Philadelphia’s Affordable Housing Challenge

Philadelphia’s current affordable housing crisis is hardly unique in modern America, but the city’s status as among the nation’s poorest large cities makes the challenge especially acute. Mayor Cherelle Parker’s proposed solution, detailed March 24th this year, is promising but problematic. Facing not just traditional obstacles of costs and political will, the proposal has been unveiled during a period of particular federal hostility toward subsidies of any kind, not the least for low-income buyers and renters.

According to a 2020 Pew Foundation report, Philadelphia’s housing costs are low relative to other peer cities, but because of its high level of poverty, the proportion of its households considered cost-burdened (spending at least 30 percent of its income on housing) is also high. The problem is particularly acute for renters with incomes below $30,000 per year, 88 percent of whom are cost-burdened, with 68 percent severely cost-burdened, meaning they spend at least 50 percent of their income on housing.

Parker’s $2 billion plan, anticipating funds drawn primarily from municipal bonds, aims to create and preserve 30,000 housing units during her first term in office. Spread primarily through seven distinct programs, the effort would, among other things, turn publicly held land (through the city’s currently underperforming land bank) over to private investors for new development while also also providing grants for repairs, subsidies for new mortgages, and payments for back rent.  Criticized by the Philadelphia Coalition for Affordable Communities, formed in 2014, for not doing enough to reach low-income residents, Parker has defended her approach supporting households that do not live in poverty by official measurements but are still struggling.  Often referred to as “middle neighborhoods”  of the kind Parker represented when she was in city council, these areas, though stable, have issues—most usually related to the age of the housing stock—and are not usually eligible for government subsidy.  Assisting these areas could help reduce demand and bring down prices in areas prone to gentrification.

Additional support for Parker’s approach can be found in light of a parallel crisis in public transit. As the Public Citizen recently argued,  Philadelphia’s leaders could boost SEPTA’s operational health by encouraging the development of more housing near what it calls the city’s high-quality transit infrastructure. Such investment where housing density is low, in such “middle neighborhoods” as Germantown and Chestnut Hill, for instance, could well boost ridership and help sustain the system, an approach the Citizen buttresses with the support of a study from the moderate Republican Niskanen Center. No less problematic than federal funding, such broad-based thinking is still worth the effort for any such important program in housing development that is likely to stretch out for years.

It would be up to public housing, then, to expand its historic role in meeting the needs of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Public funding over time has failed to keep up with demand for space or upkeep on the stock that already exists. Currently some 100,000 people appear on various wait lists.  Significantly, then, the Philadelphia Housing Authority has launched its own ambitious $6.3 billion plan, concentrated on remaking its entire housing portfolio while also adding thousands of new subsidized units through new construction and acquisition of privately held properties. PHA President Kelvin Jeremiah speaks optimistically about working with the Trump administration to draw on existing program funding such as Section 8 housing vouchers, which would be used for reconstructed units. Such funding, however, could well not be available according to recent reports. HUD Secretary Scott Turner took the lead in Opportunity Zone funding in the first Trump administration, so there might be better hope in attracting private investment for new construction in underserved areas.

In all likelihood, Philadelphia will muddle through the current housing crisis. This would be a good time, however, to do more than muddle by rethinking just where and how new housing policies can help keep Philadelphia a “city of homes.”  Well before Trump’s election, Drexel University’s Bruce Katz was promoting a “new localism,” which would help metropolitan regional economies become less reliant on federal funding. Not incidentally, he has been instrumental in forming a new national housing crisis task force, and the preliminary ideas generated in this process should become a part of the dialogue informing Philadelphia’s affordable housing campaign.

No doubt national housing policy has become a crucial area of concern when its future remains so uncertain under the Trump administration. As Philadelphia’s leadership grapples with the challenge, we can only hope it takes the opportunity to make the most of a difficult situation to consider innovations in its approach that could help free the city from additional uncertainties created in Washington and realize its ambitious goals at home.

Shopping in Greater Philadelphia

Wanamakers Department Store interior showing historic organ located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wanamaker’s department store was the first department store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the first department stores in the United States.

