for your testimony and for everything that your members do to keep the city moving. I want to talk more with the Administration about this, but I know that they're working with Pew, they're putting their pilot together. But I also wanted to ask you all about the issue of displacement. We know that increased inspections will likely lead to more housing being declared unlivable, leaving the occupants with potentially nowhere to live. I heard you talk about this briefly, but I wanted to know if the panelists could expound on possible solutions to displacement resulting from proactive inspections?

So what I suggested in my testimony and I think this is the best way that I can suggest we think about it is putting together some sort of a fund for those cases where this happens, where buildings are condemned or where the inspections that are needed require that a tenant vacate. Obviously, this is not a perfect solution, but it is what I can suggest. I guess the other -I mean, the point that I want to tack on to that is that proactive inspections are intended to try and help us get at these problems before they deteriorate, right. And so, I know it doesn't change the fact that, yes, as we switch to proactive inspections, we are very likely going to see some of this and are going to have to come up with solutions for it. But I think in the broader term this is the switch that helps us avoid more of the -- avoid so many of these cases where it becomes deteriorated to the point of uninhabitability.

Ms. Thomas, did you want to add?

I do. So I had a case where this is exactly what happened. A tenant was living in a rooming house. The conditions were deteriorating over time and over time many of her -- the other occupants had moved out. The landlord, we took him to court. He said, I don't have the money to fix any of these things, these problems are really much bigger than I can fix. And the tenant had called L&I and of course because of the safety issues, she ended up having to leave. On both sides it was a money issue, right. There was on the landlord side, I don't have enough to deal with this large problem, which may have been a small problem that just wasn't dealt with in the first place. And on the tenant side, she was on a fixed income. She was using all of her available funds to make up for not having electricity, for not having running water, and that was a true tragedy in the modern world. We live in a city. No one should not be living with no electricity and no running water, but she had used up all of her money to do that. So when it came time to move, she didn't have any funding and we had to cobble together funds for her, right. And there just wasn't a good solution for this person and it was a financial issue. And so, that's all I want to add.

So potentially having a displacement fund for tenants but also maybe marrying the Rental Improvement Fund to these inspections, right, so that we can help at least the small landlords to carry out repairs. Thank you so much for your for your thoughts on that. Vice-Chair Landau.

Yeah. Thank you. I too was curious about any ideas you have in all of our legal systems that are not working and what can be fixed. But I want to pose one in particular. Many, many years ago the City of Philadelphia would affirmatively go out and fix very dangerous problems of landlords and then charge the landlord. We've been talking about that a lot now and it seems that the City and other entities, no one really wants to take responsibility for that repair anymore. So my entire boiler is broken, there's no heat. It wasn't too long ago that the City would send out repair people, fix that, get you a new heater and then just send a bill to a landlord and go collect on it. Now, they don't want to do that repair issue. Are there any thoughts that you have on that? And also, especially if you have research that you've done in other areas of where that works, because I see the fund we're talking about to also have this emergency repair arm to it so we can take care of the biggest safety and health issues immediately?

I mean if we can do it, we should do it, right. (Applause.)

I don't -- yeah. I mean, we've now heard from multiple panelists about loans that are available and different financial options. I think one of the things that we see with our population is it's a lack of accountability or just being able to move forward with impunity, you know. And so, I do think that if that is an option, we can do that along with connecting people to the correct resources. It can't just exist in a vacuum. The resources have to be available and people need to know about them in order to take advantage of them.

Anybody else want to -- I think the silence means they want us to figure that out. But did anybody else want to weigh in on that?

I do have a comment. We had a member who -- I can't remember exactly how the whole situation was. We're not a rental aid, right, but our members come to us looking for resources and we try to point them in every direction that we can. But I remember a member specifically. There was a plumbing issue I guess in the city, like on their sidewalk or whatever. Of course, they were not the owner. But I guess the -- which I was not aware until this whole situation happened, but the City of Philadelphia, I guess the Water Department, has some type of program that the landlord was able to apply and then get some type of, I don't know, low interest or no 10 interest loan to get the repairs done, and that's how the member was able to get those repairs done. But the landlord had to apply. It was either no 15 interest or low interest for, I don't know, it was a year, three years, but the repairs got done, right. There was a serious plumbing issue in her home and it was connecting of course, but she wasn't responsible for it. The landlord was. So that was something that we learned about, and that's something that we can share with other people. But having those type of programs -- I hear what you're saying, the City of Philadelphia doesn't want to be responsible -- but having those resources or those small loans or easy loans that landlords could actually get.

Point of information. Councilmember Jones actually did create a law for emergency repairs, but I believe the issue is funding it, right, making sure that there's funding for that program and also making sure that it lives in the right department. Those are things that still need to be figured out, but things that we should work on.

Just to throw out one more thing -- I'm not a lawyer so I can't really speak directly to it, to that piece -- but we heard that the Public Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data shows not very many loans happening for small landlords. And I have looked at this data a bit enough to see that denial rates are sky high, right. And I hesitate to throw a number out because it's been too long, but I want to say like more than 50% are denied. And so, I think that is something to look at. Why are these denials happening, it has something to do with the underwriting and the crediting so I think it's about having conversations with our local banks and our local financial companies around what are strategies that we can use to make these loans more readily accessible and available.

One more question for Sherry Thomas, Legal Clinic for the Disabled. When L&I comes out to a unit where there's somebody with a disability who lives there, say, it's a physical disability where there's a ramp out front and that ramp is in disrepair or broken, is there a place on L&I's code enforcement where they can specifically comment and delineate that there's a broken ramp where it wouldn't be for most of the properties throughout Philadelphia but in this specific property there is?

I have not seen it. I can't say for sure that that doesn't exist in the code enforcement, but it's not a code violation that I've seen specific to disability.

Thank you.

Thank you. I'd like to acknowledge the presence of the Honorable Judge Samantha Williams somewhere in this room. No waves hi? JUDGE WILLIAMS: (Hand gesture).

Who is also my sister and worked on a lot of these issues as a staffer in City Council. Chair Driscoll.

And, Daisy, thank you for your advocacy. Katharine, the same. Sherry, just to get back to that case you were talking about, when the landlord doesn't have the ability to fix, does their rental license get revoked by the court or does that go back to L&I for action?

That would be an L&I action. What we could do in court are things like injunctions, right, where we'll file a lawsuit trying to implore the landlord, basically get a judge's order to tell the landlord to fix something. In this particular case we didn't find out the landlord was in financial need until we actually got to the court case and he was questioned by the judge. Yeah, so that would be an L&I action.

I see.

There is something in the code right now that says if there's a violation that is threatening the safety and habitability of the renter, if that violation stays open for more than 30 days, we can ask the court to invalidate the license, but that leaves it pretty much up to the judge, right. It's discretionary. And depending on who's on the bench, you just don't know how that outcome will be. So what I would like to see is that there would be a proactive invalidation or a pulling of licenses for specific violations, right. If something's found to be hazardous, unsafe, unfit, then that license should be at risk, right. (Applause.)

And instead of getting to the point where you're in court and now the tenant is on their back foot trying to defend. And it's kind of a lottery. You just don't know how the court will actually enforce that provision in that law.

I think during this budget process we need to talk to L&I about making that a policy. So thank you for highlighting that. (Applause.)

Councilmember O'Rourke.

Thank you, Member Landau. Just on that point around the displacement fund, our team is actually actively working on legislative legislation related to that and the idea being recouping the costs from the violating landlords with penalties, liens, what have you. And we welcome any support on that matter too because we do want to address that piece and recognizing that this effort to try to proactively address this could also cause displacement, I think they ought to be the ones to pay for it. That haven't been said though, Ms. Thomas, can you clarify the law around withholding escrow process for us? As a tenant when do you have to escrow and when do you not?

Okay. So the law around this, it's not statutory, it's case law in Pennsylvania, which basically means that there was a case several decades ago and now the court is bound by that law. So the process is a tenant can withhold their rent. It is their legal right. They should notify their landlord that they're intending to do that. Well, first, they should notify their landlord about the repairs, give them a reasonable amount of time to make the repair. The law does not define what reasonable is, so it does depend on probably the severity of the violation. So if it's the dead of winter and I have no heat, right, a reasonable time to repair that should be immediately, right. So depending on that -- so you want to notify your landlord first that there is a repair outstanding, give them reasonable time to repair and then you withhold your rent. The law actually does not require that it be in an escrow account specifically. I know that some banks do not have escrow accounts that their customers can open, but what it does require is that you set that aside so that when you come into court and a judge asks you where is the money that you've withheld, because I think the court does not want it to become an excuse for just not paying rent, right. So they want to see that you've actually withheld that money and that if the court decides, okay, you don't owe 100% of your rent but you owe 50% of your rent, you are then supposed to have the ability to pay that 50% and then avoid the eviction. That's not how it always plays out. And what we often find is that folks who are dealing with really severe habitability issues, they'll start withholding their rent but then they need to use some of that money to buy heaters, blankets, water. There's so many things that people do to make the place habitable because their landlord isn't fixing it, and all of those things cost money. So you're not always walking into court with 100% of your money. And again, depending on the judge, right, if you're short, that can be a point against you. If you don't have the money withheld, then that's also a point against you, right. So the more we can do to prevent people from getting to that point, we should. The withholding rent, it's a longstanding law in Pennsylvania, but the way it plays out it doesn't sufficiently protect renters because they're still at a very high risk of ending up losing their home. And sometimes that money also goes away if the conditions are so unbearable that they've now spent it to move out, but their landlord is still asking for the rent that they weren't paying while they were still there. So you walk into court, you've now used all of your money that you withheld to move out to a safer property, but then legally your landlord is still asking you for the back rent.

Seems really complicated.

Yeah.

What critical information for your work is not available on Atlas? As far as I understand, we have some Atlas experts here today who are working hard on updates. We'd love to help inform their work with your tenant experiences. So if you could share what it is that's not there so we can help inform that, that would be super helpful.

So there are reports available on Atlas. So when you pull up Atlas, it will first take you to a screen where it will show you what parts of the code the violations exist in. If you click on that, you can see the code itself. If there's a report, the report will tell you what fines the landlord has actually been fined by L&I and also details about what unit in the building the violations were found in. I was referring to that those reports are not always there for every address. So we have found that over the past one, two, three years, a lot of those reports are showing up, but they're not showing up for some of the older, older violations. And so, in that case we'll try to go in person to L&I and try to pick those up.

But the reports are currently sufficient. There's nothing missing there that needs to be added in?

If the reports are there, yes.

Okay.

So the thing I was referring to that is missing is sometimes the report itself isn't there. But if the report is there, it has the information that we need that we can then submit into evidence.

Okay. And this is for everybody on the panel. Good to see you, Daisy, by the way. Blessings to you. I'm very interested in government transparency and accountability. I would hope that we would all be interested in those things. What would you all recommend that we change or update about our public and accessible data to support tenants and the work that you all are doing? Take a couple seconds to process that for a minute.

While they're processing, I'll put out there I think a problem that is known, which is that the use of LLCs and other names in place of actual humans who control -- (Applause.)

-- rental companies and who are landlords. Now, the City I know in 2018, 2019 passed a law that required that business licenses have the actual name of a human being connected to it. But if you go and you, for example, want to learn about who owns a unit in, say, the rental license directory or something like that, you do not necessarily have the human name present there, and the amount of work that it takes to then figure out, okay, that unit is connected to this LLC and then I go to this database and I figure out this LLC's -- it's too many steps removed. As someone who does a lot of data work, it's a lot of work for me, much, much, much too much for a normal human. So figuring out how to make the ownership information more readily accessible to tenants would be high on my list. (Applause.)

Yes, I will second that. One of the things that we need to -- one of the ways we try to hold landlords accountable is by filing lawsuits. And if we don't have good information about where to serve that lawsuit and where to find that landlord, then the case is dead before it even starts. And a lot of tenants do come in and they'll say, I don't know who I'm paying my rent to. I now have to pay rent into a portal. The portal isn't updated. I don't have a ledger that I can look at. And we'll ask them, okay, we want to contact your landlord. Well, I texted some guy, I don't know who that is. The ownership switched at some point and I'm not sure who I'm paying my money to. So it's a lot of work. I appreciate it's a lot of work for you and it's a lot of work for us to try to figure some of that out.

It's a lot of work for us to try to find these people. Were you going to add anything?

I think for us I would just say -- did Lance leave, no, he's still here. But it's just if I think about it, just to having easier access to information. Like I joked with you this morning that I heard on the news about 988. I had never heard about it. I mean, we're here all the time. We're working with City Council all the time, but it's just putting things out, easier access, but also just promoting a lot of things that people just don't know about.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Councilmember Phillips.

