Landlords

To dwell in an apartment is to be free of snow shoveling but beholden to a company that raids your savings and invades your privacy. How else to explain an appalling new national trend requiring tenants to provide access to their bank accounts as a condition of moving in or renewing a lease? Under deceptively named "Direct Debit" policies, tenants' checking accounts become a corporation's ATM. God help folks who get paid erratically, since disappearing funds could trigger bounced checks or late fees when they pay other bills.

The homeless were not always homeless. To the reasons enumerated in The Inquirer's excellent editorial of Dec. 28 I would add the insatiable greed of landlords who raise rents year in and year out and force many tenants to become homeless. Having profiteered from the appreciation of their property, landlords use every tax increase as an excuse to raise rents higher and higher. During the last 10 years, rents have nearly doubled. It is high time the city enacted rent restrictions to curb the greed of landlords and prevent further homelessness.

The recent bout of unseasonably cool weather is prompting city inspectors to put the heat on landlords. Tenants of duplexes and multi-family dwellings are complaining to the Department of Licenses and Inspections that landlords are refusing to turn on their heat. And those complaints are sending L&I inspectors to the landlords with a warning: Turn up the thermostats or risk an immediate date in court. "The message to landlords should be loud and clear," said Robert Solvibile, chief of contracting services for the department.

Since Aug. 8, West Chester landlord Sally Biehn Blevins has spent part of her time digging through her tenants' trash looking for stray aluminum cans, glass and plastic, she says. On that date, the West Chester Borough Council adopted amendments to its recycling ordinance making landlords - and their agents - with buildings of three or fewer rental units reponsible if their tenants threw away items that could be recycled. During a special meeting Monday of the council's public-works committee, angry landlords and property managers for absentee landlords who own buildings in the borough told Councilmen Mitchell Crane and James L'heureux that the amended ordinance discriminated against them.

The neighbors want peace, the landlords want a profit, and the township wants proposals that will make both groups happy. And that has proven a difficult task for officials wrestling with the township's student-housing problem. Their mission: to control the number of student-rental properties - and the public nuisance that neighbors say they pose - while addressing landlords' concerns. So far, officials' efforts have met with little success. "The student-housing problem has become not only a quality-of-life but a safety issue as well," Commissioner Lisa Paolino-Adams said at a public hearing at the board's Nov. 27 meeting.

Two weeks after a group of tenants tried to determine the whereabouts of their landlord, who had left them without heat, the borough council passed a motion last night requiring building owners to properly register themselves. The vote came after Paulsboro police searched for the landlord of an apartment building at 101 W. Broad St., where 16 tenants, including children and a pregnant woman, were left without heat. According to Lt. Ken Ridinger of the borough police, the landlord, Linda J. Moore, 41, was arrested Jan. 12 for leaving her tenants heatless on the icy days of Jan. 4-6. The woman, who gave a Thorofare post office box as her address and was thought to reside with her parents in the first block of Peachwood Drive in Swedesboro, was charged with cruelty to children.

City Councilman Bobby Henon plans to haul allegedly negligent landlords into City Hall to answer for why they've let properties deteriorate, going so far as to single out eight people during Council's session Thursday. Should they refuse to agree to testify before Council, Henon said he would subpoena them as part of a resolution he introduced in March to compel witnesses to come forward and provide documents. "We need to start thinking about how and why our buildings fall into disarray, about why they become abandoned in the first place, about the way that we respond when the first call comes in from a resident about short-dumping, about a broken window, about trash on a lawn and any other property maintenance issue," Henon said Thursday.

A new housing-code provision in Radnor Township puts the burden on landlords to limit the number of unrelated tenants in the houses they rent. The provision, township officials acknowledge, is aimed at landlords who rent to college students. The township's zoning code already restricts the number of unrelated people in households, allowing one nonfamily member, defined as someone not related by blood, marriage or law. The Radnor commissioners on Monday night voted 6-0 to adopt an amendment to the housing code that places the burden of compliance on landlords.

