These groups, largely composed of working-class residents, have contributed to a string of high-profile legal and legislative victories \u2014 victories that housing advocates hope will empower more tenants to organize to protect their rights.\n<\/p>\n
That includes a class-action lawsuit<\/a> and legislation<\/a> aimed at strengthening renter protections and reducing instances of landlord retaliation, a pervasive fear among low-income tenants in the city.\n<\/p>\n The fight against junk fees is an extension of that work, and there are at least three City Council members who are standing behind the tenant groups: Jamie Gauthier, Rue Landau and Nicolas O\u2019Rourke.\n<\/p>\n \u201cPhilly is already in an affordability crisis. When people are paying unnecessary fees just to put a roof over their head, that crisis deepens. And that crisis creates stress, creates financial burden, creates a question of affordability,\u201d Landau said during Thursday\u2019s news conference.\n <\/p>\n Bartlett, who works in the information technology department at a local university, said tenants at The Emerson are charged $25 a month for a so-called resident benefits package.\n<\/p>\n Renters at Florence Gardens Apartments, a nearby apartment building operated by the same property management company, must make the same payment each month, generating about $30,000 a year across the two buildings, according to tenants.\n<\/p>\n \u201cFrom any angle, this is a scam,\u201d said Terence Washington, a member of the Florence Gardens Tenant Association.\n<\/p>\n On Thursday, both tenant associations announced that members will no longer be paying that fee as the groups negotiate with ownership to amend all of their leases.\n<\/p>\n New Age Realty, the property manager for both buildings, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the junk fee strike.\n<\/p>\n HAPCO Philadelphia, the city\u2019s largest advocacy group for property owners and landlords, declined comment, saying it would wade into the debate at a later date.\n<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to comment on something when we haven\u2019t seen the legislation,\u201d said Paul Cohen, general counsel for HAPCO.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These groups, largely composed of working-class residents, have contributed to a string of high-profile legal and legislative victories…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,2312],"class_list":["post-297877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-planphilly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297877","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=297877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}