Hi. I just have three quick questions. Thank you all for your testimony and availability for this very important discussion. This is for Sherry Thomas. Should Philadelphians consider third-party inspections or require landlords to submit evidence of repairs before an eviction judgment is issued? Because I know you talked about things don't photo well, so I'm just thinking about that as a solution.

Yeah. I think the more information that a judge can have to make a decision the better. I think the problem with the photographing and habitability issues is that it sometimes will come down to credibility, right. If the tenant doesn't have pictures and reports and inspections, then it turns into he said, she said we're weighing and that could be very subjective.

Yeah. And if they just took photos of the repairs themselves and proved it or receipts showing that would be helpful. And then also, Dr. Nelson, you mentioned that 41% of Philly renters live in homes needing repairs. Do we have data on how many of those repairs have been successfully completed through existing enforcement mechanisms?

Not that I know of, no. Those are estimates that were used or that were created essentially using public data and some proprietary data about cost, but there's no information there about the number of repairs that have been made unfortunately. Having said that, the Federal Reserve Bank that did the original estimates, as I understand it, is working on a report right now that updates them.

And you also mentioned that Philadelphia has housing 6 inspectors? 7

Yes. 8

9 What would be a realistic staffing 10 level from your standpoint to 11 implement a meaningful proactive 12 inspection program? 13

I say this 14 with a little bit of hesitancy 15 because I've only sort of looked at 16 comparison cities, but in listening 17 to the gentleman from D.C. today it 18 sounded like they were about 40, 19 which is about twice the number here. That would be the ballpark that I would start with, although I'm happy to think more seriously about that and give you a more detailed response.

Well, again thank you all so much for your testimonies today. And I believe our Council is going to really work on this. Thank you.

Thank you all for your testimony and for your very important work. We appreciate you. (Applause.)

Will the Clerk please call the next panel of witnesses to testify.

Tyreece Rogers, Janet White, Shawmar Pitts, Theresa Howell. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Good afternoon. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. Whomever wants to go first.

Hello. My name is Janet White. I am a member of Philly Thrive and a resident of District 8, and I'm also a former nurse and home health aide. I live at Magnolia Mews in Germantown. I moved in an apartment in 2018. Over the past seven years, I have experienced multiple instances of poor maintenance and unsafe conditions. When I -- I need my glasses on. I'm sorry. When I moved in, there were cracks in the windowsill. These cracks let in ants and cockroaches. I even had rodents running around apartment. I also had water damage both in the ceilings and in the floors. My bathroom ceiling had a hole in it because of leaking water and my floors are warped because of water damage from below. I even had holes in some of my walls. Now, throughout this past seven years despite these unlivable conditions, I continued to pay my rent on time and put in maintenance and requests after -- after maintenance request and after maintenance request. Finally, after not having heat an entire winter, I was fed up. After four years of living like this in 2021, I called L&I. Next thing, you know an eviction process was started against me as retaliation. In 2022, one day I came back to my house and I was locked out. I was evicted. Me, my mom and my granddaughter, we were all displaced. I had to stay with one of my sisters and was couch- surfing. My 84-year-old mom had to stay with another one of my sisters. And my granddaughter, she was 21, and at that time had long struggle with mental health challenges and being displaced was very hard for her. She didn't want to stay anywhere else besides her own home. She was sleeping in parks and I was afraid she might be sex trafficking and everything. Man, I was scared. Oh God. She eventually ended up in incarceration instead of being able to sleep in her own home, all because I stood up for myself and called L&I to hold my landlord accountable. My family suffered significant mental and emotional effects in not having a safe home and resulting in retaliation. In 2023, my eviction proceeding went to court and with the help of Philly Thrive and CLS, we won. (Applause.)

I was able to go back in my apartment and L&I came to make an inspection. It took two years, two years and an eviction for L&I to come to my apartment to hold my corporate landlord accountable. That's not right. When L&I finally came, they cited my landlord with 10, I mean not 1, but violations. My 9 landlord did fix some of them, 10 including the heat. But however, over a year, and I'm still there -- yes, I'm still there -- and my landlord still hasn't fixed every violation he supposed to fix or she supposed to fix or whoever the people is, and L&I has not followed up. They didn't come back yet. I'm still waiting. We need more funding for L&I rental inspectors to hold corporate landlords accountable. My family suffered from terrible conditions and displacement. It should not take two years in an eviction proceeding for L&I to do their job. We need more rental inspectors. And not only that, L&I should inspect rental units before people move in so that these issues can be prevented. (Applause.)

I hope that this City Council will act in support, but thank you. Thank you for allowing me to share my story, and I hope that you would do the right thing and support low-income renters. (Applause.)

Thank you so much. I'm so sorry that you and your family had that experience, but I'm happy that you were victorious it's our job to make sure that that never happens to another tenant. So thank you so much. Good afternoon. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Good morning. My name is Tyreece Rogers and thank you all for letting us testify. Thank you. I'm a member of -- like I said, my name is Tyreece Rogers. I live in Lawndale and I'm one of the fortunate members of OnePA Renters United. I don't have the issues that a lot of other people have. I've become the spokesperson. So anyway, I don't have the best-looking common areas thanks to some of the people that live there, not a landlord issue, and I have a slight mouse problem. Like I said, I can't say the same thing for those that are in my group. For all those who do not know, without L&I inspecting our apartments and homes, a grave housing safety crisis has become a part of our city. However, due to work or illness, some people that I'm going to speak on, just a few, are not here so I will briefly address some of their issues, such as turning my few mice into a full-grown infestation of roaches that Lori, a fine speaker who cannot be here today, keeps complaining about. But she still has the same situation after repeatedly talking to her land owner about this again and again and again. Like I said, I'm so glad that when I moved back into Philadelphia, I was still (inaudible), but now, I have my own place. I did not move into an Odin property, and their properties are over most of Philadelphia. Let's talk about having outdoor rodents, so like squirrels and raccoons inviting themselves into your dwelling just because they can. Another one of our members who was out here maybe a few weeks ago, Eden, reported this to her landlord, but she only heard the sound of laughter instead of anything to remedy her situation. And then during the heart of winter, she called L&I about not having any heat, only to be told that no one could come out. Perhaps we should speak about mold and mildew that are in some of the Odin properties -- I had to say their name again -- that are all over our city. Some of these situations are so severe that one of my acquaintances living in one of these dwellings has developed a respiratory issue, to say the least. Another one of our members, Ida, which is why I changed my speech just a little bit, she complained about not having any hot water running in her unit from 7:00 a.m. to just below -- to just -- I'm sorry, from 7:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. She had no 6 warning about this either. That blatant disregard for how people live their lives, that does not sound like a reason to increase any rent. So unless you live in an industrial-style apartment, no one wants to see pipes from an exposed ceiling. But some do get to view that because their ceilings have collapsed. Keep in mind, all do not possess the income necessary to move into a better residence. And without proper inspection starting before you move in there, people will be here with the same issues. Everybody does not make that median income, which I've heard about over and over, to try to make a better condition for themselves. Why is it that our City's L&I fails to hold landlords accountable? In the middle of winter, why can't they respond to heat being shut off for hundreds of Philadelphians? Others are here with discrepancies with their living situation, so what's wrong with proactive inspections? Let's nip this in the bud before it starts. This brings us to our collective issue, awarding $10 million to be added to L&I's budget for proactive inspections. Look at the room here -- well, there's not that many people, but no one here expects to live in such conditions, nobody. So wouldn't it be great for Philadelphia if there was an L&I that actually worked for its citizens? Okay. (Applause.)

