Thank you.
Sorry, Chair. I'm sorry, Chair. Another hand did just go up with the phone number ending at 9216.
Could you please state your name? It's spelled for the court stenographer.
Please state your name.
i think we have to tell them how to unmute oh there hi could you please state your name and
state your name and spell for this stenographer sure priscilla sigler that's p-r-i-s-c-i-l-l-a
s-e-i-g-l-e-r right do you swear or firm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
Yes, sir.
Are you a neighbor?
Yes, I am. Thank you.
Are you in favor of this project?
Yes, I am.
Thank you very much for taking the time to call us. We appreciate it. Is there any other hands?
There are no more hands.
Planning Commission.
Thank you, Chairman, and good morning. David Fechto with the City Planning Commission.
chairman and board members the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the rsa3 single
family zoning at this location the appellant has shown that the proposed personal care home
will have no detrimental impacts to the neighborhood beyond what might be expected
the city planning commission recommends that the board grant a proposed special exception
for a personal care home thank you um mr chair i would also just um reiterate what we spoke about
earlier in the presentation that if you are inclined to do a temporary variance, that the
date that it starts be the date that the applicant receives her license from the commonwealth.
Steve, we've had conversations about that. I'm not sure that we can do that. Hillary?
Yes, Mr. Masters. Unfortunately, there's no mechanism by which the city would be able to
know when she's starting and has all her state licensing in place so i believe that there would
be because because the city is supplying the the the the um clients to her so the city would have
to verify that she has all the state licenses in order to in order to authorize um any young girls
to to you know to to be treated um and cared for by her but i believe that would be a different
department that's not any way tied to the the zoning permit so i i think that'd be a bit
attenuated to assume that that connection would be made right okay steve listen and the board
member and direct questioning asked your client she said she'd be up in six months
yes but we're going to vote okay so i 2023 006 236 5103 north 15th street i vote yes
for a temporary variance that expires 8 8 26. michael johns my vote is just with the same
proviso
Cheryl Gaston
Cheryl Gaston
my vote is yes with proviso
Proulosy Cheryl
Tinetta Graham my vote is yes with proviso
James Snell my vote is yes with proviso
Ishmael Shahid
my vote is yes with proviso
Mr. Masters could you please
stay on
So MI 2023-006-250-1457 Sterling Street. There's a letter of opposition from Take Back Your Neighborhood, and there's a letter of opposition from the community on the rise. Mr. Masters, could you just state your name, please, and spell for the court stenographer?
Steve Masters, S-T-E-V-M-A-S-T-E-R-S, with the law firm of Chuss Laws.
you've already been sworn could you identify your client in relationship to the property
um yes my client is mark on holdings llc the property owner and we have here uh to testify
along with myself is going to be stephen glass who is the property manager with odin properties
um just to start off mr chair i have a vice chair our vice chair has just a good question
Sure. Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree to read another refusal or stipulate to your accuracy?
I do agree to stipulate to the accuracy.
Do you know the required documents are needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
yes we submitted our first we uploaded our our exhibit binder and our witness
Yes, we submitted our first.
list five days in advance but we also just uploaded a revised version of the
exhibit binder from earlier this morning okay thank you please proceed I'll show
your screen all right thank you I'm gonna just say first mr. Sharon this is
kind of unusual in terms of practices, but both of the RCOs did not send copies of their letters
to us, despite the fact that we have been engaged with them on multiple meetings and also many times
with the council member's office. We were able to receive a copy of the Take Back Your Neighborhood
letter yesterday we have no we've never seen any letter from another rco so i i have no um i have
no way to address it or to rebut it at all um let me let me ask this would you want hillary
to send it to you and you could continue the case um no i'd like to go forward all right sure
yeah but but um i but i would i would ask you to disregard that letter we because it was not
PROVIDED WITHIN, IT WAS NOT SHARED WITHOUT.
SO WHY DON'T WE JUST PROCEED?
SURE, OKAY.
THIS PROJECT IS AN AFFORDABLE DUPLEX, THIS PROPERTY AT THE MOMENT AT 1457 STERLING STREET.
It has been under contract for many, many years with a nonprofit organization called Pathways for Housing.
They work closely with the city of Philadelphia and provide transitional housing and related wraparound services to homeless people.
And so this property has been a legal duplex.
Those two apartments, which are not the subject of the variance today, but those two apartments have been providing, each of these apartments has one individual who has been placed there by Pathways for Housing, formerly homeless, and is getting services from the city via Pathways for Housing.
The rental costs, you'll hear testimony from Mr. Glass later on that the rental costs, the rental rates that are being charged to Pathways for Housing are substantially below market rates.
And that has, over time, produced a financial burden on the owner of this property. The owner wants to help the city and provide a way for caring and housing formerly homeless people.
But the financial burden was such that they decided to create a third unit, which is below the other two, and that is an above-ground basement unit.
It's small. It's only $600 a month in rent, but it was financially what makes it possible for them to continue to house two formerly homeless people on behalf for pathways that's from that's a high priority for the city of Philadelphia.
What we have here is one refusal for the three multifamily units.
Although the zoning archive doesn't really have any documents to speak of that address the zoning,
for many, many years, the city has been issuing two rental licenses for this property,
and so there's no dispute among anyone that this is a legal duplex.
We have petitions in support, I believe it is 21 petitions in support from the near neighbors,
and these are very close addresses from within the 250 feet.
In Exhibit 3, we have an important letter from Pathways for Housing.
They write in support of this zoning application. They've been at this location for more than 10
years. Pathways for Housing, if you're not familiar, supports 600 formerly homeless individuals
supports 600 formerly homeless individuals with housing, comprehensive case management,
with housing comprehensive case management.
primary care and psychiatric services, and community inclusion supports. They have a
scattered site model, which means they have to lease hundreds of different apartments in order
to provide the housing to their clients. And they're finding it very difficult to find affordable
units to place homeless people. I know that
Councilmember Lizata is quite also, she has a very
high priority in finding beds for homeless people. She's
spoken about it many times concerning Kensington and other areas of her
district. So the pathway says that
their work with the landlord, Odin is the property management company,
is the key to be able to continue to provide these affordable
units that are essential for the city's goals of of reducing homelessness and providing support
for formerly houseless people um this is in our exhibit binder this is more about pathways for
housing and and the kind of programs that they provide um in exhibit four um this is our um
site plans and and our elevations so this property um is located um
uh it borders on an alleyway and then it borders on on sterling street
uh this is the existing um front facade there are no change this is just a a change of of use
and the unit on the inside, there are no changes that are required on the outside at all.
This is the structure itself, and right behind it on the level of the above-ground basement unit
is the parking space that this tenant has been using and is dedicated to this tenant.
The other two tenants from Pathways for Housing do not have cars, and they don't, they receive transportation services when they need to go places.
This is the front view where, like I said, it borders onto an alley.
And this is the rear view showing the tenant's car in the lot that we're trying to, I'm sorry, the unit we're trying to legalize.
And these are, this is the other, these, by the way, these, these two units for pathways for housing are, are two bedroom units, but there's only one person living in each one of them, because that's the, that's the, the, the protocol for pathways, they provide housing, but they, but it's only for, that's the single homeless person.
um so we have here in in the uh in our in our floor plans um this is the um the exit onto the
the back driveway this is the unit that we are legalizing um and it's uh it's a you know
modest size unit um so it does have two means of ingress and egress so here's one that goes
to the outside where the car was that we saw parked and here's the second one that goes out
into the alley that we saw that um that is on the side of the building um there are uh this on the
on the um what would be called the first floor but it looks like the second floor from from the
building. This is the unit for one of the formerly homeless persons. And then this is the other one
on the third floor. Steve, is the basement unit already occupied?
It is currently occupied. We do have a violation from L&I and we have that under appeal. And the
The violation simply states that it needs a zoning permit and a certificate of occupancy for a living space in that unit.
How big is that unit?
not the mechanical so um it is nine feet six plus
i guess we take 39 minus nine so it's approximately 30 feet long by 14
All right.
Thank you.
This is the rear, the rear facade, you can see that it's totally above ground.
This is the rear, the rear facade, you can.
And this is the front, okay.
We have some photos now.
So this is the front of the property.
You come into this door to go into the upper two apartments that are with pathways to enter the new,
the new above ground basement unit,
the entrance is in the rear.
This is the first floor bathroom.
So this is, when it says first floor,
this is one of the pathways units,
half of first floor living room,
kitchen, first floor bedroom.
And now we're going to the second floor.
This is the second pathways unit.
then here's the above ground basement this is the kitchen area for this the unit that we want to
legalize this is the sleeping area bathroom shower this is the common area uh that has the
mechanicals and the utilities um this shows the various water heaters the um
this is the gas there is no gas hookups into this into the the the unit that we want to legalize the
gas um power is for the two pathways unit this is the door that goes out to the alleyway so this is
one of the egresses from the unit that we wanna legalize.
And this is the other egress where the car is parked.
This is another view of that egress
into the alleyway from that unit.
So we, there were, the RCO had complained
about a lot of wires that were very unsightly
that were along this wall.
So one of the remedies that we did,
you can see them kind of scattered all over this wall.
This is a photo afterwards showing
that we brought in a contractor
who consolidated all of the wires
and made them very tidy.
There was also a concern that
because it was a converted garage
into this above-ground basement unit,
There wasn't a dedicated hot water heater for that unit, so we have now installed a new hot water tank that only services this new above-ground basement unit that doesn't share any of the utilities with the other units.
This is our zoning poster with the data posting.
Steve, what was the vote of the zoning board, of the RCO?
So that's an interesting question, Mr. Chair. So we asked several times to have an RCO meeting.
The RCO told us that they will not hold an RCO meeting for this type of a project. They said
we will do a site visit, not an RCO meeting. So we had a site visit, and we walked through,
but there was, we basically, it was quite cold, and we were basically outside on that alley for
for a good 45 minutes or so after we walked through the unit.
At that point, the RCO told us that they don't have votes.
They're not going to call a vote on this.
I said to them, we need an RCO meeting.
That's what our requirement is.
We have to do a mailing.
We have to tell people about this.
So they said we could have a second site visit,
and they would make that as the RCO meeting.
So they scheduled a second site visit.
we did our mailing, and we had a few neighbors show up. No one from the block. The neighbors who
showed up were from a ways away. They were, I'm not sure exactly how far away they are, but they
were not within the 250 feet. At that point, Mr. Radnitsky, who was the head of Take Back Your
neighbors. I saw him walk around to all of the people who came and encourage them to oppose the
project and to vote no. It was somewhat unusual to see someone who leads an RCO be that explicit
with neighbors. And so they reported on their letter. I wasn't present in any kind of an
official vote, but to what extent there were people who were there who I think were expressed
But for to what extent there were people who were there who I think were expressing their position on on the issue.
And I believe that there was substantial opposition to it from those people.
So that's the letter, the letter that you don't have. Were they also their community on the rise?
I am not sure. There were two people from Take Back Your Neighborhood.
there was Robert and Pamela. And I recall that there was one or two other people, but I don't
remember if they identified where they were from. Why don't you bring your client on?
Okay. Sure. All right. So, Steve Glass, will you please raise your virtual hand?
steve glass is allowed to speak to speak yes can you hear me i can't could you please take
your name and spell for the court stenographer even glass s-t-e-v-e-n glass g-l-a-s-s