On October 23, 2026, Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) had 124 open imminently dangerous violations and 3,045 open unsafe violations, the latter at 2,984 addresses. You can check any address on the city’s map of open imminently dangerous violations, its map of open unsafe violations or Atlas. An imminently dangerous (ID) finding often ends in demolition within weeks: where a 2024 city demolition address had an ID violation, the teardown began a median 47 days after the first one.
We counted the open lists from L&I’s unsafe and imminently dangerous datasets on OpenDataPhilly on October 25, 2026, and matched the city’s demolition records for 2024 to violations at the same address.
| Item | What we found |
|---|---|
| Where to check an address | Atlas, or the city’s open ID and unsafe violation maps |
| Open ID violations | 124; 63 cited in 2026, 31 cited in 2023 or earlier |
| Open unsafe violations | 3,045; median age 669 days; 14.5% cited before 2021 |
| Final notice on open unsafe cases | 55.7% show a final notice of violation date |
| Owner deadline after an ID notice | Five days to respond (City Controller, 2024); Make Safe permit within 10 days of receiving the violation (L&I) |
| Demolitions started in 2024 | 559: 341 by the city (61%), 218 under private permits |
| City demolition, start to finish | Median 40 days; private demolition permits took a median 143 days |
| City demolition cost | About $25,000–$30,000 for a typical two-story building, billed to the owner |
Unsafe vs. imminently dangerous: what each Philadelphia violation means
An unsafe violation cites section PM-108.1 of the Philadelphia Property Maintenance Code; 3,021 of the 3,045 open unsafe rows use code PM15-108.1, Unsafe Structure. An imminently dangerous violation cites PM-110.1, which the City Controller’s June 2024 report quotes: the code official finds imminent danger of failure or collapse that endangers life, can order occupants out, and posts a notice at each entrance. After that only crews making repairs or demolishing the building may enter. The same report describes the roughly 4,000 unsafe properties as buildings that can become ID if the structural problems go unaddressed.
For an ID building, L&I inspectors post orange violation notices on the door and send the owner a certified letter. The Controller’s report says the owner then has five days to respond by getting a permit to demolish or to make the structure safe, which requires engineering and architectural plans. If the owner does nothing, L&I seeks demolition through the courts; a hearing master in Equity Court reviews the violation, and the court stage can take 30 to 90 days unless the building could collapse at any time. Inspectors are supposed to reinspect an ID property every 10 days in the meantime.
The repair route is L&I’s Make Safe permit, which the city says must be obtained within ten days of receiving the violation. Owners or their authorized agents (design professionals, contractors or licensed expediters) apply. L&I can waive the engineer for certain minor repairs when the violation notice does not require one, and work that affects a neighboring property needs a pre-construction survey, a monitoring plan and the adjacent owner’s acknowledgment.
How old the open unsafe and imminently dangerous violations are
| Year cited | Open unsafe | Open ID |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 (to Oct. 23) | 964 | 63 |
| 2025 | 548 | 18 |
| 2024 | 471 | 12 |
| 2023 | 282 | 11 |
| 2022 | 193 | 3 |
| 2021 | 144 | 17 |
| 2017–2020 | 443 | 0 |
Half of the open ID violations date from 2026, but 31 of the 124 are from 2023 or earlier, and the median open ID violation was 292 days old. The data shows an L&I inspection in the past 90 days for 59 of them (47.6%). The Controller’s 2024 review of 120 ID properties found 49 with no permit to make safe or demolish.
Open unsafe violations stay open much longer. The median one was 669 days old, and 443 (14.5%) were cited between 2017 and 2020. 1,696 (55.7%) show a final notice of violation, and 2,566 (84.3%) had an inspection in the past 12 months. Nearly all (3,037) are assigned to the Contractual Services Unit, the L&I team that handles dangerous buildings. Council District 8 had the most, 668 (21.9%), followed by District 4 (449), District 3 (428) and District 5 (425); District 10 had 18.
How often a dangerous Philadelphia building ends in a city demolition
L&I’s demolition records list 559 demolitions that started in 2024. The city ran 341 of them (61%), hiring contractors itself; the other 218 were under permits pulled by contractors (215) or owners (3). City demolitions held between 275 and 429 a year from 2021 to 2025, while private demolition permits fell from 424 in 2021 to 171 in 2025.
City demolitions finish fast. 340 of the 341 started in 2024 were completed, a median 40 days after they began. Private demolition permits took a median 143 days to complete, and 31 of the 218 expired.
The two kinds come from different places. 246 of the 341 city demolition addresses (72.1%) had an ID violation in the five years before the work started, 128 (37.5%) an unsafe violation, and 312 (91.5%) one or the other. At those ID addresses, demolition began a median 47 days after the first ID violation; the middle half fell between 18 and 123 days. Only 38 of the 218 private demolitions (17.4%) were at an address with either violation.
Who pays when L&I demolishes a building
According to the Controller’s 2024 report, a typical two-story demolition costs about $25,000 to $30,000, and each additional floor about $12,000; brick row homes are taken down by hand because of the neighbors. The city pays roughly 10 approved contractors through curbside bids and then bills the owner. It spent more than $60 million on staff and contractors for almost 2,000 demolitions since 2019 (leaving out 2020) and recovers as little as 3%, about $1.8 million. Unpaid demolition bills become liens on the parcel, and the owner can appeal the penalties to the Tax Review Board. Our property lien search guide explains how to find those liens.
How to check a Philadelphia address for unsafe or imminently dangerous violations
- Search the address on Atlas and open the Licenses & Inspections tab for violations, permits and case numbers (CF-…).
- Check the city’s open ID map and open unsafe map. They show only violations that are still open.
- Read the violation code. PM15-110.1 means imminently dangerous; PM15-108.1 means unsafe. The date of the final notice shows how far enforcement has gone.
- Look for a Make Safe building permit or a demolition permit (DP-…) on the same property in Atlas. A permit shows the owner has started the required work.
- For older or closed cases, use our Philadelphia L&I violations lookup guide, which covers the full violations dataset.
- To report a building you think is unsafe, contact Philly311 with the address.
What to check before buying or renting near a flagged Philadelphia building
- Whether the violation is unsafe or imminently dangerous, and the date it was cited.
- Whether a final notice has been issued.
- Whether a Make Safe or demolition permit exists, and its status.
- Whether the building shares a wall with the one you are considering; repair work there needs your acknowledgment.
- Any city demolition record or lien for unpaid demolition costs on the parcel.
About the open-violation data
The OpenDataPhilly unsafe and ID datasets hold only active, open violations, so closed cases drop off the map; the full history is in the L&I violations dataset. The Controller’s 2024 report noted that L&I’s eCLIPSE system could not export a complete ID list and that inspectors kept a separate spreadsheet, so these counts can differ from L&I’s internal list. Demolition-to-violation matches use the address ID in both datasets. More figures from Philadelphia and other cities are on our building permit data page.
Philadelphia L&I data and City Controller report checked October 25, 2026.