PA Housing Crisis Worsening As Inequality Deepens, Hearing Finds

HARRISBURG, PA — Pervasive inequality, lack of access to resources, and the lingering impacts of inflation have all contributed to create a widespread housing crisis in Pennsylvania, lawmakers and testifiers at a House Majority Policy Committee hearing said this week.

And it's more than just the impoverished that are struggling to find affordable housing. Skyrocketing rent and cost of living has led to increased evictions and caused those with financial resources to struggle to find a home, the hearing found.

“Rising prices for rent and construction costs continue to displace people,” State Rep. Danilo Burgos, the Policy Subcommittee chairman of Progressive Policies for Working People, said in a statement. “But this hearing helped illustrate that the housing crisis also has a negative impact on equity and environmental issues – forcing workers to commute great distances since acquiring housing near available jobs is not always possible.”

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Compounding deletrious economic conditions, corporate price gouging has overadjusted to inflation and passed the most severe impacts down to the middle and working classes.

"In a country where increase in rental costs have far outpaced wage growth, it is clear that these heightened costs and acts of corporate profiteering are exacerbating an already-existing crisis of housing unaffordability and instability," U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wrote in a January letter that was co-signed by dozens of other federal lawmakers. "Reports of corporate landlords and real estate companies increasing the rent for their own profit are rampant, placing additional strain on already struggling working families."

Multiple members of Pennsylvania's delegation to U.S. Congress were among those who signed on to the letter, including Rep. Dwight Evans and Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon.

Nationally, rent costs increased 8.3 percent for the 12-month period ending in December 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest Consumer Price Index report.

This week's hearing in the Pennsylvania General Assembly noted that communities are simply not producing enough housing options for residents that actually live and work there.

Meanwhile, to help fight back against the growing number of landlords advancing rapacious policies, a group of lawmakers plans to introduce a bill that would seal eviction procedures if the tenant did not breach the lease.

"Renters aren’t the only ones hurt by the current state of affairs — the law as is makes it harder for small landlords who need accurate information about their tenants and who can’t afford to be misled by spurious eviction records," State Reps. Elizabeth Fiedler, Rep. Rick Krajewski, and Rep. Ismail Smith-Wade-El wrote in a co-sponsorship memorandum. "Our current eviction records law benefits a small number of bad-acting landlords who can threaten tenants with frivolous evictions to keep them from demanding safe and sanitary housing conditions."

About 44 million households, whose occupants represent about 35 percent of the U.S. population, live in rental housing. About 19 million renter-households, or 43 percent of them, spent more than 30 percent of their annual income on housing costs in 2021, according to the 2017-2021 American Community Survey five-year estimates released in December.

The Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Violence Against Women Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act all offer some protections for renters, but there is no comprehensive set of federal laws protecting renters, resulting in a patchwork of state and local laws and legal processes renters must navigate.

Michaela Allwine and Jocelynn Ritchey of the Lancaster County Housing and Redevelopment Authority, Holly Beck from the Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, and Lisette Rivera and Stephanie Thomas from Families in Transition all spoke during this week's House hearing.