Testimony echoed the findings of an Inquirer investigation that uncovered an ecosystem of nonprofits, run by real-estate investors, using the state conservatorship law for their own benefit. Linsey Franklin stands in front of her family's former home in Fishtown. Her advocacy, after she had to fight an Act 135 petition, sparked City Council to call a hearing about the law.The Malesiewskis had lived in their three-story Queen Village rowhouse since the 1930s.
But by 2016, Edward Malesiewski had passed, and his widow, Olga, was in a nursing home. That left the property vacant and blighted — conditions that were the basis for a lawsuit, by the Philadelphia Community Development Coalition and an investor group, to take over the property under Pennsylvania’s controversial conservatorship law, Act 135. Under the law, the nonprofit and its partner were permitted to get control of the property, rehab it, and sell it for $990,000 — more than $900,000 of which went to the organizations’ costs and fees.This time, it’s because the current owners of the home say it’s uninhabitable and filled with mold. According to a recent lawsuit, they lived there for just two weeks in 2023. Then, “they were displaced from the home as a result of the extensive and prevalent systemic water infiltration and damage,” the suit contend