And as the speaker for my group, OnePA Renters United and Philly Thrive -- these are all my people -- I will continue to speak on their situation so that they can have at least a safe, healthy home such as I have. Not the best place, but it's livable.

Thank you so much. Are you done your --

Oh, wait. Just a little bit more.

Oh, go ahead. You got it.

We are thankful. We are thankful to all you Councilmembers who are here with us today and we implore you to say to support safe, healthy housing for all. Okay. And I thank you. That's it. (Applause.)

Thank you so much. You're a great spokesperson. And I also wanted to say obviously Renters United is a very strong advocacy organization. But while we work on this proactive rental inspection program, if you all have open items for L&I from your members, feel free to submit them to the Committee because we will help you press on those issues and get responses. (Applause.)

Thank you.

Mr. Pitts, good to see you.

Yes. Good morning.

Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Yes, ma'am. My name is Shawmar Pitts, and I'm the Co-managing Director at Philly Thrive and a lifelong resident of District 2. And before I was at Philly Thrive, I had multitudes of jobs, right, always had a job. And one of my jobs I worked with a contractor as an apprentice, carpentry apprentice, right. And the name of our company was First Class Renovations. And boy, he used to work me hard, right. But we used to go from a gut-out to a showroom finish. And Ms. Janet right here sitting next to me, one of the many low-income people from my community that I know and that experience unsafe and unhealthy rental conditions, which is just a shame, and I also know Ms. Janet's sister. And we know that this past summer, this was one of the hottest summers that we've had in a long time. And I just remember her sister living in an apartment that was without electricity during those hot summer months, right, and that was just terrible. And then I have another friend of mine whose name is Maria, she's also here in attendance. She was out of hot water for so long, it's a shame. She's been without hot water for over a year and a half. And these landlords are not held accountable for these things. But guess what? They want their money. They want their money. You better have it. That's what they want. They want their money. And I also know of a young lady from our community, her name is Rashida and she couldn't be here today because she has a small newborn. And in the house that she lives in right now she has electrical fire hazards. And when she reported this to L&I, the landlord retaliated and wanted to get her evicted because of the electrical problems that's in the property that she owns. She wanted her to be evicted. Her children are not even able to take a bath in the house because the tub is broken. Unsafe rental conditions, especially for low-income renters are widespread and a major problem throughout our city. But me being a contractor or working for a contractor before, I know there's a different way, and there's a different way possible because I've seen it. My sister who is a small landlord, she owns two properties. She's a responsible landlord and wants her tenants to live in healthy conditions. So since I used to work with this contractor, she hired us to work on one of her properties. She purchased it and we started working on it and we were going to make this compliant for Section 8. We wanted to help low-income renters, so we made sure that we was going to be compliant so that a Section 8 person would be able to move into this home. And so, we renovated. We put in a new kitchen, a new bathroom, we put in new windows. It was a lot of water damage and things to be done to the house because the person that was living there before under the landlord they were living under, it wasn't repaired. So it was a lot of repairs that had to be done. And we did the repairs. And L&I came out and they inspected and they made sure that every outlet was grounded, and they made sure there were no leaks and they made sure everything was proper. And I just remember the person that moved in when I talked to her, she said I was online looking for a house and I saw this house, I was getting ready to call your phone 3 o'clock in the morning when I saw this house because I just want to move so bad, right. And I was just so happy for her that she was moving into a nice home that was done with love and care. And so, L&I came out and they made sure that this was properly done. She was just so excited when she moved in that it was just a joyous occasion. And this is a success story of what proactive rental inspections from L&I should look like for every person in this city in any house that they live in, in any apartment that they live in. But as we heard from my fellow panelists and the people who have been up here, we know that that's not what's happening.

Low-income tenants have nowhere to turn for support and are forced into unlivable conditions because they can't afford anywhere else whereas small landlords who need financial support to make repairs, they have places like the Rental Improvement Fund for support, even though that needs to be fixed too, because that has problems also. But low-income renters don't even have that to even look out for, right. They don't even have that. They don't have many options for affordable units in the city as it stands anyway, right. It's unlikely that you're going to end up in my sister's property, right, because she only owned two properties. So it's only two, right. Now, you can end up in her property by chance maybe, right, or end up in a corporate landlord building where they're profiting, and making needed repairs is not on the list. They're just out for profit and no 9 one is holding them accountable. And safe and healthy housing should be a guarantee for everyone, not based on your income or by chance. )

This is something that is allowed to happen when we can do something about it. We shouldn't allow these things to take place. It's well within our ability to correct it. And not only that, Philadelphia is behind the other major cities as we seen the brother come on from D.C. and talk about their program. They like years ahead of us in Philadelphia, right. And they have programs that have proactive inspections. And it's a no-brainer and a way to ensure that low-income renters are protected and that they have a safe and healthy home, and we need our city to invest in proactive rental inspections so that every rent unit has a thorough inspection, especially at a time when our federal government is getting rid of protections. We are turning to our City Council to stand up for us and I urge the Committee to support a pilot proactive rental inspection program. And thank you so much for allowing me to testify. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you so much for your work and your advocacy. And if Philly Thrive has recommendations for the Rental Improvement Fund, you can feel free to submit that to the Committee and we'll take that into consideration as we talk about the ongoing life of the program. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony and good afternoon.

