This is the left side of the backyard.
Our zoning posters for today's hearing.
um for our tax clearance this is the payment agreement that our client has entered into with
the city for 25 51 53 west silver um their monthly payments are 129.91 uh this shows
a voucher of receipt for um payments for uh this was a thousand dollars thousand seven dollars and
35 cents back in december 2024 and another receipt for uh that's the set 1,007 35
uh if that is not sufficient we can provide you with additional documentation for for the tax
compliance uh this is the deed uh that was conveyed to rl property our clients um
the application for appeal the the um the project information form and our rco letter
uh we mail this letter to i believe it's 203
230 uh first class mail proof of mailing so let's go back to now uh the alarmist uh
messages and communications that that started um uh just a few days ago although there was
there was some there was a fairly high degree of acrimony at the at the rco meeting between
the two RCO leaders and the neighbors who were all extremely supportive of this project.
So we received on Monday a communication from the coordinating RCO, and it was sent to not
just the zoning board, but it was sent to the commissioner of L&I, to the managing director,
to a number of city agencies with the allegation that this property
agencies um with the allegation that um this property was uh was unsafe and was um illegally
divided that that portions of the wall between the two historic row houses were illegally removed
so uh here we go that all that um all that is also conveyed in the rco letters
um this is not the this is the one this is an affected rco swamp poodle um in which they
oppose it and say that uh that there's unsafe and multiple conditions that are that are
unproblematic um and then the coordinating rco has a similar uh critique but you'll see here
for the vote count all seven of meeting attendees supported uh the only two that were opposed were
the rco board committees that was one representative of strawberry mansion
community concern and one from swan poodle um and that just happened uh last week
when we received uh this letter uh this was this is i guess a reissue of this letter that was sent
on monday um claiming fire safety hazards structural integrity issues legal and compliance
violations um all of these are really um there if this was true i would be extremely concerned
about this but it's also not within the within the domain of the zoning board these are definitely
lni issues that would be part of the certificate of occupancy uh situation we responded um on january
10th with the history of this property. So in 1996, PHDC applied to L&I to consolidate the two
lots. The lot consolidation application explicitly included plans to, quote, breach walls between
buildings for use as a single-family dwelling. In another document in the zoning archive, it says
first and second floor partition walls will be breached. These plans were approved by Gene
Klinger, who at that point was the head of zoning for the city of Philadelphia on November 20th,
1996. We'll look at the zoning archive momentarily. The zoning archives confirmed that the city not
only has been aware of the breach of the walls between 2551 and 2553 for almost 30 years, the
city requested the walls be breached, and this request was approved by the city zoning director.
So this is not some new situation.
This was the way it was supposed to be.
On July 29th, 2022, an inspector from L&I visited the property and issued a notice of
violation, stating the property for lacking proper zoning, permit, and certificate of
occupancy because it was operating in a rooming house on one side and an apartment on the
other.
After receiving this code violation, our client immediately filed the zoning application,
which is the subject of this hearing, and made sure that the property remained vacant until
these issues were going to be resolved. Very significantly, the L&I inspector did not discover
any unsafe or hazardous conditions when they inspected the property in 2022, and that's the
sole kind of allegations from the RCO that there's something dangerous here, when the L&I inspector
would have, of course, noted that
and not just written it up
for technical violations
of lacking a permit and a CO.
Again, the property is empty.
There are no tenants.
All of the neighbors who appeared
voted in favor of it at the RCO meeting
and 42 petitions in support
have been presented to you.
Here's the zoning archive
in which, this is from 1996, this is the application from Ph.D.C., PCCO and Ph.D.C.,
and it says specifically, I'm going to try to make this bigger, relocate lot lines to create
one lot from two lots, breach walls between buildings for use as a single-family dwelling.
Gene Klinger signed it in 1996, and then in the plans, or in the application, it specifically says
one-family dwelling, one-family dwelling. Both addresses will be merged as one-family dwelling.
First and second floor partition walls will be breached.
and its owner
is the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation
the violation
the violation in 2022 uh was was um indicates that the inspector went inside the building he
in 2022
didn't just inspect it from the outside or i don't know if it's he or she um it it was and these these
are still uncomplied because we're in the process of of getting them complied rooming house with
three-room units on the left side, one apartment on the right. There is no other citations issued
that concern anything about safety or fire code issues. At this point, I'm going to
ask for my client, LaTosha Turner, to raise her hand and to adopt my testimony.
has been promoted to panelists good morning could you please state your name and spell for the
stenographer uh she may be muted
hi could you please state your name unmute okay my name's latasha latasha turner
could you spell it please for the stenographer um l-a-t-a-s-h-a turner t-u-r-n-e-r do you
swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes please proceed
counsel um miss turner you have heard my um testimony today do you believe that it was
correct and accurate and do you adopt it as your own yes um would you thank you um would you please
um tell the board um something about uh why you chose to buy this this building the way that it
was configured and let's start with that um what was your vision um i purchased i purchased the
building back in 2022 um at the time he already had tennis in it and at that time I didn't really
know what I was going to do with it he just was saying like the tennis had nowhere to go at the
moment I said they can stay but um at that time I didn't do no like um I never collect anything
because Ellen and I came out within uh I'd say like less than a month or a month after that and
told me what it was and i immediately he gave them till i think august or something to vet um
evacuate the um premises and then after that i went straight to lna once he gave me the notice
i had a hearing i think march or something other than next year or october that year or something
and they said i needed an attorney and that's when i moved forward with getting an attorney
to, you know, take me through the process of this case, but, um, I haven't done anything
with the property. So you do have other properties that you, that you rent, um, at this point,
right? Right. Um, can you tell the, the board what kind of, uh, what's your process for,
for picking or approving tenants in your properties and, and how do you, how do you
make sure that the tenants are going to uh follow the the rules and and and be good neighbors um
i i put my property through zillow and um once i put it through there i i don't know if it's true
or if you can do that but i i don't rent to young people um i try to rent to like older people like
people of age um just on the fact like i try to be want the place to be as i gave it to them
no nonsense i don't really have complaints i don't really go through nuisance none of them things um
i run the background i do all them things to make sure like they're a good candidate
and basically the the couple i have like the couple people i have they've been tenants for
some years it ain't like they've been on and off they've been there for some years
um so the the the bill the unit on the right side is going to be a uh just an apartment a
one-bedroom apartment correct correct all right and then on the on the on the entry on the left
side um that's a two-person rooming house yes um and uh oh actually let me let me go through the uh
the trash plan on for the for the rooming house because uh i forgot to cover that in our photos
here. Let's see.
Thank you.
i have not seen see what what you're looking for in the front of the house steve or behind
uh yes uh i we have a photo from in front of uh the the the neighboring property let me let me
see if i can hang on a second i think i can pull it up another way
I apologize.
So why don't you explain to us what it is?
Okay, sure.
The neighbors, I have a photo of the neighbor right next door.
They basically put their trash out right next to their stoop and their entryway.
um the we showed you inside um uh the the rooming house area where there's areas to put
the the trash bins in the kitchen and on on trash day they just put it right outside uh there is
there is no trash pickup in the rear so all the neighbors put their trash out uh right next to
their their um the stairway that goes up into their into their homes would you show us on your
plans i mean you have plans here could you just point to it yes
so in the rooming houses the the the trash you know trash um uh bin can be in anywhere
in this area in the kitchen for the unit number two and this is the trash area for unit number
one that's where they can store their trash during the week and then on on trash day they
will take out the trash and put it in this area and in this area that and that's I have a photo
i can probably uh it may be important to just uh locate it uh momentarily and just show you from
the neighbor that that's exactly what i think steve i think we understand okay okay so uh
questions from the board and can you go back to the floor plans sure uh we also apologize are are
the drafts person who made these plans is himself ill, he is undergoing cancer treatment,
and he was not able to appear as far as I know today unless my paralegal tells me otherwise.
Okay, here's the plans.
yeah so i guess my um comment is the plan to me seems fairly easily to be converted
to a duplex where they're two bedrooms or three bedrooms per floor so i don't necessarily see
the hardship of not being able to convert it um to not necessarily to a single family house
because clearly it was probably a four-bedroom single-family house,
but it could clearly be converted very easily
to two-bedroom or two-three-bedroom duplex unit,
which would make it look exactly like a row house from the outside
and not have the issues with the concerns that people have with a rooming house.
Well, let me explore that with you.
There used to be a stairway that was removed.
from the 2551 side because there's so there's no access i understand i understand i understand but
are you saying are you saying keep i'm saying that this entire first floor could be a unit
and this entire second floor could be a unit close off that door create access i mean i'm not going
to redesign it right here but right right there's it's fairly easily you've got kitchens already up
on the second floor you've got a kitchen on the first floor you know so it's fairly easy could be
So it's fairly easy to be converted into two two-bedroom units or two three-bedroom units and not have the issue and the concerns that the neighbors have with it being a rooming house and could provide some housing for a family.
convert it into a two bet two.
um okay i i would need to confer with my client on on that but but but to be just to be clear
we would still need a variance because uh because it's been consolidated it would be two principal
uses on one lot and that still requires a variance from from this board um but it would eliminate
the variance for the parking for the rooming house and for the and for the for how for the
the variance for a rooming house um no other questions more that's it yes i have a list of
questions one um i have a question of any construction has been done in the unit since
your client purchased the property in 2022 no she has deferred all of that until she gets the zoning
clearance okay um i just wanted to point out two things because you mentioned during your testimony
that there were no issues with L&I in 2022,
and Atlas is showing that there was a failed fire safety inspection in 2022
after the detransfer of the property that has not been resolved.
And so is there a plan to move forward with any fire suppression requirements
for the unit if approved?
Well, definitely.
I mean, if there are whatever the fire code requires
for the combination rooming house and apartment
would need to be implemented.
There's no question.
And then just from the photos that you showed,
it did look like work had been done.
There was like evidence of construction materials
and equipment in some of the photos.
Okay, let me ask Ms. Turner,
can you speak to that
if there was any work that you have done on the property?
I haven't done no work.
All I did was clean everything out the house,
out of each place okay and then are there any tenants in the property currently no once they
once ellen i told them they had to august of 2022 no one been in there and then what is the plan for
how many people per room on the rooming house side for tenants in the future i said one and one like
each place would be like one person okay are there other rooming houses on the block or yes
there are yes how many do you know i'm gonna say around like four or five of the houses on
that block alone or the houses on the block already are rooming houses all right yes thank
and then i think the last question i had which um do we know what the fire separation is in
between uh the rooming house unit and the existing apartment on the side where they both
exist on the first floor uh are you saying the the first floor uh let's see so there's a there's
a wall like where you've got the salmon and the purple right on the first floor do you know what
the fire separation is for that wall in between those units um i do not know um the draftsman
might have known that um but unfortunately he was not available today okay other questions from the
yes um can you tell me what size are these units um the single room residences as you're calling
sure okay because we have this the the apartment use oh not talk about the apartment okay so the
purple room residences all right kind of square footage are we talking about for each one of these
the bedrooms are 140 this is 140 square feet room two 130 square feet room one for the bedroom
We have another 20 square feet for the closet.
Maybe I'm not being clear.
Each one of these single room residences, what are we talking about in terms of total square footage?
I'm not talking about the individual rooms.
I'm talking about square footage for the units themselves.