Philadelphia, Stop Blaming the Landlords
By Benjamin Oller, Principal at TCS Property Management · About the author
Philadelphia has an affordability problem. City Council keeps pointing at landlords as the cause. That is the wrong target, and every Philadelphian who rents, owns or works here is paying for the mistake.
We are a local property management company. We maintain homes, answer the 2 a.m. calls, fix the boilers and rehab the houses nobody else would touch. We are not the problem. We are one of the few groups still putting private money into this city's aging housing stock.
Attacking landlords shrinks the supply you need
Every new restriction, fee and mandate aimed at landlords has the same effect: it raises the cost and risk of renting out a home. Small owners respond the only way they can. They raise rents, sell to large investors, convert to condos, or leave units empty.
The result is fewer affordable units, not more. The landlords hit hardest are not big out-of-town funds. They are the local owners with a handful of rowhomes who rent below market and can't absorb another layer of red tape.
If the goal is to make private housing so hard to provide that only government provides it, say so. If the goal is affordable housing, stop punishing the people who supply it.
Look at what government housing already delivers
We don't have to guess what happens when the public sector runs housing. Look around. Too much of our public housing is dilapidated, waiting lists stretch for years, and repairs disappear into layers of bureaucracy.
Even with heavy subsidies, unpaid rent remains a problem. Subsidies alone don't fix a housing system. Good management, accountability and a working economy do.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Philadelphia keeps doubling down on more control and more mandates. The outcome keeps getting worse.
Affordability isn't a Philadelphia problem. It's an everywhere problem.
Housing costs have climbed in nearly every city, country and nation. Insurance, taxes, materials, labor and interest rates have all gone up. Landlords did not invent inflation, and they can't legislate it away.
By national standards, Philadelphia is still one of the more affordable big cities on the East Coast. The real gap is not rent. It is income. At current wages, too many Philadelphians struggle to afford housing anywhere, and no rent rule changes that math.
Meanwhile, the landlords and companies rehabbing vacant, crumbling properties are the easiest political target in town. Taking aim at them always wins a headline. It never wins a single new home.
What City Hall should do instead
If Council wants real affordability, raise what people earn and lower what it costs to build and maintain housing. That means:
- Create jobs. Employers across the region are posting openings faster than they can fill them. Connect residents to those jobs with training and transit.
- Fix education. A city's earning power starts in its classrooms. Better schools mean better wages a generation from now.
- Police the city. No one invests, rents or stays in a neighborhood that doesn't feel safe. Public safety is housing policy.
- Fix the budget. Stop spending to manage the problem and start spending to solve it. Measure every program by results, not by how much it costs.
- Partner with owners. Speed up permits, cut fees on rehab projects and reward landlords who keep rents affordable instead of treating them all as suspects.
Philadelphia, it's time to get back to work
City Hall, pull your pants up, brush your teeth and get back to work. Your landlords are taking the abuse, and your tenants are feeling the pain of policies made in Council chambers.
Stop feeding the problem. Start solving it. The housing providers of this city are ready to be partners. All we ask is that you stop treating us like the enemy.
— TCS Property Management