My name is Theresa Howell, and I first want to thank all the Councilwomen and the Councilmen that are here listening that care about what renters go through in the city of Philadelphia. So firstly, we want to thank you. My name is Theresa Howell and I'm a proud member of OnePA Renters United of Philadelphia. I'm a renter and a lifelong Philadelphia. I have lived in my current residence for 13 years. I love my community and my neighborhood. I have built long-lasting friendships, relationships in my community. We look out for one another. We watch out for each other's children. Even when we go on vacation, we keep each other's animals. That's just how close we are in that community. However, I am being pushed out of my home for many reasons. My home was built in the 1930s and it has not been updated in almost 100 years, except for the kitchen which I fought and I advocated for. And through organizing with OnePA Renters United, I got a brand new kitchen. (Applause.)

I have been plagued with the need for so many repairs over the years. Each time the landlord Drew DeMarco sent someone to make repairs, it was only a patch job. It's a battle to get repairs from the property manager, and I've been battling for years. Recently I learned my home has an unsafe amount of lead. and a child in my care of contracted lead poisoning from this home, but I was given a lead-safe certificate. Drew DeMarco owns over 500 properties in the City of Philadelphia. So it makes me wonder did he use his own inspectors to cheat with other homes in lead tests as he did mine, because clearly he cheated on my home. Bioenvirnmental came out to do -- after we realized this child had lead, Bioenvironmental came out and did a lead test and it was vastly different from the lead test that Drew DeMarco turned into the City of Philadelphia, vastly different. Oh, and more importantly, do we have the Administration that cares enough for the parents and children living in these homes to find out whether these landlords are cheating on these tests? It's not just lead tests. We don't even have a precedent for mold in this city and children are dying from asthma attacks left and right from the mold content that's in their homes. During my time organizing, I have discovered so many renters are having the same or worse issues that I have. I've had people say to me, why not just move. My answer to that is, it is not that we want to live in horrible conditions but many of us are unable to have a plethora -- we don't have a plethora of opportunities or options. The affordable options that we're usually left with are the predatory property owners that do minimal work on their homes and move us into unsafe conditions. They are only in it to make the most profit with minimal repairs. So I have a question to ask. Since my options are limited and so many other Philadelphians' options are limited because we're on fixed incomes, does that mean that we are entitled to less than people with higher incomes? Do we not deserve safe, healthy homes to raise our children in? Our rent is paid. Our property owners, because we pay our rent, they can afford to send their children to colleges and private schools and things that we afford them to do, and they can't even keep up our properties to keep us healthy and safe. (Applause.)

No one wants to move every couple of years because the house is unsafe. People who rent still like building community which takes years. And then because no one makes the property owner keep up the place, we just have to keep moving and moving and moving. Therefore, we can't build community. We can't get to the child that might be in trouble that we can save from going down the wrong path because we have that ability to do so. But because we are not in the community long enough to build anything with these children because the landlords are so inadequate, this is what we're faced with. So we have more crime in low-income areas because there's nobody there to look out for them because we're too busy trying to stay safe in our homes, you know what I mean. We're trying to keep it where it don't break out in a fire because it's not safe or our home isn't flooded with sewage because no one will come with a snake, with a simple snake and just snake the line. Sometimes that's all it takes. But by the time the landlord get to it, it's at the property line. And now, we have a big sewage problem and we have to move. So I'll ask you a question. Since my options are limited and so many other -- no, that's not where I'm at. Why should I have to leave? Why shouldn't the property owner be made to make my home adequate? If we had a team of code enforcement inspectors that could go into our homes and do a real inspection, make the property owner repair things properly, then we could stay in our homes and we could build that community or continually build that community. The City gives owners a license to rent and I need the City to make that license mean something to protect renters. (Applause.)

The reactive inspection system that L&I currently has is inadequate. We all know that. We've heard that. We have children dying from mold, children dying in fires unnecessarily, people's health suffering. Mine being one, I'm asthmatic. And because I live in a house with lead and mold, I don't need to tell you it's a lot worse. And it's also possibly taken years off of my life. I have grandchildren that I want to see graduate from college. But because I'm living in a home that is inadequate, it probably won't happen if this City doesn't do something to make us important enough to have a healthy, safe home. (Applause.)

We cannot afford to wait for the next child to die. We need our city to be proactive in protecting us by inspecting properties before families move in. That's why we're asking for $10 million in the budget for L&I to implement a pilot program, a pilot inspection program. The $10 million is a drop in the bucket, but it also is a good start. The last thing I want to talk about is retaliation. I had an experience of retaliation for my landlord after I started organizing and speaking out publicly. One morning someone tied a rope from the outside railing of my home to the doorknob of my house literally locking me in my home. I could not open my front door. Immediately I started thinking like, oh, they're trying to burn me out and kill me in this house because I'm speaking out against what I'm going through with this landlord. I literally could not open my front door. I can't prove that it was Drew DeMarco. But I'm here to tell you I live a peaceful life. I'm a person that will help you before I hurt you. Everyone in my community knows me. They know my name, they know my children. We are helpful to one another, so I know no one in my community would do this to me. So it wasn't hard for me to figure out where this came from. He was tired of me talking about him. And I mean, I drug him through the mud at every chance I got. Every time they put a mic in my face I let everyone know, because I told you he has 500 properties. And most of our members that start coming in originally were from the same landlord, which is mine Drew DeMarco. But here I sit at this panel and I'm still talking about it. Because I'm not scared to live in a lead-free home, why should I be scared to speak up about it. So we definitely need legislation to give renters stronger protections against retaliation. Renters should not be afraid to call L&I, afraid of eviction or harassment just because we're asking for our basic human rights to a safe, healthy home. When we look at renters having problems with predatory property owners, think about your mother, your father, your sisters and brothers. Although they may not be experiencing what we're experiencing, we're somebody's mothers and grandmothers that they revere dearly. So please help us stop the predatory practices of these corporate property owners and what they are doing to low-income Black and Brown communities. We need all of City Council to support the safe, healthy homes platform by giving L&I the resources they need to do proactive inspections. Thank you, Councilmembers and panel members, for your time. I really appreciate it. (Applause.)

Thank you so much for your testimony and your advocacy and for sharing your story. I have to admit I was very disturbed to hear about the fake or fraudulent lead certification. I would love to follow up with you after the hearing about that just to learn more and to see what we can do to stop that from happening in the city. Minority Whip O'Rourke, did you want to make a comment?

