When tenants at King’s Ferry Square Apartments in South Philadelphia call their property manager, Camden answers the phone. “Hi there!” she says, unfailingly chipper. Camden, however, is not a property manager, nor is she an employee of The Michaels Organization, which owns the building. In fact, Camden is not a human. She’s an artificial intelligence agent, named for the South Jersey city where The Michaels Organization is headquartered.
Earlier this year, Camden started fielding residents’ calls to the building office.
“We can’t communicate with them,” says June Almond, a King’s Ferry resident since 1999 and member of the building’s recently formed tenant union. “When you call AI, they always ask you if you want a tour. They advertise.” Camden would present callers with information tailored toward prospective renters, not current tenants, Almond explains. “It takes too long,” she says, and “when you get to the end, it says no one’s in the office. You cannot leave a message.”
“If a resident wishes to speak with a staff member directly, telling Camden they need to speak to an agent will route the call to our front desk team,” a representative for The Michaels Organization said in a statement, though King’s Ferry tenants have described being unable to get through to a human despite repeated attempts.
That’s been a problem when tenants have urgent issues; Almond recently went without hot water for two days and had trouble contacting management to make a maintenance request. It wasn’t always that way, she says. Under a previous property manager, tenants and management met once or twice per month to discuss building conditions, and issues were dealt with promptly.
I know I’m looking out not just for myself no more. We’re looking out for each other.”
— June Almond, member, King’s Ferry Square Apartments tenant association
This summer, frustrated by their experiences with management, Almond and her neighbors gathered signatures from a supermajority of tenants to form an association under the auspices of the Citywide Tenant Union, an arm of the Philadelphia Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). She’s hopeful that their organizing will encourage Michaels to negotiate with residents. “We got their attention,” she said. At the very least, the tenant union has given Almond and her neighbors a sense of united purpose and power: “I know I’m looking out not just for myself no more. We’re looking out for each other.”
It’s been a busy year for tenants like Almond. The number of tenant unions in Philadelphia has quadrupled since the pandemic, WHYY News has reported, from about five to at least 20, and housing advocacy groups secured an important victory in April when City Council passed the Safe Healthy Homes Act, which was drafted in consultation with OnePA Renters United Philadelphia. The legislative package — a pair of bills that take effect Nov. 1 — codifies tenants’ right to organize, establishes that landlords have a duty to negotiate in good faith with tenant unions, and expands “good cause” protections, which require that landlords provide written justification before ending or deciding not to renew a lease.
A new phase in the fight for tenant rights began on the morning of Oct. 1, when the Citywide Tenant Union of Philly DSA convened advocates, tenants and a trio of City councilmembers — Rue Landau, Jamie Gauthier and Nicolas O’Rourke, chief sponsor of the Safe Healthy Homes Act — at City Hall to launch the End Rental Ripoffs Campaign. Drawing inspiration from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “Rental Ripoff Hearings,” the campaign calls for an end to a range of practices that tenants and organizers view as exploitative, including late fees, “junk fees” and AI property management. (Almond was one of three tenants who spoke at the morning press conference. She and her King’s Ferry neighbors brought signs, one of which read, “Fire Camden. Pick up your phone.”)
Standing behind a lectern on the north side of City Hall, Councilmember O’Rourke addressed the gathered crowd: “Nothing gets me going like that special six-letter word: strike!”
Indeed, the assembled tenants, most of whom wore red T-shirts that identified them as members of the Citywide Tenant Union, were not merely announcing the start of the End Rental Ripoffs Campaign; they were declaring a strike. Beginning Oct. 1, more than 40 tenants from The Emerson and Florence Gardens, two West Philly buildings with tenant unions connected to the Philly DSA, have refused to pay a mandatory $25 monthly fee that their management company, New Age Realty Group, charges in addition to rent. Tenants call it a “junk fee.”
“New Age Realty and our landlord, Ghodrat P. Sholevar, rip us off every month with a fee they like to call the Resident Benefits Package,” Gavin Bartlett, a member of the Emerson tenant association, said at the press conference. “This $300-a-year junk fee grants us access to a laundry list of so-called benefits that entirely miss the mark of what we need as tenants.” According to a copy of a lease reviewed by Grid, perks include a “moving concierge,” “free preventative supplies to clear your drain,” reimbursement for lockouts, and waived brokerage fees when tenants buy property through New Age Realty.
“When you try to actually utilize any of these benefits that we pay for the privilege of having,” Bartlett continued, “you’re met with terms and conditions that make it unclear if you’re actually eligible for them.”
After canvassing more than 65 residents, organizers at The Emerson and Florence Gardens say they found that fewer than 20% of tenants had used any of the perks included in the package. And, lest a $25 monthly fee seem insignificant, the organizers note that the sum of the benefits paid annually by tenants at the two striking buildings is $30,000.
What we’re actually paying for is the privilege of lining our landlord’s pockets.”
— Gavin Bartlett, member, The Emerson tenant association
“What we’re actually paying for is the privilege of lining our landlord’s pockets,” Bartlett maintained. New Age, which manages Florence Gardens and The Emerson, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Tenant unions in Philadelphia and beyond have developed amid a deepening cost-of-living crisis. Pandemic-era rent increases and elevated inflation from the Iran War have left a growing share of renters struggling to afford housing. Organizers cite ongoing protests in Spain, where tenants are demanding stronger protections against rent increases and evictions, as evidence that their efforts are part of an “international uprising” of renters who are feeling the squeeze and fighting back.
“This entire campaign’s focus on affordability is right on time, because the rent is too high,” O’Rourke said at the press conference. “And that’s before we add the junk fees on top of the too-damn-high rent.”