The closing of downtown Philadelphia’s last department store and the collapse of plans to locate the 76er’s arena on east Market Street have opened major questions, not just about the future of Market Street East but about the role of the city’s core more broadly.

Historically, department stores played a major role in anchoring the region. As population growth accelerated outside the city proper, rail transit connected burgeoning suburbs with the city core, where Philadelphia’s “Big Six” department stores offered not just a vast array of merchandise, but unparalleled opportunities to mix with fellow citizens, enjoy fine dining, and participate in civic rituals. Undoubtedly, Wanamaker’s epitomized the civic element of shopping with its grand court and massive organ offering hugely popular concerts. Appropriately, the 1911 store was designed by Daniel Burnam, whose 1909 Chicago plan epitomized what I have called “civitas by design”—using the built environment as a means of enhancing “the community of citizens.”

As decentralization accelerated in the twentieth century, especially under the influence of the automobile, downtown stores attempted to reach customers where they were by opening branch operations. Strawbridge & Clothier led the way, opening at Suburban Square in Ardmore in 1930 and just outside Jenkintown on Old York Road in 1931.  By mid-century, however, a whole different variation of the shopping experience emerged in the form of regional shopping centers. Taking advantage of an expanded highway network making shopping accessible to patrons from multiple jurisdictions, the new commercial structures offered a great deal of that civic sociability once associated with downtown department stores. As a pioneer in the genre and developer of the Cherry Hill Mall, opened in 1961 in Camden County, New Jersey, James Rouse liked to describe such centers as maintaining all the best features of the city core, without its attendant nuisances. Like downtown stores before them, these centers, which emerged throughout the region, offered a range of social opportunities, including fashion shows, a variety of dining options, and opportunities to celebrate national holidays and other civic rituals. In addition to affording social encounters with fellow citizens, such spaces became a preferred location for social gatherings. A number of former Camden residents who left the city after the upheaval of the early 1970s, for instance, met for years at the Cherry Hill Mall.

photograph of Ardmore Strawbridge & Clothier
The Strawbridge and Clothier in Ardmore opened to the public in 1930 and was one of the first department stores to open a branch in the suburbs of Philadelphia. (Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries)

More recently, as the Internet has undermined bricks and mortar stores, the nature of shopping has changed. As individual consumers go online, they encounter neither the salespeople that once guided them to a purchase nor fellow shoppers, whether known or unknown to them. As habits shifted, shopping malls had to adapt in order to survive. While some followed their downtown predecessors by going out of business, others adjusted by incorporating new uses: medical or civic facilities, hotels, housing, and even sports facilities. Such adaptive uses have staved off the extinction of the building type but left the future of such facilities very much in question.

The same could be said for downtown shopping, as evidenced especially by the Gallery at Market Street East, as the development was marketed when it opened in 1977. Heralded for bringing the best of the suburbs (without its attendant nuisance) back to the city, the experiment never really took off. Plopping the 76ers arena down next to its latest iteration as the Fashion District looked a bit like suburban efforts to enliven shopping districts through the attraction of sports. But because professional games have only a limited schedule, the effect would have been limited. The right mix of intended uses could bring life back to the area, while at the same time helping stitch together nearby elements in ways that could help re-establish the area as a central heart to the region.

As Inquirer columnist Inga Saffron reports, the area already is following one lead from refurnished suburban shopping centers by attracting a mix of accessible recreational activities: paintball courses, Formula 1 simulators, arcade games, and indoor bounce houses for kids located into the spaces once occupied by clothing and furniture retailers. These complement other similar newcomers such as Puttshack, at the Shops at Liberty Place on Chestnut Street.

Such investments could help make downtown a desirable destination for more than just the casual visitor. To succeed, however, planners will need to envision a district that moves beyond novelty to enrichment, and here the area’s position between the soon-to-be-reopened Franklin Square SEPTA terminal and Chinatown to the north and the historic district to the south opens new opportunities for blending education and civic celebration with leisure activities. It’s a combination that makes it possible to imagine something so central to a wide range of area residents as well as tourists as to bring back memories of the importance of department stores like Wanamaker’s.

Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy