Landlords who sued city over renter protection bills have asked the court to hold the city in contempt

The two landlords who forced City Council to redo a committee hearing on rental protection bills through an exceedingly rare lawsuit are asking a Philadelphia judge to hold the city in contempt and impose sanctions, alleging that the new hearing also violated transparency requirements.

The motion for contempt, filed Thursday, claims that Council failed to comply with a March 18 agreement to delay a committee vote on the bills and “comply fully with the Sunshine Act as well as the [Philadelphia Home Rule] Charter.”

Council’s Committee on Housing met for a second time on March 30, and unanimously passed the two bills, which say tenants are entitled to withhold rent if their landlord does not have an active rental license or fails to repair code violations in a timely manner.

» READ MORE: Philly renter protections advance toward final vote after a landlord lawsuit forced a redo

The legislation also includes protections from retaliation for renters who complain about housing conditions, requires landlords to have “good cause” to not renew a tenant’s lease, and increases penalties for landlords who rack up code violations.

The landlords attacked the March 30 hearing, alleging a series of procedural failures. A quorum of the committee was initially present but members “moved in and out of the hearing throughout the proceeding,” the motion says. And during the hearing, Council members left the public session to meet privately with Council President Kenyatta Johnson and “representatives of interested parties,” according to the legal filing.

“The public session functioned merely to formalize decisions reached outside public view,” the landlords’ motion says.

And while it’s custom for Council to upload full recordings of committee hearings to YouTube, the March 30 meeting video hasn’t been posted publicly, the filing says.

The hearing video hasn’t been posted as of April 11.

Taken together, these deficits amount to a violation of the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act, which requires government meetings to be held in public, the motions says. The landlords ask a judge to nullify the committee vote to prevent a full Council vote on the bills next week.

“They did exactly the same thing they did March 4,“ said Briana Pearson, an attorney representing the landlords, referring to the original hearing Council agreed to redo. ”At a basic level, they should at least adhere to the court order.”

It is common for City Council members to leave the room during hearings, but that is no excuse and still amounts to a violation of the law, said Paul Cohen, general counsel for the Homeowners Association of Philadelphia.

“This is the way it’s always been done? Then guess what, it’s always been done wrong,” Cohen said. “The purpose of public hearings, and the sunshine act, is for the deliberations to happen in public.”

Common Pleas Judge Christopher Hall will hold a hearing on Tuesday in which the city attorneys will need to explain why it shouldn’t be held in contempt, according to a Friday order.

“The recent contempt motion filed by two HAPCO-affiliated landlords is baseless and reflects their frustration with the outcome of a process that did not go their way: plain and simple,” Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke, the primary sponsor of the Safe Healthy Homes Act, said in a statement.

Harrison Feinman, a spokesperson for Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who chairs the housing committee, declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.

“City Council’s Housing Committee voted twice to unanimously advance this legislation because every Philadelphian deserves a safe and healthy home,” Feinman said in a statement.

Philadelphia rental property owners Erica Hadley and Seth Floyd, who brought the lawsuit, also amended their initial complaint Friday to include claims that the bills amount to a violation of landlords’ constitutional rights.

The bills rewrite existing contracts between landlords and their tenants, the revised lawsuit says, making rental agreements that both parties entered into voluntarily unenforceable. If the bills become law, landlords will be “deprived of their ability to determine when and under what conditions their property will be returned to their possession, even at the natural expiration of a lease,” the suit says.

Such requirements would force small landlords, who own the majority of rental properties in the city, to leave the market and further restrict the supply of rental units in the city, the complaint says.

“The inevitable outcome is a contraction in available housing supply, upward pressure on rents, and displacement effects that will be felt first and most severely in low income and majority Black communities,” the lawsuit says.

O’Rourke, who wrote the bills in partnership with OnePA Renters United Philadelphia, a coalition of renters unions and advocates, and Philly Thrive, an advocacy group for racial, economic, and environmental justice, called the claim of constitutional violations “an embarrassing legal argument.”

“The Safe Healthy Homes Act works to bring Philadelphia’s rental code enforcement up to the standard that already exists in peer cities and is a standard internationally,” the Council member said in a March 31 statement. “I think that a suit on civil rights grounds only goes to show that the plaintiffs think Philly tenants deserve fewer rights than their regional and national neighbors.”

In the nullified March 4 hearing, tenants testified about living in dilapidated units that include mold, pests, leaks, lack of heat, and falling ceilings.

The Brewerytown building that Jason Bowman lives in became a “haven for mice, rats, mold, leaks, and heating issues,” he said during the hearing, “the property did not even have a valid rental license.”

Another tenant, Sonya Sanders, said that her Grays Ferry rental home had holes through the floor and walls that allowed large cockroaches to fly into their home. Desperate for a solution, Sanders and her husband taped the walls to prevent bugs from coming in.

“These living conditions were detrimental to my physical and mental health,” Sanders said.

When her husband passed away, she was forced to move to a different home. Her dreams of a new beginning in a safe home quickly became a nightmare. Sanders lived without electricity for weeks during the summer heat, and went months without water.

“We need a city that works for us, to hold slumlords accountable,” Sanders said. “I’m not here to complain about the landlords who are doing their job.”

Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.