{"id":353745,"date":"2025-11-04T00:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T00:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/353745\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T00:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T00:05:10","slug":"lawsuit-philly-landlord-illegally-collected-rent-from-tenants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/353745\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit: Philly landlord illegally collected rent from tenants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have a question about Philly\u2019s neighborhoods or the systems that shape them? PlanPhilly reporters want to hear from you! <a href=\"#Section1\">Ask us a question or send us a story idea you think we should cover.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>The owner of a Mt. Airy apartment complex is facing a proposed <a href=\"https:\/\/pubintlaw.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/25.11.3-Complaint.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">class-action lawsuit<\/a> alleging that he illegally collected rent from tenants while the property posed a \u201cdanger to life,\u201d violating Philadelphia law.\n<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit, filed Monday in Common Pleas Court, alleges that ownership continued to demand and collect rent at Upsal Garden Apartments despite the property being declared \u201cunsafe\u201d by the city\u2019s Department of Licenses and Inspections.\n<\/p>\n<p>The designation, issued in August, was the result of \u201cdeteriorated stone foundation, fractured exterior masonry walls and deteriorated interior floor joists\u201d \u2014 conditions the department determined were an \u201cimmediate danger or hazard to health, safety and welfare,\u201d according to <a href=\"https:\/\/li.phila.gov\/property-history\/search\/violation-detail?address=881099015&amp;Id=CF-2025-089276\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">public records<\/a>.\n  <\/p>\n<p>City and state law requires landlords to keep their properties safe and habitable. In Philadelphia, violators are barred from collecting rent until the property is compliant. To date, ownership has not addressed the violation.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to sleep at night after you see a declaration from L&amp;I that the property is unsafe and that the building may need to be vacated or demolished if the violations are not corrected,\u201d said the Upsal Garden Tenants Council in a statement. \u201cWe just want real accountability and the conditions fixed. Everyone should get to live with dignity, and we won\u2019t stop until that\u2019s the reality for all residents here.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have a question about Philly\u2019s neighborhoods or the systems that shape them? PlanPhilly reporters want to hear from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":353746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,12771,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-353745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-planphilly","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115488510820104251","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}