the new urban landscape areas. “these rising johns, pha’s assistant general manager, says the...

At 46th and Fairmount, in the downtrod-den Mill Creek section of WestPhiladelphia, you can stand and watch theurban landscape being transformed.

Amid the abandoned buildings and thetrash-strewn lots, an ever-expanding swathof inner-city suburbia is rising from therubble.

Here are 120 freshly built townhousesand twins, with all-new streets, big back-yards, rear driveways, and wrought-ironfences.

What’s most remarkable about thisimprobable community is that all of it ispublic housing - just like the three grim,

crime-ridden, 17-story high-rises that oncestood on the site, deadening and stigmatiz-ing an entire neighborhood.

And this sort of change is happening notonly in Mill Creek.

Throughout the city, over the last 10years, the Philadelphia Housing Authority(PHA) has demolished old projects andbuilt new communities, with an impact thatcan be felt citywide.

“It’s one of the major factors in the revi-talization of the city’s real estate market,”said Jeremy Nowak, chief executive officerof the Reinvestment Fund, a nonprofitgroup that finances projects in low-income

areas. “Theseplaces werel i a b i l i t i e sbefore. Theyaren’t now.”

S p a c i o u sand open, thenew develop-ments arefully integrat-ed into thecity’s streetgrid; theirpredecessorswere separateand threaten-ing worlds ofdimly litd e a d - e n dstreets andlitter-strewn

courtyards.In the immediate surroundings, crime is

down, property values are up, and cautiousoptimism is rampant.

“Things are a whole lot better,” saidSabrina Williams, 25, who grew up in theold Richard Allen Homes in NorthPhiladelphia and now lives in the new ver-sion. “You got so used to hearing gun-shots.”

Experts say that this transformationqualifies as one of the most significant andleast-noted changes in the city’s overalllook and feel.

“For a while, a lot of people didn’t under-stand what I was doing,” said Carl R.Greene, PHA’s executive director, who, innearly eight years at the helm, has madethe quasi-independent agency into perhapsthe city’s leading force for neighborhoodrevitalization.

“We’re not just building houses to bebuilding houses. We’re creating economicimpact.”

To what degree this approach is helpingthe city’s most needy is another question.

The new low-density developments,which are expensive to build, have signifi-cantly cut the number of PHA-run units - ata time when the number of poor people inPhiladelphia has risen dramatically and thewaiting list for public housing has swelledto nearly 46,000 families.

Richard Allen Homes — its very name synonymous with the horrors of public housing — hasbeen transformed into what might be mistaken for a suburban neighborhood. Tenant EllaLawrence tidies up her unit at 11th and Fairmount.

DAVID SWANSON / Inquirer Staff Photographer

The old Cambridge Plaza on aday in 1986 when a toddlerfell nine stories to his death.

Inquirer Archives

First of three parts

By Larry EichelINQUIRER STAFF WRITER

RISINGfrom RUINS

Why public housing,once the scourge of thecity, now is a vital partof its life and its future.

THE NEW URBAN LANDSCAPE

SUNDAYDEC. 4, 2005

nSince 1996, PHA has put $1.2 bil-

lion - most of it from the U.S.Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment and very little fromcity coffers - into the refurbishing,demolition, reconception andreconstruction of what had beensome of its most notorious projects.

Tasker Homes, a rundown collec-tion of boxes along the SchuylkillExpressway, is gone, replaced byGreater Grays Ferry Estates.

The Mill Creek Apartments, thetowers that once stood at 46th andFairmount, have given way to theLucien E. Blackwell Homes.Southwark Plaza is now theCourtyard Apartments at Riverview.

Removing the old and buildingthe new has caused property valuesto rise faster in those areas than inthe city as a whole, according to areport done for PHA by AppliedReal Estate Analysis of Chicago.

In the blocks surrounding theMartin Luther King Plaza develop-ment, just south of Center City, theaverage sale price of homes rose 161percent from 1999 to 2004, almostthree times the citywide increase.

What PHA has done is hardly thesole factor fueling the growth inproperty values and tax revenues. In somecases, the authority targeted neighbor-hoods that were well-situated for revival.

Residents appreciate all that haschanged.