Just briefly I want to just thank you all for your testimony. It's particularly important I think in these hearings that we prioritize, commonize alongside the experts in the fields that can give you information on data, the lived experience of those tenants, right. I think you all as renters giving the sort of testimony like, hey, I experienced a situation where actual lead certification could perhaps be fraudulent or at least bias for the landlord, I think that's particularly important. Politics is about a contest toward resources to kind of work on a common life together. And so, this sort of information I think is super helpful as we are thinking through how to allocate funding, where money needs to go in order to realize an actual community. Your commentary about having to move all the time or being forced to, all that kind of making community itself unstable, you can't realize it because folks keep moving about, I think that should be heard really clearly that if we want to have a safer city, it does start with creating spaces where community can stay community. (Applause.)

Folks talk often about what about this generation, this generation that, these kids are doing this, they're doing that, what have you. But if you have mothers who are saying, I would love to be a guiding light, I would love to provide some sort of advice or guidance or what have you but I can't because I can't stay here long enough because of the conditions. Thank you for making that point. It's super helpful. And I thank you all for what you've shared today. I think this is one of the best things, one of the most important things I've heard all week. Thank you so much. (Applause.)

Thank you so much.

Real quick before you go I wanted to first of all also thank you. And particularly, Ms. Howell, I've been saying for years how important it is for tenants to also become the fabric of our communities. Nowadays people do not stay in properties for years. They're being pushed out and being forced to move in a much shorter period of time. So our goal is to make sure that people can rent and stay in their communities for longer. Our goal is to make sure that you're not being sold something as is or a sight unseen, that we really can have people moving into safe and healthy homes. Thank you so much. (Applause.)

Thank you.

We are now going to move into public comment. I believe we have about 10 people on the list for public comment. But before we start, I'm going to ask for your help. Everybody coming up for public comment you're going to have two minutes to summarize your testimony. At the end of two minutes, you're going to hear an alarm from our clerk and then that means can you please take a few more seconds just to wrap up. Thank you so much. Clerk, will you please call the first person for public comment.

Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture, Malaika Gilpin and Raymond Huxen. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Good morning. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture. I'm an organizer with the Philadelphia Tenants Union and the Justice for Angel Davis and Latese Bethea Now Campaign. Thanks to Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke, his staff and the entire City Council for this very important hearing, grassroots housing justice organizations, agency heads, elected officials, et cetera must all work together to solve our current housing crisis. First and foremost, we as tenants must organize ourselves to fight back and build our own power. When we vote, we must carefully research candidates to know where they stand on housing issues, being very careful about developers, landlords and how they make campaign donations. L&I is a very important agency and must be given all the resources necessary to build their capacity, hire more inspectors have all the necessary tools to properly do their job to assure the public of safety for housing and other buildings. As a member of the Philadelphia Tenants Union, I sometimes answer hotline calls. Some of those calls include tenants who are concerned about their landlord has never had a license, delay or refusal to make urgent repairs such as mold, cracks and ceiling, et cetera. Even illegal evictions, and it's often the small landlords, the mom-and-pop landlords that are the worst in this regard. And if a landlord and tenant have not gone to court, if a judge has not signed off, then that eviction is illegal. Right now we're facing a tendency among some landlords. They want to threaten tenants with slander, libel or defamation of their character when they are bad landlords, and that infringement of our First Amendment right will not be threatened. We are very glad that the former Landlord Tenant Office of Marisa Shuter no longer exist and we will make sure it does not come back again. Two years ago Angel Davis and Latese Bethea were shot during LTO evictions, and their landlords at that time were the notorious Odin Properties and the Women's Community Revitalization Project, respectively. At the time that Odin Properties had Angel Davis shot, they did not have a license and both these landlords have a large number of evictions. So joining us -- I want you to know that joining us today we have Angel Davis and she would like to thank you all publicly in her own words. Angel.

Good afternoon, everyone. I just want to thank everybody --

Ms. Davis?

Yes.

Thank you so much for being here. Do you think you can start by stating your name for the record.

Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Angel Davis. I would like to thank everybody for letting me be here and speak. Two years ago I was shot on Odin properties by my landlord March 29, 2023. I was shot twice in the head close range by an LTO. At that time, the LTO office was last led by Marisa Shuter and Odin Properties did not have a license as required. This has been a terrible experience for me and my family, but I am thankful to God for my life. I ask the for the continued prayers. I ask the continuous your support please and let's hold bad landlords accountable. Let's make sure what happened to me and Latese never happens again. That's why I won't stop. (Applause.)

Thank you so much. You are not a stranger to these chambers, and it's just been so inspiring to see how courageous you've been with everything that you've been through, continuing to share your story and adding in to all of this advocacy to make sure that people have quality housing. Thank you so, so much. (Applause.)

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Good afternoon. Thank you so much for caring about us and calling us together and hearing our voices, but I have to go fast because I didn't know I had three minutes. But I just, you know --

Please start by stating your name for the record.

Malaika Hart Gilpin and I'm with One Art Community Center. And you all know this, but there is a plague that's ravaging our beloved city, the same one that ravages the country. It's not an illness of the body but an affliction of greed. It moves swiftly consuming neighborhoods, displacing families and seeking to erase the very essence of our communities. Overnight historic homes are reduced to rubble, replaced by towering developments with rental prices so high that the very people of this city can no longer afford to live here. We're here today to discuss landlord-tenant issues, but these are only the symptoms of a deeper disease, profits over people. Under the guise of progress, our communities are being violently torn apart by a system that values wealth over well-being, power over people and unchecked development over dignity. Our City's leadership has embraced rampant development in the name of housing, but I ask who is being housed? Who is being left behind? Families that have lived here for generations who've contributed to the culture, the history, the love, the fabric of Philadelphia, they're being forced out. They're being misplaced, displaced, pushed aside and treated without care. This is not just happening. It's being allowed to happen. Developers, many of whom are not even Philadelphians, hide behind shell companies, tax breaks and zoning loopholes to seize land and build without accountability. This is the City of Brotherly Love, Brotherly and Sisterly Love, and they've tried to bury us under cookie-cutter, cultureless condos. They tried to cover us with evictions, neglect and injustice. They've treated us like dirt. But what they do not realize is that we are the seeds, we are the seeds and these are seeds of love. And so, we ask that you continue to nourish these seeds and pass legislation. I can't list everything, all of our demands, but you're hearing them today. And again, we thank you to be in this with you all. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you for your testimony and for being here today and for the wonderful space, wonderful and loving space that you continue to steward at One Art. We really appreciate you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks to all of you. And will the Clerk please call the next public commenter.

