After initially being approved by the committee on March 4 but being delayed by a landlord lawsuit, the two remaining Safe Healthy Homes bills, once again, have been passed by City Council’s Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and the Homeless.

With the committee hurdle cleared, the bills, aimed at strengthening tenants’ rights, will face a final vote during a City Council session in the coming weeks.

The process had been halted ahead of an expected City Council vote on March 19, after the lawsuit and a subsequent settlement pushed the matter back to committee for further public testimony.

The lawsuit alleged that City Council had violated Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act, which requires state and local agencies to conduct deliberations in public.The plaintiffs took issue with the committee voting to advance the bills before public testimony concluded, and alleged Council members had deliberated in private on amendments.

The bills

The two bills, the “Right to Repairs Ordinance” and “Right to Safety Ordinance,” introduced by Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke, aim to strengthen protections for tenant organizing and increase enforcement by the city’s Department of Licenses & Inspections (L&I) toward landlords whose properties violate city code.

The first of the remaining bills would authorize L&I to establish a proactive inspection program; require landlords, before eviction, to provide an updated certificate of rental suitability, which requires a valid rental license and no outstanding violations; and require posting of licenses, violations, appeals, and suspensions on the property.

The “Right to Safety Ordinance” aims to provide greater protection for tenants against retaliation and for their right to organize.

The bill also seeks to extend the “good cause” requirements for lease nonrenewals to all leases. Currently, landlords are not required to provide good cause for nonrenewals on leases one year or longer. This means that a tenant who has never missed a payment or received a violation could be denied a renewal.

The hearing

On March 30, the committee held another hearing, with testimony from tenants, landlords, and advocates. Ahead of public testimony, O’Rourke addressed the room, hoping to dispel what he said were misconceptions about the bill.

“It is already illegal for a landlord to collect rent without a rental license,” O’Rourke said. “...Unfortunately, this law is violated constantly. Thousands of dollars are illegally collected from renters every day. My legislation simply clarifies their right to a refund when profits are illegally collected.

“This right is not about penalizing a landlord for a mistake or something that’s out of your control,” he added. “That’s not what these bills do. This is about protecting tenants from landlords who refuse to follow the law, who neglect to apply for a license, who refuse to repair crumbling properties, who do not take their responsibility to provide safe, healthy homes seriously. … We worked at length with small landlord stakeholders to include a safe harbor provision, protecting landlords when L&I is the one at fault. If you didn’t know that, unfortunately, you have been misinformed.”

Several landlords testified at the hearing, saying the bills would put “mom and pop” landlords out of business and would force them to sell to corporations. Tenants pushed back, with several arguing that the bills force bad landlords to “do your job,” which attendees shouted throughout the hearing.

Mo Rushdy, testifying on behalf of the Building Industry Association, advocated for five amendments to the bills. He said there was agreement on the concept of the bills and asked the committee to take more time on the language.

The first proposed amendment would allow 60 days, not 30, to remove fire safety violations from the rent refund requirement. The second asks for a 15-day grace period when an owner is notified that their rental license has expired “due to administrative or clerical error” before they are deemed noncompliant.

The third aims at “maintaining building security” during tenant organizing efforts. The fourth involves changing the language of how the “good cause” requirements are implemented and for whom. Lastly, the fifth amendment seeks to delay the implementation of the bill until the start of 2027, allowing time for property owners to adjust.

O’Rourke took issue with the fire code amendment, saying, “the idea that you should have a longer period of time for something that could endanger your livelihood because your house can catch on fire, is a major concern for us.”

Responding to Rushdy’s four other proposed amendments, O’Rourke said, “I think there’s some misunderstanding, at least in the first two, about the bills, and then the last one is something that we are interested in looking at potentially as well. But of course, this remains to be true, that we’re open to talking with folks to hear things that they believe create unintended harm to small landlords, as long as it does not get at the core of our bill.”

Kadi Ashby, president of the Alden Park Tenants Association in Germantown, testified again in favor of the bills, detailing her experience with black mold in her apartment and what she said was a lack of response from management, which drove her to organize.

The vote

After almost two hours of testimony, the committee members voted again to pass both bills. A date has to be set for the final City Council vote.

“I look forward to talking with small landlords,” O’Rourke said after the hearing, “and I got a few of their numbers today as we continue to have conversations about ways that we can reduce or eliminate unintended consequences on those who genuinely qualify as small landlords.”