Court tackles nuisance rentals

ON TUESDAY, the first case at the city's Rental Housing Court will be heard at the 8th Police District in Northeast Philadelphia. This long-awaited development will finally tackle the long-standing and destructive practice of irresponsible absentee landlords and nuisance rentals in the city.

This project is a two-year labor of hard work and dedication by the Department of Licenses & Inspections, Municipal Court, local civic and community organizations in Northeast Philadelphia and my office, which investigated these nuisance rentals.

Once my office gets a complaint about the state of a rental property, we forward it to L&I or CLIP (the Community Life Improvement Program, which addresses quality-of-life problems), and check if the owner has rental and business-privilege-tax licenses. Property owners are then told to get the correct licenses and correct any violations. If they don't, they get a summons to appear in the new Rental Housing Court.

Both civic organizations and neighbors will be able to testify about cases in which poorly managed properties have torn away at the living conditions of our Northeast Philly neighborhoods.

The last several years have brought an increase in home sales in Northeast Philadelphia that turn into rental properties and an increase in out-of-state buyers looking for real-estate investments. That leads to a large number of absentee landlords in our area who are not responsible property owners.

They don't seem to care if there is a broken sewer pipe, backyards full of trash or dog feces, nuisance tenants, overgrown weeds and grass in the yard, overcrowding and other problems that turn a property into a problem for the whole block.

As long as they get that monthly rental check, they don't care about the other neighbors and homeowners on that block. Over the last few years, calls to my office have included an overwhelming number of complaints about rental properties in the area.

Time and again these rentals are investigated by L&I and CLIP, but the absentee landlords ignore the code violations and fines against their properties.

They frequently don't have a valid city rental or business-privilege license. Sometimes they buy a single-family rowhouse and convert it into a duplex without the proper zoning, licenses and work permits. What's more, we find that on their mortgage applications, they often claim that the property is "owner-occupied" to get a better interest rate and fewer points, while never intending it to be anything but a rental.

I've introduced legislation to regulate rental properties, beginning with authorizing L&I to hold hearings on the alarming increase in the number of rentals in the Northeast and to explore the possibility of creating a rental unit within L&I.

Council has also passed bills I've sponsored to require out-of-state owners of one- and two-family rental properties to have a local property manager to receive all notices from L&I as well as prohibiting landlords from having a P.O. box instead of a real address. In April, Council passed an ordinance requiring any ad or correspondence involving residential rentals to include the rental license number, with a $75-a-day fine until the license is obtained.

With Rental Housing Court now in place, all those who've battled these nuisance rentals should take this opportunity to help us put a stop to these irresponsible absentee landlords who think Northeast Philly is their personal Monopoly game. *

Councilwoman Joan L. Krajewski lives in Mayfair and represents the 6th District.