Philadelphia LGBT housing project receives 19 million dollars in public financing; dmhFund; Pennrose Properties

Catching up on April's news, we see the CBS Philadelphia affiliate and Marketwatch.com with the story of a publicly financed housing project for the benefit of elderly LGBT seniors.

The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA) voted on Thursday, April 12 to provide a reservation of Low Income Housing Tax Credits --an official "green light" that now will generate up to $11 million dollars for the LGBT-friendly affordable senior housing facility co-developed by the dmhFund and Pennrose Properties. This new public-private housing initiative, conceived in the heart of Philadelphia's downtown lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender neighborhoods, is considered among the first such elder housing facilities of its kind in the U.S.

This critical stream of funding will allow the $19 million project to move forward and break ground as early as September 30th. The co-developers had already raised $6 million from the Commonwealth's capital development program and $2 million from the City's Office of Housing and Community Development.

"For years, developing a unique facility in the heart of Philadelphia's gayborhood where our most vulnerable LGBT elders could live out their golden years was our pie-in-the-sky idea," dmhFund President Mark Segal said. "But today, we can say for certain, that pie-in-the-sky idea will become a reality."

The Marketwatch article goes on to say that the project will not exclude those who are not LGBT. (If it were exclusive to LGBT, I do not know how such a policy would be enforced.) It is legal to create housing exclusively for seniors under certain circumstances.

DNA sampling for dogs at apartment complexes.

The Rosedale Estates apartment complex in Minneapolis has begun a new program for cracking down on tenants that do not clean up after their dogs. From now on, the complex will collect DNA samples from every dog that lives in the complex. These samples will be held by a private laboratory that will compare the samples to dog feces left on the premises. The complex began this program in response to a growing problem that left the outdoors virtually unwalkable. The Minneapolis CBS affiliate has more details.

This program would be legal in Pennsylvania, as landlords may go so far as to exclude dog owners entirely. Landlords may charge dog owners for the initial sampling. Landlords may charge violators for the cost of the comparison testing once a violator is identified. Landlords should be careful to enforce such a program uniformly, as a situation with as high a volume as that at the Rosedale complex would tempt selective enforcement.

I believe that this policy could be enforced even against guide dog owners so long as it is enforced uniformly and so long as it does not appear that the policy exists for the purpose of excluding the visually impaired. Such a policy would invite litigation, so this policy should be restricted for the most severe cases, such as the situation at Rosedale in Minnesota.