New Cityscape Reflects on the Rental Assistance Demonstration and the Hispanic Housing Experience planetizen.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from planetizen.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Rowhouses line North 29th Street in Philadelphia. (Jonathan Wilson/WHYY)
Philadelphia landlords cannot file an eviction without first applying for rental assistance and going through an eviction diversion program under a fresh court order. The unprecedented order, which came late Wednesday night after months of hard-fought negotiations between tenant advocates and landlords, went into effect Thursday.
Claudia Aiken is the director of The Housing Initiative at Penn and has studied 15 cities across the country that have put in place emergency rental assistance programs since the onset of the pandemic.
“Philly stands out because it says you have to apply for rental assistance before you can evict and I haven’t seen that before,” she said.