READING — This spring, a group of advocates asked Reading City Council to adopt a wide-ranging proposal aimed at protecting renters from being priced out of their homes or retaliated against for organizing.
Council members expressed sympathy and thanked the speakers for sharing their experiences. But the discussion focused on whether the city has the legal authority to adopt or enforce parts of the proposed “Housing Bill of Rights.”
A Spotlight PA analysis of the ideas found that several are indeed off limits for Reading to enact on its own.
For example, the city is unable to cap rent increases, as the advocates called for. That power lies with the state, where such proposals have been introduced but not voted on by the divided legislature.
But the advocates did propose actions the city could take, such as strengthening enforcement of habitability conditions.
Reading Managing Director Jack Gombach said Mayor Eddie Morán’s administration “philosophically agrees” with a lot of the ideas in the housing proposal.
“It's just always going to be this delicate balancing act of what legally can we do and offer, and then from an execution standpoint, what does that look like?” Gombach said.
‘Destabilizing and demoralizing’
The Housing Bill of Rights, presented at an April City Council meeting by members of Berks Stands Up and Make the Road, calls for:
Free legal counsel in eviction proceedings.
Disclosure of all fees and charges.
Expanded anti-discrimination protections.
Capped rent increases.
Protections for unhoused residents in public spaces.
Stronger habitability enforcement.
Tenant organizing rights.
Their proposal points to a need for tenant protections in Reading, where nearly 6 in 10 households are renters and the eviction rate is higher than the state’s 7% average.
According to census data, the median household income for renter households in 2024 was $30,465 a year. At that income, an affordable monthly rent payment would be about $760, if following a common guideline that rent should not be more than 30% of monthly income. Reading apartments currently listed on Zillow average about $1,355 a month.
Some of the advocates shared personal experiences with unstable housing, eviction, and dysfunctional landlord-tenant relationships, arguing that many of the challenges they faced could have been prevented or mitigated if the city had better regulations.
Cierra “Cece” Mayo, a 30-year-old massage therapist, told council members she supports a cap on rent increases to prevent landlords from raising rent more than 3%. She also advocated for a “right-to-rest,” which would protect unhoused people, including those living in their cars, from fines or other penalties.
Mayo described how a $577-a-month apartment, originally managed by the Reading Housing Authority, was sold to a private landlord, who then raised the rent to $1,000 per month. After about three years of keeping up with rent, a series of crises — her family’s SNAP benefits being cut, having to help her mother buy food and medication, and a car accident on Thanksgiving — left her behind on rent.
Mayo said she does not remember the judge asking her any questions during her Dec. 4 eviction hearing before ruling that she had 20 days to pack her belongings and leave her apartment. She had asked her landlord if she could move out but keep her things stored until early January, but he refused. She was evicted on Christmas Eve.
“By New Year's Eve, I was sleeping in my car with my dog,” Mayo told City Council members. “It was freezing. What I went through was dehumanizing. It was destabilizing and demoralizing.“
At the same time, her experiences navigating homelessness have pushed her focus to advocacy around tenant protections in Reading.
“It lets me really lean into the community and work with people who are also going through this, so I feel like my vision going forward is just: I don't want this to happen to family members or neighbors or people who are in the city,” Mayo told Spotlight PA.
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Reading can’t cap rent increases
There is no law in Pennsylvania that caps or limits rent increases. However, Pennsylvania’s Landlord and Tenant Act establishes “basic rules for renting residential property,” according to the state Office of Attorney General.
“I believe it is clear that anything addressing rental amounts or caps on rental increases and other fees, as well as enforcement of evictions and similar terms in lease agreements or occupancy arrangements, are preempted by the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951, as amended, of Pennsylvania,” Michael Gombar, Reading City Council solicitor, told Spotlight PA in an email.
Robert Damewood, staff attorney with Regional Housing Legal Services, said it’s not preemption stopping Reading from unilaterally capping rents. He pointed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision in Warren v. City of Philadelphia, which found that the Landlord and Tenant Act did not invalidate the city’s 1955 emergency rent control ordinance. Instead, the court said, the ordinance was valid as long as the housing crisis that justified it continued.
However, “Pennsylvania is a so-called ‘Dillon’s Rule’ state, which means that municipalities do not have inherent legislative powers, only such powers that are expressly delegated to them by the state,” Damewood explained via email.
And while Reading is a third-class home-rule municipality, meaning it has additional powers, it still generally can’t regulate businesses unless there’s a statute that explicitly allows it to.
That means landlords can increase rent as much as they want, provided the increase complies with the lease terms. Generally, landlords are not allowed to raise rent mid-lease unless the tenant agrees to the increase.
There are some legal limits on fees. For example, by law, landlords cannot require a security deposit that is more than two months’ rent.
Over the past few years, there have been proposals at the state level to cap rent, but those bills have not advanced out of committee. Former state Sen. Jimmy Dillon (D., Philadelphia) sponsored a bill in 2023 to create statewide rent increase regulations. Similarly, HB 914, introduced by state Rep. Jim Prokopiak (D., Bucks), proposes amending the Landlord and Tenant Act to include limits on rent increases.
