Landlord advocates want more tweaks<\/p>\n
HAPCO Philadelphia, the city\u2019s largest advocacy group for landlords and property owners, opposes O\u2019Rourke\u2019s legislation. While members support their intent, they argue the bills will disproportionately harm them while doing little to deter bad actors.<\/p>\n
Paul Cohen, the group\u2019s general counsel, has said that expanding \u201cgood-cause\u201d protections would make it even harder for landlords to remove problematic tenants, particularly if their conduct doesn\u2019t warrant pursuing an eviction in court or if it would be difficult to demonstrate the need for one.<\/p>\n
He has also raised concerns about a provision that clarifies when a tenant can receive a rental rebate. Under the legislation, a tenant could sue for relief if a landlord collected rent without having an active rental license or certificate of rental suitability. Both are required for landlords to legally collect rent.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, he urged the committee to hold off on voting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not saying not to pass a bill. We\u2019re saying not to pass the bill until it\u2019s done properly. We need to make sure this bill is right,\u201d Cohen said.<\/p>\n
These bills were previously considered by the housing committee during a public hearing in June. Following pushback from Mayor Cherelle Parker\u2019s administration, O\u2019Rourke agreed to hold the legislation to allow time for negotiations.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for O\u2019Rourke said the bills are slated to come up for a final vote on March 19.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers previously passed a third part of the Safe Healthy Homes Act. The legislation would authorize the city to create an anti-displacement fund<\/a> for tenants forced to move because their property has been designated uninhabitable.<\/p>\n Under the program, tenants would be eligible to receive a one-time payment through the fund if they must move because of a negligent property owner or landlord. Specifically, the property must be the target of a cease-operations order<\/a> from L&I.<\/p>\n The order is considered an extreme measure and is issued for properties that pose an \u201cimmediate danger to life or property.\u201d<\/p>\n The fund is set to receive dollars<\/a> from Parker\u2019s Housing Opportunities Made Easy<\/a>, or H.O.M.E., initiative. The multifaceted effort is backed by $800 million in bonds and seeks to create and preserve 30,000 units of housing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Landlord advocates want more tweaks HAPCO Philadelphia, the city\u2019s largest advocacy group for landlords and property owners, opposes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,5648,71,70,2312],"class_list":["post-129654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-city-council","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-planphilly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}