In a bureaucracy as large as the one that operates in Philadelphia, it's not too difficult to understand that the right hand doesn't always know what the left hand is doing. But that fact of life frequently works against the best interests of the citizens - and the city itself. Consider, for example, the bits and pieces of information collected by each city agency. The Water Department knows that service to a particular property has been shut off due to lack of payment. Fire officials know that they have been summoned repeatedly to that same address.

To dwell in an apartment is to be free of snow shoveling but beholden to a company that raids your savings and invades your privacy. How else to explain an appalling new national trend requiring tenants to provide access to their bank accounts as a condition of moving in or renewing a lease? Under deceptively named "Direct Debit" policies, tenants' checking accounts become a corporation's ATM. God help folks who get paid erratically, since disappearing funds could trigger bounced checks or late fees when they pay other bills.

CITY COUNCILMAN Bobby Henon plans to haul allegedly negligent landlords into City Hall to answer for why they've let properties deteriorate, going as far as to single out eight people during Council's session Thursday. If they refuse to agree to testify before Council, Henon said he would subpoena them as part of a resolution he introduced in March to compel witnesses to come forward and provide documents. "We need to start thinking about how and why our buildings fall into disarray, about why they become abandoned in the first place, about the way that we respond when the first call comes in from a resident about short-dumping, about a broken window, about trash on a lawn and any other property-maintenance issue," Henon said.

City Councilman Bobby Henon plans to haul allegedly negligent landlords into City Hall to answer for why they have let properties deteriorate, going so far as to single out eight people during Council's session Thursday. If they refuse to agree to testify before Council, Henon said, he will subpoena them under a resolution he introduced in March to compel witnesses to come forward and provide documents. "We need to start thinking about how and why our buildings fall into disarray, about why they become abandoned in the first place, about the way that we respond when the first call comes in from a resident about short-dumping, about a broken window, about trash on a lawn, and any other property-maintenance issue," Henon said Thursday.

In 2010, after I wrote about sewage, rodents, and frigid showers compromising "luxury" living at the Marquis apartments in King of Prussia, the complex's Boston owner sent a scathing letter to my editors urging them to silence me and insisting "good news should have found its way into her column. " A week later, many of the 1,200 residents at the hilltop complex shivered through the coldest day of the winter without heat, taking no comfort in the "million-dollar fitness center" with busted equipment.

THE PHILADELPHIA Gas Works is facing increasing political pressure to change its collection practices following Daily News reports about its use of property liens to shake down landlords for their former tenants' delinquent bills. State Sen. Anthony Williams, a Democrat from West Philadelphia, said Monday that he plans to introduce legislation next week that would severely restrict PGW's lien authority, which has enabled it to squeeze money out of property owners years after their deadbeat tenants have left.

Over the next few weeks, Council President Darrell Clarke will be holding community meetings about his efforts to bring peace among Temple University students, their off-campus landlords, and longtime North Philadelphia residents, and dispel some unfortunate misinformation that has been undermining a smart idea that's good for all involved. Clarke wants to create a neighborhood improvement district that would cover security, public sanitation, and code enforcement around the growing number of private buildings where Temple students rent apartments.

LANDLORDS in North Philadelphia were on opposite sides of the fence yesterday over a proposed neighborhood improvement district (NID) near Temple University. Dozens of residents, landlords and developers showed up for a City Council Rules Committee hearing to testify on a bill sponsored by Council President Darrell Clarke. He said he introduced the bill in response to complaints about trash, Temple students partying all night and developers dumping construction debris. Under the bill, landlords who own rental properties and businesses would be asked to pay up to 10 percent more in real-estate tax to help pay for security, streetscaping and cleaning services, totaling $450,000 a year.

IN JANUARY, I introduced legislation that, if enacted, will bring into existence the North Central Neighborhood Improvement District (NID). The record of accomplishments of neighborhood (or business) improvement districts in Philadelphia is impressive. From streetscape improvements to enhanced cleanliness to safer streets, these districts have revitalized neighborhoods in concrete ways by supplementing, not replacing, services provided by municipal government. The grandfather of them all is the Center City Special Services District, nationally renowned for its role in rejuvenating the core of Philadelphia.