Ray Hudson, Craig Summers, Martha Mosley. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Good afternoon. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony, with your comment.

Craig William Summers, and I'm here on behalf of the Tenants Committee from the Hardy Williams Veterans Apartment Complex in Southwest Philadelphia. We've been going through a lot of situations that shouldn't be happening. A lot of things that should be happening aren't happening. It's supposed to be a senior citizens complex and it's -- like, I was actually at Brith Sholom House before I moved there. And I had moved out of Brith Sholom House because of this. I was part of the Tenant Committee there. And now, I'm part of the Tenant Committee where I'm at now because I thought it was a better place and it's not at all. The mismanagement going on there, the owners of the building really don't know what's happening. It seems like they just don't care about us, and we need change. And, Councilman O'Rourke, you were there when we protested. They retaliated on us by taking the shopping carts from senior citizens that get their groceries out the car. We had two carts and they took the carts away and people were struggling for over two months and still is struggling now because they replaced the two carts with just one cart and it has two handles. It doesn't have a bar in the front to hold on to for people with disabilities to be able to use. It's sad. I have a picture of if you want to see it. But it's deplorable things that are happening there. It's not good. It's not good for anyone. So we just want change and I want to thank everyone for their help, but we need to do a lot more.

Thank you so much, Mr. Summers. I'm so sorry that you would have to go from one --

Situation to another situation.

-- really bad experience to another. This is something that's not uncommon with our subsidized properties unfortunately. A lot of them -- a lot of the owners aren't sort of making the repairs that are necessary. But we want to help with this issue. I know that you're talking with various Councilmembers. I believe that this is in the Council President's District potentially or --

Yes, it is.

Okay. So I just want to make sure that he's also plugged into this issue and we'll do our best to help make this a better situation. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you guys so much for having me. (Applause.)

Will the Clerk please call the next person for public comment.

Maria Yelverton, Rashida Price, Rosa King. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Good afternoon. So good to see you, Rashida. Thank you so much for being here. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your comment.

Good afternoon. Thank you for having us today and hearing us out. My name is Rashida Price. I'm a homeowner and a community leader, a committee person. And I'm here representing OnePA West Southwest Rising, which is an organization that includes both renters and homeowners. I want to thank you all for your ongoing support. I know that you all are staunch advocates for affordable community housing. So I'm here to urge Council to continue to support us in safe and affordable housing for all Philadelphians, particularly low-income and working-class residents. As a former renter, I understand how proactive rental inspections can greatly contribute to ensuring quality of life. That's what I'm really here to promote. Often times renters and homeowners are pitted against one another despite their urgent housing concerns overlapping. There's no new news for you all that we in Philadelphia are facing a housing crisis. Renters live in unsafe conditions which other panelists have detailed, and it's created a public health crisis. Homelessness is rising at an alarming rate due to corporate greed and people being displaced. And big landlords are profiting from low-income Philadelphians' collective misery. (Applause.)

On top of all of that, poorly-maintained properties encourage criminal activity and increases further threats to public safety. So then we're fighting on all these different fronts. And even though I'm a home owner, because there's still rental properties in my community it affects me as well. We at OnePA West Southwest Rising strongly urge Council to join us in supporting the Safe and Healthy Homes Campaign by voting to grant $10 million for proactive rental inspections and $10 million for low-income home repairs. Property maintenance is a form of community investment. Well-kept homes contribute to a safer, more attractive and more prosperous neighborhood for all. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you so much. You're absolutely right on everything you said and the public safety aspect. I just read an article yesterday in The Inquirer that teens are more likely to carry a gun if the surroundings around them are in disrepair. So this affects us in many, many ways. Good afternoon.

Hi.

Thank you so much for being here. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your comment.

Hello. My name is Maria Yelverton and I'm a member of Philly Thrive. I am a District 7 resident. I'm speaking on Resolution 240267. I need to move out of my car and apartment as soon as possible because the conditions, they are unlivable. I have not had hot water for a year and a half. Throughout the winter in order for me to take a warm shower, my daughter has to carry boiling water up a flight of stairs into my bathtub, and this is dangerous. And this is on top of the fact that I continue to pay my rent every month. Why is it that my landlord can get away with these dangerous, unlivable and inhuman conditions and still continue to pay -- make a profit? It is not right. We need L&I to hold corporate landlords accountable to make needed repairs. This is not the first time that I experienced unlivable rental conditions. I remember raising my young kids in a house that was filled with mold. My son suffered significant health challenges, God bless his soul, because of this environment including throat cancer. It is clear we need more rental inspections, but not only that the process for calling L&I should not only be reactive. We need L&I to inspect rental units before people move in so that these issues can be prevented. I hope that the City Council will act in support for that and everyone, including low-income renters like myself, can live in a safe and healthy home. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you for your testimony and for sharing your story. And I'm very sorry to hear about your son. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your comment.

Okay. Thank you very much for having me here, Councilmembers. My name is Rosa King. How are you all? I thank God, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for the opportunity to be here. I am accustomed to being evicted, you know, five times when my children were small -- well, they're grown now with their own children. But where I currently stay I was without heat for three years, from 2013 to 2016. And as a result, I am now severely anemic. I've also been harassed by L&I to get into my house, even though I told them that they can come in with the property managers with the keys because I'm constantly at the doctor's office for my problems of being diabetic Type 2 and severely anemic that causes ongoing symptoms. I just want to say that something does need to be done for low-income tenants. I am in project-based housing, which means my voucher stays to the building. So that if I leave, I will no longer have subsidy. I need the subsidy. I'm on SSI. I do have a work history. I would like to return to work one day, but I have to put my health first. And it's becoming just ludicrous because I should be able to work and not all the time have to take care of health issues because my property is improper condition right now. And so, please consider whatever laws that need to be made. And just so the record shows, I was always evicted the five times by slum landlords that the law said I should have never been evicted from and I was paying my rent. It was like one landlord I didn't pay my rent to. I used the money to send my son to acting school because I was just fed up. Thank you for letting me speak. (Applause.)

Thank you for being here. I'm sorry to hear about everything that you've been going through. Do you still need action from L&I today?

Yes, I still need action from them, but I don't need the harassment. Don't make me feel like an ant under your feet because I said I give you permission to go in with my housing manager in spite of your desperation for court. I don't trust the Department of L&I because you allow me to live without heat for three years. And at the time, my sons were younger. They're grown men now. But I had to send them to live other places while I stayed there to sustain a roof where I was freezing inside more than outside. It doesn't make any sense.