“It is so quiet,” said Helen Gates, 68, wholives in a two-story, three-bedroom unit atFalls Ridge, the new PHA development inEast Falls, along with her daughter, grand-daughter and great-granddaughter. “Theonly thing you might hear is the sound ofchildren playing, and you don’t mind thatat all.”

Houses come equipped with dishwash-ers, garbage disposals, off-street parking,and central air-conditioning.

Eligibility rules have been changed in anattempt to create a more positive socialenvironment. The aim is to keep out peoplewith criminal records and drug historieswhile creating a larger complement ofworking-class families.

In some locations, homes are availablefor purchase at subsidized prices by fami-lies making as much as $55,000 a year, and

demand has been strong.“The implications are clear,” said Mayor

Street, who serves as PHA chairman.“Families are no longer running from pub-lic housing but are willing to live near PHAsites.”

Over the last decade, other cities havemade similar changes, taking advantage ofa Clinton-era federal program known asHOPE VI, with HOPE standing for HousingOpportunities for People Everywhere.

Indeed, Philadelphia was something of alatecomer in terms of knocking down oldprojects and trying to replace them withsomething better.

But along with Chicago, Atlanta andWashington, the city has been among themost successful in securing multimillion-dollar grants from the program.

Other cities in the region, notablyCamden and Chester, also have receivedHOPE VI money. In Camden, the housingauthority used some of it to demolish anold-style project, Westfield Acres, and toreplace it with a widely praised, suburban-

style, mixed-income communityknown as Baldwin’s Run.

PHA has been creative in find-ing other financing sources - suchas private capital raised throughthe state-run, federally fundedLow Income Housing Tax Creditprogram - to keep the transfor-mation going.

While the new housing is uni-versally considered a vastimprovement over the old, thechange is not without its critics.They say, among other things,that the new housing costs toomuch to build, that it looks toosuburban, and that not enough ofit is available to the people whoneed it most.

Construction of the new unitsruns about $250,000 apiece,according to PHA data.

“Can this approach possibly becost-effective at $250,000 per

copy?” asked Howard Husock, an expert onhousing and social policy at HarvardUniversity’s Kennedy School ofGovernment. “Not if the question is what’sthe best way to help the poor advance.”

A study done for the Reinvestment Fundin 2002 found that the cost of government-subsidized residential construction ranabout 23 percent higher than private work.

PHA officials say the average cost of theunits themselves is roughly $190,000; the$250,000 figure includes the cost of newstreets, underground utility lines, and com-munity centers.

Greene calls the cost question a “validconcern” but urges a broader perspective.

“We’re serving the poor, undoing themistakes of the past, creating new assets,increasing property values,” he said. “Wethink that when you look at all those bene-fits, you could have never gotten a privatedeveloper to do those projects and servethose public purposes.”

As for the architecture, residents love thesuburban feel of the new developments.

The transformation of public housingThe suburban nature ofPhiladelphia’s new public housing isapparent in this southwest-facingview of the Center City skyline from11th and Parrish Streets. The neigh-borhood is part of Richard AllenHomes, just a few blocks northeastof Center City.


But some planners say that the layoutsseem out of place in rowhouse neighbor-hoods.

“In my mind, it’s just inappropriate forits context,” said Tim McDonald, aKensington-based architect. “Good archi-tecture and good urban planning beginwith appropriateness.”

Michael Johns, PHA’s assistant generalmanager, says the suburban look at somesites is intentional and points to one phaseof the Richard Allen Homes as an example.

“To get anyone to come to NorthPhiladelphia, it better look like somethingdone by Toll Bros.,” he said. “It had to bedramatic if we were going to change peo-ple’s notions about public housing. Wewere making a statement.”

Advocates for the poor worry about theoverall supply of affordable housing inPhiladelphia. The old, demolished projectshad twice as many units as the new ones.

To some degree, such reductions in num-bers were inevitable; the density of the oldprojects helped make them unlivable. Butat a time when demand for affordablehousing is rising and PHA waiting lists areswelling, having fewer units is a problemfor the city.

And there’s the question of who gets tolive there.

