Philadelphia judges with rental properties don't pay taxes, follow laws - The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Ramy I. Djerassi is a Rittenhouse Square landlord whose rental property company has been sued by the city several times.

Since 2015, the city has gone after his company, RID Properties, for unpaid real estate taxes three times, and for unpaid gas bills, for unpaid trash violations, and for other citations from the city’s Department of Licenses & Inspections.

There’s one big difference between him and your typical landlord. Djerassi is also a judge in the Court of Common Pleas, an elected position he has held for 20 years. Six of those city cases against his property company were brought in the Court of Common Pleas.

Djerassi, whose portfolio spans more than three dozen units in five different downtown brownstones, said he didn’t remember the city taking his limited liability corporation to court over tax delinquencies.

“I know that we pay our taxes. They’re very high, and we’re current,” he said in an interview.

As of this year, Djerassi’s RID Properties was up-to-date on its taxes but still had two unresolved L&I citations on his buildings, including a fire-code violation that led the city to seek yet another court action against his company in June, according to a department spokesperson.

The judge said he could not speak to any L&I violations, that this was his property management company’s domain — “I’m really beholden to them in terms of response to L&I.” The trash violations were his maintenance people’s fault — “I cannot control how our maintenance people do it other than fire them. We did fire one … because of those trash violations.” As for the unpaid gas bills, he blamed tenants who moved out without paying them.

“Managing real estate in Philadelphia is a challenge for all kinds of reasons,” said the judge, who is up for a retention vote this fall. “But I’m proud of what we’re doing on these properties.”

But city regulations do not absolve landlords from these responsibilities simply because they retained the services of a property management company.

In Philadelphia, dozens of other judges double as landlords. Yet although their courts are charged with upholding the city’s tax and building codes, a string of judges didn’t follow these same laws with their own rental properties.

The Inquirer reviewed the 2022 financial disclosure forms of every Philadelphia judge — about 120 in total — and cross-referenced them with city property, code enforcement and tax records. The analysis determined that:

1. At least 28 judges own property in Philadelphia outside of their primary residence.

2. The Philadelphia judge with the most rental units is Djerassi.

3. Twelve judges did not have the rental licensing required by city law before The Inquirer called for comment.

4. Five judges own income-generating properties — or benefit from a spouse’s — that were the subject of city lawsuits for issues such as unpaid real estate taxes, water bills, gas bills, and trash tickets, as well as unresolved L&I violations.

5. Two Common Pleas judges — Nicholas Kamau and Roxanne Covington — failed to list rental properties on their financial disclosure forms, as required by a judicial order. They also did not have current rental licenses. Neither responded to calls from a reporter but renewed their licenses shortly after they were contacted.

Nine judges renewed their rental licenses after a reporter called. But three still own properties that are not licensed as rentals.

Philadelphia is an outlier among big cities in having no program to regularly inspect rental properties, a 2021 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts found. City inspectors visit just 7% of rental units each year, on average, and only in response to formal complaints.

Pew estimated that 45% of the city’s rentals are unlicensed. As most rentals here are single-family rowhouses that are often “visually indistinguishable” from owner-occupied structures, if a property doesn’t have a license, it’s hard for inspectors to establish whether that property is a rental when they do receive complaints. Tracking down owners who control property through LLCs, as does Djerassi, for enforcement can be even more difficult.

Octavia Howell, who manages Pew’s Philadelphia Research and Policy Initiative, said that missing licenses can be red flags signaling other, more serious, violations.

“Rental licenses are the first line of defense,” she said. “It feels like a benign issue, but these types of things have been related to things like building collapses in the city.”

For example, one unlicensed unit last year that caught fire — killing four tenants — was found to also be missing required smoke detectors. Another illegal rental collapsed during a fire, killing a veteran firefighter.

Patrick Christmas, policy director of the good-government group Committee of Seventy, said these deficiencies were unacceptable from judges and other city officials.

“Our elected officials, including our judges, need to hold themselves to the highest standards,” he said. “If they’re not doing this, why should they expect anything different from the general public?”

He added that there was little excuse for sloppy rental management, given judges’ compensation in Philadelphia. Municipal Court judges, who are elected to six-year terms, make about $207,000 a year, while those in Common Pleas serve 10-year terms and earn about $212,000.

Rental licenses cost $63 a year, per unit, plus a late fee of 1.5% of the cost of the license, per month since the license has expired.

“It’s not as though our judges are scraping by with the paychecks they have,” Christmas said.

‘The city’s fault’

Some judges who did not have the appropriate rental licenses blamed the city.

