Philadelphians deserve safe and healthy homes
The city needs to crack down on dangerous housing conditions and support renters who are affected by them.
The Department of Licenses and Inspections didn’t mince words when it declared the 144-unit Upsal Gardens complex an “unsafe structure.”
Foundation separation. Cracked masonry. Failing floor joists. A building so compromised that city officials said it posed “immediate danger” to human life.
That violation is just the tip of the iceberg. I know this because I have lived it. On Aug. 23, my wife noticed a large crack forming in our living room ceiling. We alerted management through their portal, and I went to their on-site office to report it. Less than 24 hours later, at 12:06 a.m., the entire ceiling collapsed.
Fortunately, we had renters’ insurance. While management took their time deciding what to do, we stayed in the apartment under the exposed ceiling until our insurance finally booked us a hotel. After two days of waiting, we were moved temporarily so repairs could be made. But that displacement came with costs: For eight days, we paid out of pocket for meals and essentials while living in the hotel.
Nevertheless, when we returned home, a notice was taped to our door: “Overdue rent.”
Management knew we were displaced because of conditions they failed to address. And still, they badgered us for late rent — as though the collapse was an inconvenience to them, rather than a danger to us.
A citywide crisis
Unfortunately, my story isn’t unusual. My neighbors have filed a class-action lawsuit against the owners and managers of the property due to the complex-wide dangerous conditions described in an “unsafe structure” L&I violation. This lawsuit reflects a mounting rental safety crisis across Philadelphia.
In West Oak Lane, tenants at Bentley Manor filed a similar lawsuit after their building was deemed unsafe while rent was still being collected. Upsal Gardens, Bentley Manor, Brith Sholom, Phillip Pulley and SBG Management, 8500 Lindbergh Blvd., ABC Capital. These are different buildings with different owners, managers, and business models, but nonetheless an all too similar story: Tenants forced to live in deplorable conditions while predatory landlords keep turning a profit.
Philadelphians deserve safe and healthy homes, tenants deserve roofs and ceilings that are secure, floors that don’t buckle, and air that doesn’t make their children sick. We have laws on the books intended to address these issues.
The vast majority of renters in Philadelphia continue to live in units that have never been inspected.
But a combination of loopholes, insufficient funding, and lack of enforcement leaves renters without a clear means to enforce those laws, placing many renters between a rock and a hard place: pay for unsafe housing, risk retaliation for withholding rent, or absorb the costs of displacement.
Renters aren’t completely powerless, though. This year, we’ve seen that when renters come together, they win. This spring, City Council took the first steps toward addressing the city’s rental safety crisis by creating a fund for tenants displaced because of unsafe conditions. But that fund sat empty for months, until a coalition of housing justice advocates successfully lobbied for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s H.O.M.E. Plan to fund it.
Dangerous, uninhabitable
Still, there is much more work to be done. The vast majority of renters continue to live in units that have never been inspected. Landlords continue to demand rent for rental units with dangerous, uninhabitable conditions. Renters continue to acquiesce to those conditions out of fear of retaliation.
The Safe Healthy Homes (SHH) campaign, led by OnePA, Renters United Philadelphia, Philly Thrive, and the office of Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke, provides commonsense answers to these issues: protecting renters who speak up about unsafe conditions from landlord retaliation, authorizing proactive L&I inspections, and requiring proof of code compliance to evict or collect rent. These are all things we would assume are happening already, but this package adds the critical enforcement provisions that have been missing.
Safe housing is not a perk — it is the bare minimum, and City Council’s Housing Committee had a long-overdue hearing for the SHH package tentatively scheduled for Tuesday.
I encourage you to let the members of the committee know how you feel about having safe and healthy homes for tenants across our city.
B. Cincere Wilson is the chief operations officer of Myra’s Kids Inc., a nonprofit serving justice-impacted and high-risk youth. He lives in Philadelphia and works in New York City.