Jack Aloff Obit
Jack Aloff, 93, a tenacious advocate of fair play
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writer
Jack Aloff, the 93-year-old Center City man whose tenacious sense of fair play spurred him to protest his apartment's utility-rate hike to the point of eviction, died Thursday at Hahnemann University Hospital.
Mr. Aloff's daughter, Mindy Aloff, a dance critic and professor at Barnard College in New York, said her father spent the last month at a Center City convalescent facility after becoming ill at home. On Wednesday he was taken to Hahnemann suffering from "respiratory distress."
Mr. Aloff, a wiry bantamweight, was a retired electrical contractor and sometime utility-rate gadfly when management at Park Towne Place, where he had long rented a 12th-floor apartment overlooking the Art Museum, changed how they calculated tenants' utility bills.
He complained that management was improperly trying to surcharge tenants to recoup rising energy costs at the four-building complex at 22d Street and the Parkway.
Other Park Towne tenants also complained. But Mr. Aloff went further, refusing to pay the increase.
"An individual is not really paid attention to if they don't give a damn," Mr. Aloff said in a January interview. "I fight fire with fire. You just can't lie down and be walked on."
Park Towne's management moved to evict him in May 2005, contending Mr. Aloff unilaterally had reduced his rent from $1,600-a-month to $1,450.
Defending himself and filing voluminous block-lettered briefs, Mr. Aloff won a round in Municipal Court but lost the next when Park Towne appealed.
Eviction was set for Jan. 20 and then Feb. 28. A day before deputy sheriffs were to evict Mr. Aloff and seize his possessions, Mr. Aloff got a court order blocking eviction pending a hearing on his claim that the eviction was procedurally faulty.
But by the May 1 hearing, Mindy Aloff said, she had persuaded her father to move to an apartment at the Windsor Hotel to avoid the problem of seeking a new home with an eviction on his record.
On May 1, a judge ruled that Mr. Aloff's case was "moot" because he no longer lived at Park Towne Place. The judge dismissed the case and released $1,450 in escrow money to Park Towne Place.
Mr. Aloff was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard in 1934 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering.
He served as a captain in Army intelligence in Europe during World War II.
After the war, Mr. Aloff relocated to Philadelphia and started an electrical-contracting business.
His wife, the former Selma Album, a schoolteacher, died in February 2005 at age 91. They were married 57 years.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Aloff is survived by a granddaughter, Ariel Cohen, and his 95-year-old sister, Dinah Aloff.
Graveside services will be at noon tomorrow at Roosevelt Memorial Park, 2701 Old Lincoln Highway, Trevose.
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Contact staff writer Joseph A. Slobodzian at 215-854-2985 or jslobodzian@phillynews.com.
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writer
Jack Aloff, the 93-year-old Center City man whose tenacious sense of fair play spurred him to protest his apartment's utility-rate hike to the point of eviction, died Thursday at Hahnemann University Hospital.
Mr. Aloff's daughter, Mindy Aloff, a dance critic and professor at Barnard College in New York, said her father spent the last month at a Center City convalescent facility after becoming ill at home. On Wednesday he was taken to Hahnemann suffering from "respiratory distress."
Mr. Aloff, a wiry bantamweight, was a retired electrical contractor and sometime utility-rate gadfly when management at Park Towne Place, where he had long rented a 12th-floor apartment overlooking the Art Museum, changed how they calculated tenants' utility bills.
He complained that management was improperly trying to surcharge tenants to recoup rising energy costs at the four-building complex at 22d Street and the Parkway.
Other Park Towne tenants also complained. But Mr. Aloff went further, refusing to pay the increase.
"An individual is not really paid attention to if they don't give a damn," Mr. Aloff said in a January interview. "I fight fire with fire. You just can't lie down and be walked on."
Park Towne's management moved to evict him in May 2005, contending Mr. Aloff unilaterally had reduced his rent from $1,600-a-month to $1,450.
Defending himself and filing voluminous block-lettered briefs, Mr. Aloff won a round in Municipal Court but lost the next when Park Towne appealed.
Eviction was set for Jan. 20 and then Feb. 28. A day before deputy sheriffs were to evict Mr. Aloff and seize his possessions, Mr. Aloff got a court order blocking eviction pending a hearing on his claim that the eviction was procedurally faulty.
But by the May 1 hearing, Mindy Aloff said, she had persuaded her father to move to an apartment at the Windsor Hotel to avoid the problem of seeking a new home with an eviction on his record.
On May 1, a judge ruled that Mr. Aloff's case was "moot" because he no longer lived at Park Towne Place. The judge dismissed the case and released $1,450 in escrow money to Park Towne Place.
Mr. Aloff was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard in 1934 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering.
He served as a captain in Army intelligence in Europe during World War II.
After the war, Mr. Aloff relocated to Philadelphia and started an electrical-contracting business.
His wife, the former Selma Album, a schoolteacher, died in February 2005 at age 91. They were married 57 years.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Aloff is survived by a granddaughter, Ariel Cohen, and his 95-year-old sister, Dinah Aloff.
Graveside services will be at noon tomorrow at Roosevelt Memorial Park, 2701 Old Lincoln Highway, Trevose.
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Contact staff writer Joseph A. Slobodzian at 215-854-2985 or jslobodzian@phillynews.com.