Common Pleas Court Judge Tracy Brandeis-Roman said the licenses for her husband’s three rental properties were expired because the city was now requiring a lead safety certification.

“You have to jump through some hoops before they’ll let you renew,” she said.

The rental license on Common Pleas Court Judge Ida Chen’s condo in Center City had been inactive since 2020 because she did not receive a renewal notice from the city, said her lawyer, Gary Lee.

James DeLeon, a Municipal Court judge for more than 30 years before retiring in 2021 to run for mayor, owns a four-unit building with his wife in Germantown; its license had been expired for two years when the newspaper called. His wife, Marilyn Rigmaiden DeLeon, who manages the property, said this was because “the city botched the rollout of the lead-based paint requirement for landlords.”

“I’ve been fighting to try and come into compliance for the last 2½ years,” she said, citing confusion over whether she had to get a unit inspected if it was not occupied.

Brandeis-Roman, Chen, and DeLeon all took care of their licensing issues after The Inquirer called.

But others didn’t explain at all.

Common Pleas Court Judge Ourania Papademetriou owns nine rental properties around Washington Square West and Society Hill with her husband Jon Belisonzi. None was licensed before a reporter called. Some licenses were expired for two or three years, while four were never licensed at all.

Papademetriou did not respond to messages left at her chambers. Reached by phone, Belisonzi declined to comment.

Their licenses are now all up to date.

Ignored calls, expired licenses

While most judges updated their licenses after The Inquirer called, three Common Pleas Court judges did not.

Judge Rayford Means has not renewed his rental license on his Southwest Philadelphia rental property since 2015. He has a pattern of not following the rules on this property: A 2007 Inquirer investigation found that Means was running an illegal rooming house, didn’t have the proper licensing, and hadn’t listed this property on his financial disclosure form for 10 years.

Means, who is not standing for a retention vote this year, did not respond to requests for comment.

Judge Deborah Canty reported owning a 16% stake in Jubilee Investment Properties, a company incorporated at the same address where the judge is registered to vote. That LLC owns a rowhouse in West Philadelphia that hasn’t been licensed for rent since 2015. Jubilee also owes $1,256.56 in real estate taxes on that property, according to city records.

The city also sued Jubilee for numerous L&I violations on a Port Richmond property, resulting in a judgment of nearly $5,000 in February 2020.

Canty did not respond to messages left at her chambers.

If they’re not doing this, why should they expect anything different from the general public?

Patrick Christmas, Committee of Seventy

City records indicate that Judge Christopher Mallios co-owns a unit in the Pennsylvanian, just off the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Although he listed a tenant in that unit as an income source in a financial disclosure form submitted last year — albeit with a slight typo in the address — it is not licensed as a rental.

“I do not own that property,” Mallios wrote in an email responding to an Inquirer reporter’s questions. “Be very, very careful what you write about me.”

He did not respond to follow up questions about why his name and home address were listed on a 2007 deed for the condo.

A years-long tax delinquency

One judge has a spouse who has fallen so far behind on property taxes that, earlier this year, the city asked for a court-appointed receiver to manage the property and collect the debts.

Sharon Losier, a Municipal Court judge who was elected in 2016 and former Democratic ward leader, listed husband Picard Losier’s property in Ogontz on her financial disclosure form.

Picard Losier owes more than $6,000 in taxes on the three-story building with a boarded-up first floor. Since 2021, the city has placed more than $4,000 in liens on the property for its real estate tax delinquency. In April, it escalated its collection efforts by filing for the court-appointed receiver.

Picard Losier owes an additional $11,700 to the city in commercial trash pickup fees and work done to address L&I violations.

Judge Losier said that she did not know of these issues and that her husband has been dealing with depression, as well as glaucoma that has made him blind in one eye and unable to drive.

“He’s been going through a lot so I think that’s what happened,” she said.

Her husband “is willing to enter into a payment plan with the city,” she said, adding that the building used to house a radio station but has since been abandoned.

“You know, I’m a senior citizen,” she said. “I have a job that takes a lot and I’m trying to get my kids involved in some things with their dad because it’s obvious that he’s not taking care of it. I don’t know what he’s doing, really.”

This fall, voters will get to decide whether a string of local judges should remain on the bench.

Christmas, of the Committee of Seventy, noted that one of the criteria the Bar Association uses to judge judicial candidates is financial responsibility.

“If we were to use the same system to assess aspiring judges as those that are already on the bench, you would have some red flags go up,” he said. “The voters should keep this in mind.”

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