Injustice in Housing is a Life or Death Matter
Yesterday Jill Porter of the Philadelphia Daily News reported on the death of a man named Roy Parker, a tenant in an illegal boarding house behind the shuttered Ivy Ridge Assisted Living facility in Roxborough. Parker and 9 other low-income residents had been renting 7 rooms at the property, at $450 each, in an effort to rebuild their lives after struggling with poverty, health, and in Parker’s case, even homelessness.
According to the medical examiner, Parker’s death was due to complications from heart disease and hypothermia. Apparently the illegal boarding house had no heat, and Parker died when the temperature outside was below freezing for a full day. While this is a tragedy in itself, those familiar with the history of the property owner, Rosalind Lavin, could have seen this coming.
An article written by Drew Armstrong in the November 13, 2002 issue of the Daily Pennsylvanian covered the closing of the Thoroughgood Home, a personal care facility for seniors and mentally or physically disabled people. The state shutdown the property after reports of “filthy and inhumane conditions”that were “dangerous to human life.” This was the third of 4personal care facilities owned by the Lavins to be closed at thispoint.
Six years later Jill Porter of the Daily News covered the closing of the fourth and final site:Ivy Ridge Assisted Living—the same location of the boarding house where Parker died. This location was also closed for gross violations, where many of its residents were found “lay[ing] in vomit and feces on filthy linen, without enough food or medicine.”
After the closing, however, Lavin attempted to continue to exploit vulnerable people by operating the carriage house behind the Ivy Ridge facility as a rental property.Without permits, fire alarms, or heat, Lavin used the boarding house to supplement a luxurious lifestyle at her multi-million dollar Villanova estate through the little income held by its tenants. The term “parasite” has used to describe this activity.
Yet you don’t even have to rent property to poor people to be a parasite of society. Lavin also owns a valuable vacant lot off of Ridge Ave. purchased in 2004 for$192,500. Given the record of her other “investment” property,this land is probably a speculative holding gaining value from the community activity around it. Under a land value tax as proposed by the Common Wealth Campaign (www.ourcommonwealth.org), this property would see $5,120 annual increase in the property tax, making such a holding nearly unprofitable and force it to be sold off to a more productive owner.
This kind of activity is going on in almost every corner of Philadelphia, with land speculators, house flippers, and downright incompetent absentee owners destroying the neighborhoods and very lives of people like Roy Parker that struggle daily in quiet desperation. Instead of more opportunities to rent or own an affordable home, many of Philadelphia’s poor are denied access to the tens of thousands of the city's vacant properties and forced into substandard or even squalid units at premium prices owned by by wealthy absentees in prosperous areas.
A land value tax will cause the thousands of property owners just like Lavin to begin paying their fair share through the only tax that cannot be passed onto their tenants. And as the tax is further shifted onto land much of the un-or under-utilized properties will be pressured into use, raising the supply and lowering the price of housing for low-income residents.This combination of higher taxes on vacant properties and increased competition in the housing market will eventually help put Philadelphia’s slumlords out of business for good.
