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Philadelphia is growing. To complicate things, a few things are making our growth a little more complicated and presenting new challenges. A few staggering facts: between 2006 and ’12, our city has grown by 58,897 to 1,547,607, according to recent Census estimates; Philadelphia is ranked the ninth-most racially segregated metro area in America; and federal standards characterize 26.9 percent of residents as poor.
These are a few facts that Earni Young dug up, a reporter for the Daily News, whose lead feature on Gentrification last week focused on Graduate Hospital and Point Breeze. One compelling assertion is that “1,097 vacant lots and buildings [are] scattered throughout [Point Breeze, between Washington Ave. and Mifflin St. and S. Broad and S. 25th streets, which] mean there is plenty of room for growth.”
Yvette Ousley, an Assistant City Editor and the editor of this story package (as assigned by editor Michael Days), said they aimed “to assess the state of gentrification in Philadelphia and at the same time give people some tools to assist them as their neighborhoods are undergoing change.” “It’s very much about economics,” she added. “Part of what we tried to do was deal with the fact that people coming into neighborhoods are certainly welcome to do that and more people coming to develop helps, but at the same time, we wanted to give people tools to stay in those neighborhoods because if those people stay, then you have diverse neighborhoods.”
Adding some great context, the Francisville resident said “we also tried to move away from the idea that gentrifying neighborhoods, whatever color they are, are victims. The people currently in these neighborhoods have choices – they can sell for lots of money or they can stay,” posited Ousley.
Anne Kelly King, a Girard Estate native who works for 1st District City Councilman Mark Squilla as his chief of staff, said “mostly what we’ve been dealing with regarding gentrification has been Real Estate Tax adjustment through the Actual Value Initiative and providing as many resources as we can for long-term and senior residents.” It’s one of the nastiest by-products of developing neighborhoods: young folks with money coming in and building, pushing up market values and negatively affecting folks who paid for their house decades ago but are feeling the tax heat.
“It’s a hard issue. There’s good people on both sides of this,” Beth McConnell, the Policy Director for the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations (PACDC), said. “The senior who paid off her mortgage 20 to 30 years ago and is on a fixed income and all she can afford is her taxes – what can she do?” Or there may be folks who “inherited a house for $1 and are working three part-time or full-time jobs and they’re struggling to avoid utilities,”
There are a great deal of resources available to long-term residents to offset the burden of reassessed home values. For a home owner like Alda Ballard on Catharine Street, whose home was assessed at $27,100 in 2012 and now it’s $420,000 after 70 years in the neighborhood, there are options like the Longtime Owner-Occupants Program and the Homestead Exemption.
But as Ousley hammered home, this is not only about race. “This is not a black issue solely. There are people in Fishtown and Northern Liberties who are being moved as well.”
Point Breeze may be ground zero for gentrification in South Philly, but it’s not the only neighborhood affected. The largest pressures of development typically come as a result of being close to Center City, where jobs, businesses and services are flourishing.
Bella Vista clocks in as the highest in the Top 10 increasing rents, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute, with a 46 percent increase in rent. Queen Village-Pennsport, at eight, went up 28 percent; East Passyunk went up 25 percent; and Point Breeze also went up 25 percent. Coincidentally, there are no South Philly neighborhoods in the Bottom 10 neighborhoods (where rent is generally steady or declining).
“I would say that the majority of change that’s going on in our neighborhood has been about rehabbing and remodeling existing homes,” said Levana Layendecker, the president of the Newbold Civic Association and resident of the 2200 block of South Hicks Street. Their civic focuses on the southern portion of Newbold: Broad to 18th and Tasker to Wolf streets.
“The bigger challenge is that there are a number of vacant homes that are in need of repair, and we’ve seen most of the new neighbors coming in and fixing up old houses and I think that’s the natural cycle of life in the neighborhood,” Layendecker said. Newer residents sometimes help with cleanups and patrols, something older residents appreciate.
Layndecker hopes the AVI move and tax hikes will help the City provide essential utilities. “A lot of the properties were undervalued for so long, so at some point the market will catch up and frankly, a lot of our problems in the city are because the City hasn’t been able to collect taxes and fund our budget to do basic things like street cleanups and quality of life things that people need like schools and recreation areas and policing,” she argued.
Claudia Sherrod, the Executive Director of South Philadelphia Homes, Inc., 1444 Point Breeze Ave., has called 21st and Federal streets home for 55 years. So she’s seen a ton of change – “oh yes,” she agreed. “It’s getting better now but it was a long time before the city would pay us due diligence. But all the market rate houses are going up, and we’re getting an abundance of help,” she explained. They deliver services for hungry, frustrated and under-worked neighbors. She wants to give people “the tools to defend this crazy environment we live in. Sometimes you’re down because there’s no one there to help you pick yourself up.” One of her office’s invaluable resources is helping draw up wills and deeds for residents, a kiss of death to be avoided, something called Tangled Titles.
McConnell and the PACDC have been advocating for a City-run Land Bank that would coordinate the management, approvals and development plans of empty, privately-owned and City-owned blighted properties.
“We’re an old city with a lot of tangled titles,” McConnell said, and the “Land Bank will be trying to streamline that process,” she explained, noting that the City’s Office of Public Property, The Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation and the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority own all abandoned lots and properties.
“Let’s acquire these private properties and make them available for affordable housing,” she said, adding she and her team look at growth not as dangerous but as an opportunity for improvement: “There’s a real sense of ‘Not Again,’” referring to folks who watched everyone flee to the suburbs and now return to shift violently the neighborhood dynamics again. “We want to use growth not to deepen economic segregation but to attack it.”
Contact Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
Empty lots and abandoned properties are what the Philly Land Bank Alliance will be focusing on, attempting to consider neighborhood input when such sites are sold for development.
Staff Photo By Bill Chenevert
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