O’Rourke, a member of the Working Families Party, closed with an announcement that he was introducing a City Council resolution to honor the Citywide Tenant Union. “I hope the recognition can serve as a starting gun for your efforts,” he said. The resolution, which “calls upon the individual owner and New Age Realty to come to the bargaining table … and negotiate contracts in good faith with the tenants,” was adopted Oct. 8.
Organizers hope to work with City Council on legislative solutions for some of their immediate demands, like an end to junk fees, but “tenants who are organizing are more ambitious,” according to Rebecca Grayum, co-chair of the Citywide Tenant Union. “They want their elevator to work, but they want more than that. They want rent they can afford that’s not going to go up every year, and they want landlords and leases that are accountable to them.”
The End Rental Ripoffs campaign aims to lay the groundwork for longer-term goals, like collectively bargained leases, rent control and decommodified housing, Grayum says, by demonstrating that organizing can deliver real improvements in tenants’ lives.
Tenant associations are “an experiment in democracy,” says Jax Hebner, an organizer with the Philadelphia Tenants Union, which leads eviction defense trainings and helped win the first “good cause” protections for tenants in 2019. “We’re figuring out how to govern ourselves, which can then lead to how we govern the land.” (The Philadelphia Tenants Union is unaffiliated with the DSA but stands in “full solidarity” with the End Rental Ripoffs campaign.)
One evening less than a week after the City Hall press conference, a group of about a dozen organizers and tenants stood outside The Emerson on Chester Avenue, discussing logistics. “Tape or velcro?” someone asked. Before long, heads emerged from a fourth-floor window, followed by a banner, followed in turn by clapping and whooping from the sidewalk. The banner read: “Ban junk fees.”
Tenants at The Emerson formed a union in February after a power outage — the latest in a series of annual, dayslong winter outages that residents say started after management replaced the building’s failing boiler system with window-mounted electric heating and cooling units. Residents, who didn’t pay for heating before the radiator was replaced, have since reported utility bills as high as $300. They contend that poor insulation and other maintenance issues are partly responsible for the exorbitant costs. “They’re paying for their landlord’s lack of investment in their building,” says Grayum.
Earlier this summer, after the tenant union went public, New Age announced that a new boiler would be installed. Management treated the timing as a coincidence, but residents and organizers weren’t convinced. “The power had been going out every year for at least three years,” says Vincent Montoya, an organizer with the Citywide Tenant Union, “and suddenly, the first year that tenants actually stood up and did something about it, the impossible became possible and now they’re replacing the boiler.”
Likewise, tenants at King’s Ferry Square have made headway in their negotiations with building management since forming their union this summer. Representatives from The Michaels Organization first sat down with the tenant association in September, and then, not long after the End Rental Ripoffs campaign launch at City Hall, residents noticed that Camden’s usual script had shortened. It had become easier for residents to leave messages.
When representatives from The Michaels Organization met again with the tenant association on Oct. 15, June Almond found them more receptive. She thinks that Michaels has paid more attention to the association’s concerns in the aftermath of the junk-fee strike at The Emerson and Florence Gardens. “They know that would be the potential here,” she says. “They know we’re serious.”
Cyrus, a member of the Emerson tenant union who asked that he be identified only by his first name, has lived in the building for six years. He tends to be a “fly-under-the-radar kind of person,” not prone to ruffling feathers, and besides, The Emerson wasn’t as badly maintained as past apartments where he’d experienced “unmitigated greed” from landlords. So when the monthly charge for the Resident Benefits Package first appeared, he didn’t push back. “I’ve just kind of rolled over and taken it all these years,” he said, standing in front of The Emerson. “Until the tenant association really started speaking up about it.”
“$300,” he realized, citing the annual sum of the monthly fee, is “a lot of groceries.”
“Our organizing efforts have shown that they’re willing to make certain changes,” he said. The promise to install a new boiler was one “concrete win,” and he hopes that more will follow.
A resident of a nearby New Age building, who asked not to be named, stopped to ask about the junk-fee strike. He reported having no maintenance issues in his own building, but he was supportive of the End Rental Ripoffs campaign nonetheless. “I have an interest in not being taken advantage of,” he said.
He had a question for Cyrus and the organizers: “What kind of leverage does the union have?”
By that point, residents had secured another banner below a third-floor window, and its message provided part of an answer. “Boycott New Age,” it read. “Don’t rent here!”
Organizers are calling on renters across the city to boycott New Age until the company and Sholevar, the owner of the two buildings, agree to negotiate with the tenant associations as the Safe Healthy Homes Act requires. (Last year, Sholevar paid $900,000 to settle a Medicaid fraud case related to three mental health clinics he operates.) “It’s gonna take some solidarity to win this campaign,” Montoya, the Citywide Tenant Union organizer, says.
Having secured their banners at The Emerson, the group walked a block and a half to Florence Gardens.
Fed up with recurring pest issues and leaks, and equally perturbed by the Resident Benefits Package, tenants at Florence Gardens formed their own association in May. Florence Gardens tenants have also reported that, despite leases in which the landlord promises to keep amenities in working order, a nonfunctioning elevator has forced at least one resident with a disability to use the stairs in the four-story building.
After months of organizing — door-knocking, tabling — tenants at the two buildings are excited to at last take “big leaps” toward achieving their demands, which include a three-year rent freeze, working appliances and pest control.
“I think we’ve scared New Age into potential loss of business,” said Jared Winters, a member of the Florence Gardens tenant association, as his fellow residents secured a “Boycott New Age” banner below a second-floor window. “And I think that is powerful.”
As dusk descended, the assembled tenants broke out in a chant — “No more rental ripoffs! No more rental ripoffs!” — and then, after concluding with a cheer, headed back to their apartments.
