Your Right to Habitable Housing in Pennsylvania

Every residential lease in Pennsylvania includes an implied warranty of habitability, a promise the law reads into the lease that the home is fit to live in. The state Supreme Court recognized it in Pugh v. Holmes (1979): your landlord must keep the home safe and sanitary, and, as the state Attorney General notes, no lease clause can waive that duty. The warranty comes from court decisions rather than a statute, so to use its remedies (repair and deduct, withholding rent, moving out, or suing) you must be able to show the defect was serious and that you gave the landlord notice and a reasonable chance to fix it. Separate state laws add rent escrow (paying rent into a held account instead of to the landlord) in cities after an agency certifies the home unfit, and a way to keep your utilities on when the landlord stops paying the bill.

What does the warranty of habitability require?

Under Pugh, a defect breaches the warranty when it keeps the home from being fit to live in. At a minimum the home must be safe and sanitary, but the landlord does not have to provide a perfect or attractive one. A court decides case by case whether a problem is serious enough, looking at any housing code violations and at how serious the defect is and how long it has lasted. A code violation helps your case but is not required. The warranty also does not make the landlord repair damage you caused, as MidPenn Legal Services notes.

The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General lists examples of uninhabitable conditions:

• No heat in winter, no hot and cold running water, or no working sanitation
• Rodent infestation
• A leaking roof
• Unsafe floors or stairs
• Broken locks on doors and windows

The Attorney General also notes that lease clauses requiring you to accept the unit "as is" or to handle all maintenance and repairs are unenforceable. If your home was built before 1978, deteriorating paint can be a lead hazard, and federal rules require most landlords of that housing to disclose known lead paint and lead hazards before you sign the lease; see lead paint protections for tenants. For how this warranty compares with other states, see the implied warranty of habitability and your basic rights as a tenant.

What must you do before using a remedy?

Pugh requires you to prove three things: you told the landlord about the defect, the landlord had a reasonable opportunity to repair it, and the landlord did not. No statute sets a number of days; a court judges what was reasonable for the problem.

1. Notify the landlord in writing. Describe each problem and the date you first noticed it. Keep a copy and proof of delivery.
2. Document the conditions. The Attorney General recommends recording the problem and every attempt to reach the landlord; dated photos and saved texts, emails, and letters serve that purpose.
3. Call your local code office. If your municipality has a housing code, ask its code enforcement office or the health department to inspect. A written violation notice is evidence that the problem is serious, and in cities, a certification that the home is unfit lets you use the escrow remedy below.
4. Wait a reasonable time before acting. The Attorney General warns that using a remedy improperly can lead to an eviction if a court finds that you, not the landlord, breached the lease.

Our guide to requesting repairs in Pennsylvania covers the request process in more detail.

What remedies does the warranty give you?

Once the landlord has had notice and a reasonable chance to repair a defect you did not cause, you can choose among these remedies.

Repair and deduct

You can have the repair made and subtract its reasonable cost from rent. Pugh requires notice that describes the defect and says what you will do if the landlord does not fix it within a reasonable time. The cost must be reasonable and cannot exceed the rent owed for the term of your lease. If a court later decides the repair was not needed to make the home habitable, the landlord can get a judgment for the rent you deducted, and if the price was too high, the landlord can recover the difference. MidPenn Legal Services advises getting a couple of estimates first and not using this remedy for a repair that costs more than one month's rent.

Withhold rent and ask the court to reduce it

Pennsylvania lets you raise the landlord's breach as a defense if the landlord sues to evict you for the rent you held back. The court then decides how much of your rent to cancel:

If you lose and the case was only about unpaid rent, you can still stop the eviction by paying the officer the rent listed on the order plus court costs any time before the eviction is carried out.

Pugh measures the reduction by the percentage by which the defects cut your use of the home. For example, if a court found that defects cut your use of a $1,200-a-month apartment by 25 percent, your rent would drop by $300 (25 percent of $1,200), to $900 a month, until the repairs are made.

Keep the withheld rent set aside. After a hearing, the court can order you to deposit all or part of it with the court while the case is pending. Our guide on withholding rent explains the risks in more detail.

Move out

If the breach is material (serious enough to make the home unfit), you can move out, and giving up possession ends your obligation to pay rent under the lease. Document the conditions and your notices first, because the landlord may still sue you for the remaining rent and you will need to prove the breach.

Sue or file a cross-complaint

You can sue to recover repair costs you paid for, or the value of the rent reduction on rent you already paid. If the landlord files an eviction case in magisterial district court (the local court that hears most eviction cases), you can file a cross-complaint, your own claim against the landlord, at any time before the hearing, as long as it is within that court's dollar limit. There is no filing fee, and the judge hears both complaints together 7 to 15 days after you file.

When can you pay rent into escrow?

The Rent Withholding Act creates a separate, statutory escrow remedy, but only in cities: Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton, and the state's third-class cities. It does not cover boroughs or townships.

It starts only when the city agency named in the act (in Philadelphia, the Department of Licenses and Inspections) or the city or county health department certifies your home as unfit for human habitation. From that date:

1. Your duty to pay rent to the landlord, and the landlord's right to collect it, are suspended. The rest of the lease stays in effect.
2. If you stay, you deposit the rent as it comes due into an escrow account at a bank or trust company approved by the city or county.
3. If the home is certified fit within six months of the unfit certification, the escrowed rent goes to the landlord.
4. If it is not certified fit by the end of six months, the money goes back to you, though escrow funds can be used to make the home fit or to pay utilities the landlord is responsible for but will not or cannot pay.

The act says no tenant may be evicted for any reason while rent is being deposited in escrow. See how rent escrow works for the general process.

How do you keep utilities on if the landlord stops paying?

If your landlord pays the electric, gas, water, steam, or sewer bill as part of your rent and falls behind, state law lets you keep service on. One law covers utilities regulated by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, and the Utility Service Tenants Rights Act covers utilities run by a municipality or municipal authority. Both follow the same steps:

1. The utility must notify the landlord at least 37 days before shutting off service, and must notify tenants in writing at least 30 days before, including notices posted in common areas.
2. You, alone or with other tenants, can stop the shutoff or restore service by paying the landlord's bill for the billing period before the notice, usually about one month; the notice to tenants states the exact amount. You do not owe a deposit or the landlord's older debts, and the account stays in the landlord's name. After that, you keep service on by paying each later monthly bill, though from December 1 through March 31, PUC rules bar a regulated utility from shutting off service on an account in a landlord's name except for reasons such as unauthorized use, fraud, tampering, or danger to people or property.
3. You can deduct what you paid the utility from your rent, now or later, or get it back from the landlord.
4. The landlord cannot retaliate for this. A landlord who does owes you two months' rent or your actual damages, whichever is greater, plus court costs and attorney's fees. A notice ending your lease, a rent increase, or a major change to your lease within six months of your payment is presumed to be retaliation, unless the notice is for unpaid rent that you neither deducted under this law nor lawfully withheld on another legal ground, such as the warranty of habitability.

If you have questions about a shutoff notice, the Public Utility Commission's consumer line is 1-800-692-7380.

Are you protected from retaliation?

Only partly. The Attorney General notes that Pennsylvania has no general state law barring landlord retaliation for using your landlord-tenant rights, apart from the utility laws above and a law protecting membership in a tenant organization. Some local governments add protections; Philadelphia's code, for example, bars a landlord from retaliating against a tenant who files a complaint or exercises a legal right. Outside those protections, a landlord may be able to decline to renew a lease after a repair dispute, so check your city's or township's rules before you withhold rent.