What Reading can do
Even with legal restraints due to municipal authority, Reading could strengthen tenant protections that already exist under state and federal law.
A “right to safe and habitable homes,” included in the proposal, aligns with Pennsylvania’s “implied warranty of habitability,” which requires landlords to provide a home that is safe, sanitary, and fit for human habitation. In Pennsylvania, all residential leases have that warranty, giving tenants the right to terminate a lease or withhold rent if a landlord repeatedly fails to address serious habitability issues.
All Pennsylvania landlords are required to provide safe homes, including basic necessities like water, heat, structurally safe spaces, and functional plumbing. It's up to municipalities to enact their own regulations for enforcement, inspections, licensing, and penalties.
More specifically, advocates want stronger inspections and more penalties for landlords who chronically violate codes.
Gombar, city council solicitor, said the city may have the ability to strengthen code enforcement to prevent landlord negligence.
“As far as the right to safe and habitable homes, that is something that can be looked at, as far as inspections go, to do that on a more regular basis,” Gombar said at the meeting on April 27. He added that it would also depend on whether the administration has the “ability, resources, manpower, and time” to increase enforcement.
Reading already requires all multifamily and rental properties to be inspected every two to five years, and noncompliance can result in fines. Tenants can also file housing complaints with the Citizens Service Center, and the Property Maintenance Division will investigate potential property code violations.
In January, the city reinstated pre-sale health and safety inspections. Reading moved to post-sale inspections for a period because of a shortage of city property management staff, Dave Barr, Reading’s director of community development, said in an interview with the Reading Berks Association of Realtors.
City officials said these inspections can hold owners accountable, enforce maintenance standards, and identify code violations before the property changes hands.
The city does these reviews even if buyers decide to forgo an independent home inspection.
“In Berks County, people are very quick to waive their inspection rights in order to close the deal, and that exposes the tenant, the owner to so much risk,” Gombach, the city managing director, said.
Gombach said Reading has made progress on housing safety and increased inspection volume without slowing down real estate transactions as some had feared.
“I would like to see us get a little more efficient in the processes and procedures that we already have on the books before we seek to expand, because I think we have a good toolbox already to basically address some of these issues,” Gombach said.
The main challenge is finding a way to regulate bad actors without punishing responsible property owners,” said Mark Mohn, government affairs director for the Reading-Berks Association of Realtors.
“Any sort of wide-sweeping measures that are punitive across the board, we certainly would not be in favor of that. We'd rather see incentivization for the good actors, the ones that are doing what they need to do,” Mohn said.
For example, the city could adopt an inspection system similar to Lancaster City’s, conducting inspections less frequently at properties owned by landlords who have strong compliance records, and more frequent, targeted inspections in properties with a history of code violations and tenant complaints.
Damewood said there is “really broad state authorization” for Pennsylvania municipalities to regulate the health and safety of rental housing because of the Municipal Housing Ordinance Authorization Law, which allows them to regulate inspections, licenses, and enforcement.
Another Housing Bill of Rights plank the city could potentially examine is the “right to rest,” which, Gombar said at the April meeting, would involve “looking at the current regulations in place that are impacting homeless people and whether any of that can be scaled back.”
The proposal also calls for expanding anti-discrimination protections for renters to include source of income, household and family composition, and immigration status.
Damewood from Regional Housing Legal Services said this could be partially done. The city could pass legislation to add more protected classes — specific groups of people — that would be protected from housing discrimination. Adding “source of income” as a protected category could face legal hurdles though, because it would make landlords accept what the state Supreme Court calls an “affirmative obligation,” by requiring them to accept Section 8 vouchers.
“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said, you know, wait a minute, that's obligating a landlord to enter into a contract with the housing authority, enter into a contractual relationship with the housing authority, and that's an affirmative obligation, that's not just nondiscrimination,” Damewood said.
Reading already investigates anti-discrimination complaints through its Human Relations Commission. City Council could take legislative action to increase funding and resources to increase the Human Relations Commission’s ability to investigate more complaints.
Free legal counsel for tenants, one of the provisions in the proposed Housing Bill of Rights, would be possible, but would depend on available funding. Reading could fund a program similar to Pittsburgh’s “Lawyer of the Day” program, which sends attorneys and other social services to four of the city’s 12 magisterial district courts.
A 2020 pilot eviction program that increased tenant access to legal advice in one of Reading’s magisterial district courts was hailed a success by housing advocates. An analysis by the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania found that in 2021, orders of possession dropped in the pilot court compared with other courts in the city.
For now, the proposal remains in its early stages. No ordinance has been introduced in City Council.
Briana Rodriguez, organizer for Berks Stands Up, said the group is in the process of setting up meetings with different officials in charge of enforcing zoning code, as well as with the city’s legal department. The goal is to have a final ordinance draft that could be introduced by City Council before the end of the year.