You're right, that's unacceptable. And we're happy to follow up with you after the hearing --

Okay.

-- to get that taken care of. Thank you so much. Thanks to all of you. (Applause.)

Will the Clerk please call the next person for public comment.

Madam Chair, there's no one else on public comment.

Is there anyone else here to testify on this resolution?

(Inaudible). (Witness approached Witness table.)

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Chairwoman as well as other Councilmembers and associates, members of the audience and different groups. I must apologize. I was not ready for this --

That's the first time I ever asked is there anyone else to testify and there was somebody to testify.

I appreciate it. That ain't nothing but God.

Please state your name for the record and proceed with your comments.

Thank you. My name is Cherese L. Kitchens and I don't belong to any particular group, but I'm here on behalf of myself and so many others in the city of Philadelphia as well as all of these groups who have testified. I would like to thank you all for giving me this opportunity to be able to speak because I think that and I may have spoken to you or some of your representatives in the past or sent letters. I'm so sorry what happened to the young lady in the -- I'm so sorry. I cannot remember your last name. However, I remember the incident. And it comes to the point where a lot of these things could have been prevented if the City of Philadelphia or if different administrations follow similar programs that work. In the past, the City of Philadelphia had the Sheriff's Department to do evictions. It's been a long, long time. I don't look as old as I am. However, I did send in a letter to the Housing Director at the time after this young lady's incident and my heart felt for her. However, as far as landlords go and as far as the L&I Department, one who's done inspections under PHFA, Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, I also managed properties with PHA as well and market rent properties, it is imperative that the funding be granted not just for L&I workers itself but they may need an assistant to go along with them out in the field. Now, we're talking about low-income housing, but it just doesn't do that too. I'm in Cindy Bass' District. I was in Curtis Jones' District when something happened to me. I got evicted with the management company manipulating my checks, bringing in the U.S. Treasury because they manipulated it, they processed it, and I still got evicted. I still have a -- what is it, a judgment. Now, when I say did I struggle? I'm disabled. I may not look it because you cannot judge a person by their visual appearance. I live in market rent housing and I basically was harassed beyond being harassed, locked out under a key fob system not being able to get into the building itself. Then these landlords actually offer a concierge service, but then they eliminate them so no one has access, not even L&I. And I believe -- the same organization, which is Montium Management Company, and I lived in a 500-unit building, 250 units on each side. They did not pay any taxes, they did not have a license certificate to operate, but they received funds and continually re-enroll people, then took them to court. A building having 500 units, how do you take 198 people to court? This all happened during the pandemic. The back end of my building looked like a shopping center, because people who moved out just left. To this day some of these same people have judgments against them. I fought mines, but everything has to line up. Every city agency needs to line up going across the board. The City of Philadelphia has to develop a partnership with the state, with the city -- the city, state and federal government regarding housing. We all occupy the same land and something has to be done. That's why if L&I, they said $10 million, another million, make it $11 million or $12 million to ensure that you end up getting -- (Applause.)

-- that you end up getting what is rightfully owed to any and all people in the city of Philadelphia. Now, surprisingly --

And can I ask that you maybe take the next seconds or so and wrap 13 up your comment. 14

Okay. I 15 definitely will. The same things 16 that these people testified to in 17 saying health issues, no one in 18 this room is exempt from it because 19 my building put a new heating 20 system, air-conditioning system, and mold was found inside of them. So when I tell you they're putting them in throughout the city of Philadelphia, all new developments are getting them. But if they're not maintaining them and if they feel as though that they have not gotten any city, state or federal government money, they feel as though that they can do whatever they want to do. And why should they not be able to continue to pay their rental license fees and deny our children a proper education because those fees go to different city services. And I'm just saying, I wrote about this here. They changed it because I said, allow the owners to be responsible for whenever a management company is going to switch over management companies, but the owner needs to be able to hold on to a license until they make that transaction, so no money can slip through the city of Philadelphia in which it has been denied. I'd like to thank you all and thank you again. And I thank God for just allowing me to be here at this moment and be able to give my testimony to you all. Thank you so very much. (Applause.)

Thank you so much. Thank you for making up your mind to speak today and I love your ideas. Thanks so much. So -- oh, there's somebody else. Come on. I didn't know you were on our list. I'm so sorry. (Witness approached Witness table.)

I was not, I was not. I learned about this last minute yesterday. As you know, this is something that we've been following closely at the Urban League of Philadelphia. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Abraham Reyes Pardo. I'm the Vice-president of Housing at the Urban League of Philadelphia. The Urban League of Philadelphia is a civil rights organization that has been around for 108 years. Let me just say that I had something prepared. The testimony today was so powerful that there is very little much more to say. I just want to say that we have assisted thousands of families at this point as a cornerstone partner with the Eviction Diversion Program. In our five years of existence, we have identified a trend that has been shared here many times today, tenants being agreeable to substandard living conditions at the fear of retaliation, a condition that exacerbates as the availability of affordable housing becomes more scarce. For us as housing counselors, we get to contrast this experience with our homebuyers program. And let me just tell you why. In most home-selling transactions, sellers must disclose everything they know regarding the condition of the property. They have to fill out a form that will be reviewed by the buyer and the agent. We go as far as reminding prospective buyers that they must opt into having an inspection of the property and make them sign an affidavit to confirm the information was both provided and received. The realtors enforce this requirement as well as it allows them to negotiate the financial aspect of the transaction. It only makes sense. But in addition to the $10 million, $12 million, $11 million that L&I could potentially be receiving in funding, it only makes sense to incorporate similar procedures for transactions involving rental units. These procedures shall be familiar to many managers, as many of them are also part of the realtor community. We know that because they've been opposing some work on the record sealing side. So we understand that. As the housing industry relies more often on algorithms to make their decisions, we must make sure to close the gap of information with a human approach, whether it's to verify a record for a tenant or the condition for property before someone moves in. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you so much, Abraham. We greatly appreciate the work of the Urban League. Okay. So seeing no one else here to testify on the resolution, this concludes the business of the Joint Committees on Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless and Licenses and Inspections for today. The public hearing on Resolution No. 240267 is recessed to the call of the Chair. Thank you all very much for your attendance and participation. Have a great day. (Joint Committees of Housing, Neighborhood Development and The Homeless and Licenses and Inspections concluded at 1:40 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL