Philly controller said she will audit L&I over construction safety after Inquirer investigation

In response to The Inquirer’s Crumbling City investigation, which found that 50 Philadelphia homes each year are rendered unsafe during construction next door, Philadelphia’s city controller is planning an audit of the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections.

“Seeing newspaper articles about a house collapsing ... people getting injured, people getting killed — we can’t wait for the next tragedy to happen,” Controller Christy Brady said in an interview.

“I believe in doing audits that have to do with public safety,” Brady said. “This covers that. With undocumented and unlicensed workers, you have the cost of misclassification to the city, too, whether it‘s lost tax revenue — and other costs, which would be risks to workers and residents in the form of unscrupulous contractors cutting corners in construction projects.”

Brady won a special election in November and was sworn into office just last month. She said her office is in the preliminary stages of gathering information, with plans to conduct public outreach and internal conversations before launching the audit.

But she said Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker and District Attorney Larry Krasner had expressed enthusiasm for an audit that would dig into enforcement of building safety standards and develop a series of recommendations for the department. A spokesperson for Parker said she would not comment on internal discussions.

» READ MORE: Calls for reform followed Philly’s deadly Market Street collapse. A decade later, residents are still endangered by “construction destruction.”

Among the areas Brady is looking to examine is whether a system that allows contractors to select their own electrical inspectors and the special inspectors who oversee dangerous excavation and demolition work creates a conflict of interest.

An Inquirer investigation identified vulnerabilities in that oversight process, through the story of homebuyers who discovered their electrical work had not been installed by a licensed electrician. The work was then approved by an electrical inspector who was cited by the city on 10 different jobs since 2016 for approving work that was not up to code.

» READ MORE: Philly's inspection system is failing homebuyers

Brady also wants to know what’s driving the perennial shortage of building inspectors, which has grown even more dire since the pandemic. Each inspector is now responsible for close to 1,000 building permits. “Are you training them and they’re going? Is it the pay? Could there there be a program with a high school or community college that helps train people to be inspectors, some sort of partnership? How do you retain them?”

In the interim, City Council has also allocated $200,000 to fund a pilot Rowhouse Protection Program that Community Legal Services of Philadelphia will launch in 2024.

City Councilmember Mark Squilla said it was funded in acknowledgment that legislation that took effect this year to protect neighbors from construction damage did not go far enough. Though contractors are now required to notify neighbors of work, develop a monitoring plan for any impact on neighboring properties, and carry substantial liability insurance, Squilla said some neighbors are not seeing the benefit.

» READ MORE: Five fixes for Philly's construction chaos

“If the bill worked properly, it could protect both the developer and the adjoining neighbor — so that the insurance would cover any damage. We want to make sure they are made whole,” he said.

While lawmakers figure out what’s next, the Community Legal Services (CLS) pilot program will be able to hire a full-time attorney to help residents negotiate access agreements with developers and respond if damage occurs. The money will also go to a fund for hiring engineers and other experts needed to assess the damage to residents’ homes and the best path to repairing it.

Michael Froehlich, managing attorney of CLS’s Homeownership & Consumer Rights Unit, said the new money will be the first time CLS has dedicated funding to address the issue — and was optimistic it could restore some balance to what are often lopsided disputes.

“Next door neighbors do have legal rights when it comes to demolition and construction next door, and there are things that lawyers can do to enforce those rights.”