‘Beyond frustrating’: Sheriff’s Office problems prevent Land Bank from buying lots for community gardens, houses

Last May, City Council passed a routine bill that amended the Philadelphia Code in order to preserve the Land Bank’s ability to acquire tax-delinquent lots at sheriff sales.

The bill was essentially a bit of legal housekeeping. It tightened up the city’s land-acquisition process in response to a recent U.S. Supreme Court case in Minnesota over a property forfeiture.

The goal was simple: Enable the city’s Land Bank, a quasi-governmental agency, to protect 90 or so parcels of community gardens from development and continue with its overall mission of repurposing vacant or blighted land into affordable housing and other projects that benefit the public.

The bill passed 17-0. Mayor Cherelle L. Parker — whose administration helped draft the legislation — promptly signed it into law in June 2024.

Yet, nine months later, the Land Bank has yet to acquire the garden parcels at sheriff sale.

In fact, it has been unable to purchase any properties through sheriff sale — for the last five years.

The reason: a problem in Sheriff Rochelle Bilal’s office. Again.

City Hall is losing patience.

“It is beyond frustrating that these purchases still have not taken place, and that the gardeners — people who work so hard and care so deeply about their communities — are still in limbo after years of advocacy,” Councilmember Kendra Brooks, who introduced last year’s Land Bank legislation, said in a statement to The Inquirer last week.

The specific reason for the yearslong problem is not entirely clear, even to some Council members. But it appears to be related to Bid4Assets, an online auction house Bilal hired in 2021 during the pandemic to run sheriff sales.

Angel Rodriguez, executive director of the Land Bank, told Council at an October hearing that his staff is “working out operational issues” with Bilal’s office for his agency to exercise its “priority bid” at sheriff sales.

That process is supposed to allow the Land Bank to buy properties at tax sales without getting into costly bidding wars with other interested parties, and to exempt it from other costs.

“What we’re looking at is the agreement that the sheriff’s department has with Bid4Assets,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said at the time he was hopeful the problem could be resolved by the end of 2024.

That didn’t happen.

The city now says it’s shooting for June.

Jamila Davis, a spokesperson for the Land Bank and the Philadelphia Department of Planning and Development, said: “The Land Bank and the Sheriff’s Office are working out operational details for the Land Bank to exercise its priority bid on the new online platform. We are optimistic that the Land Bank will be able to exercise its priority bid before the close of this fiscal year [in June].”

Davis declined to elaborate.

Bilal and Bid4Assets did not respond last week to requests for comment. Bilal told WHYY last week that the Supreme Court decision in 2023 was to blame for the delay.

Yet Rodriguez told City Council last fall that the issue had already been resolved, and indicated the remaining obstacle was related to fees imposed by Bid4Assets. City Hall sources, who sought anonymity in order to speak freely about internal matters, say the company has either been unwilling or unable to waive these fees for the Land Bank as part of the priority bid mechanism.

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Under Bilal, who took office in January 2020, the sheriff’s office has repeatedly failed to perform even its most basic functions, from securing court buildings to transferring deeds of properties sold at sheriff’s sale.

Sales of most tax-delinquent properties had been on hold for more than three years after Bilal circumvented the city’s law department in April 2021 and steered a no-bid contract to Bid4Assets to move auctions online.

The contract maneuver alarmed City Council and led to a protracted standoff with City Hall that left an estimated $35 million in tax revenue uncollected and undermined anti-blight initiatives around the city. It created a backlog of more than 1,000 tax-delinquent properties that had previously been slated for sale.

The sales finally resumed in July 2024 after city lawyers helped draft a new contract with Bid4Assets.

But the Land Bank, which budgets for land acquisitions each year, says it remains effectively frozen out of sheriff sales. It has not been able to buy land since the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020.

The issue has frustrated Brooks, who has been working for years to make sure that community gardens on longtime vacant land are not taken over by developers.

In 2023, the city set aside $1.2 million to purchase the tax liens to 91 parcels of community gardens from U.S. Bank. The bank owned the liens as a result of a failed city initiative in 1997 to raise money for the school district.

Once the city purchased the liens, the next steps would be for the Land Bank to exercise its priority bid at a sheriff sale and formally take ownership of the lots for a nominal fee, then transfer them to organizations like the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

“In Mayor Parker’s first budget address, she raised hopes that her administration would work with the sheriff’s office to resume sales and get these lots into the hands of communities,” Brooks said. “But we haven’t seen that happen yet.”

Sari Bernstein, a staff attorney at the Public Interest Law Center, said community gardens, in addition to providing a source of fresh produce, have been shown to reduce gun violence, improve air quality, and mitigate flooding.

“Until the Land Bank is able to acquire the parcels, there is always going to be a degree of risk to the gardens,” Bernstein said. “It is really important for the functioning of the Land Bank and preservation of green space that the Land Bank be able to exercise its priority bid and acquire these parcels.”

City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who also has been active in the community gardens initiative, said stymieing the Land Bank’s ability to acquire and assemble lots jeopardized other projects as well. At October’s hearing, she floated the idea of “bringing in a third party to see what the problem is.”

“City Council gave the Land Bank the power to cast priority bids, and a budget to buy land, because we understand how important it is to protect community spaces like urban farms, as well as create land assemblages for affordable housing,” Gauthier said last week. “I hope that the Land Bank, sheriff’s office, and Bid4Assets will figure out how to implement the Land Bank’s priority bid as soon as possible.”

» READ MORE: ‘I feel like I’ve been robbed’: The sheriff’s office still has massive delays in processing deeds from auctions.

Meanwhile, other sheriff sales have been beset with delays. Banks, real estate agents, construction financiers, and individual buyers say are still waiting eight months or longer to get copies of deeds after winning auctions. That process used to take six to eight weeks.

Daniel Bernheim, a lawyer who represents an investor and lender to commercial developers. had to sue the sheriff’s office last year to obtain deeds for his client.

Bernheim, who also serves as a Lower Merion commissioner, said the sheriff’s office finally produced the deeds after he filed a notice to have Bilal deposed. He continues to get calls from other buyers who cannot access properties they purchased up to a year ago.

“The sheriff has shown levels of incompetence which are really hard to classify with words,” Bernheim said. “It’s startling to me.”