While 64 percent of PHA renters city-wide have incomes of less than $10,000,two-thirds of units at some of the new sitesare reserved for families making $20,640to $34,400 (which is 30 to 50 percent ofthe area’s median income for a family offour). Other rule changes also have openedthe doors to those who, while far from rich,

are not quite poor.“This raises the broader issue: Who

should public housing’s customers be?”said John Kromer, a former city housingdirector. “In the late 1980s and early 1990s,the neediest and the homeless were the pri-ority. Now, it’s decent families.”

This isn’t the first time the nature of pub-lic housing in America has changed.

Long considered a policy disaster, the

program was created during the GreatDepression, with Philadelphia’s first proj-ects, including Richard Allen, opening in1941.

The original concept was that the hous-ing would provide temporary shelter forworking people who had fallen on hardtimes. But it didn’t work out that way.

By the early 1970s, many families hadbecome permanent residents, and publichousing was known for dehumanizingarchitecture, slipshod maintenance andracial segregation. Historian John Baumancalled Philadelphia’s projects “publiclyowned slums.”

In 1975 alone, the twin towers ofSchuylkill Falls hosted three murders, fourrapes, and 159 robberies or assaults. Thehigh-rises were abandoned a year later.

“I’d go to work at Schuylkill Falls with a.38-caliber revolver in my belt and a bigstick in my hand,” recalled Joseph Petrone,a former PHA maintenance supervisor.“The stick was for the German shepherdspeople kept tied to their doorknobs. Thehalls were covered with trash because thedogs would tear up the trash bags. We’dfind bodies in the elevator shafts; the kidswould play there, get stuck, and fall or getcrushed.”

Conditions continued to deteriorate intothe 1990s. No new projects were built. PHAdeveloped a reputation as a dysfunctional

The innocence of childhood had a sinister backdrop in 1975: the hulking Schuylkill Fallsproject in East Falls. That year alone, there were three murders, four rapes, and 159 rob-beries or assaults there.

Inquirer Archives

DAVID SWANSON / Inquirer Staff PhotographerThe green hills of home: The new Falls Ridge public housing development, seen from theSchuylkill Expressway, replaced Schuylkill Falls.

agency - so much so that HUD took it overfor a year.

Then along came HOPE VI. Enacted in1992, the federal program for demolishingthe old projects took off in the mid-1990safter it was reshaped by President Clinton’sHUD secretary, Henry G. Cisneros. Newregulations called for fewer units and moreof an income mix.

“The vision was that concentrated pover-ty was damaging not just to the people liv-ing there but to the entire city,” said BruceKatz, who was Cisneros’ chief of staff at thetime. “This was a dramatic revolution insocial policy.”

Raymond Rosen in North Philadelphiawas the first local project to be demolished,falling in 1995. Mill Creek was the mostrecent, coming down in 2002.

“In the old developments,” Greene said,“people were forced to live like the castoffsof society because they were treated likecastoffs. Today, they’re treated likeupstanding, contributing members of soci-ety.”

nPHA still has plenty of work to do.The new Martin Luther King Plaza is

only about half-complete six years after theold towers were demolished. Constructionin East Falls has moved at a similar pace.

Asked for an explanation, Greene notedthat in both of those cases PHA initiallyhanded over responsibility for constructionto a for-profit company, PennroseProperties, and a nonprofit, UniversalCommunity Homes. In 2004, PHA tookover greater control of Martin Luther King,

and it hopes to do the same in East Falls.Over the next six years, plans call for

building an additional 1,560 units, one-fourth of them to be sold to low- and mod-erate-income families, at eight locations.

With diminished federal funding, it’s anambitious plan.

And if reducing concentrations of pover-ty is the goal, Philadelphia still has miles togo.

A report earlier this year by theBrookings Institution found that 28 per-cent of Philadelphia’s poor live in neighbor-hoods of extreme poverty, seventh-highestamong the nation’s 50 largest cities.

Contact staff writer Larry Eichel at215-854-2415 [email protected].

As she considers what has become ofpublic housing in Grays Ferry, longtimeneighborhood resident Mary Umbrell is oftwo minds.

Yes, the old project, Tasker Homes, wasan eyesore, and its replacement, GreaterGrays Ferry Estates, is anything but.

And yes, property values are on the risein Grays Ferry, at least in part because ofthe $165 million of public and privatemoney that the Philadelphia HousingAuthority (PHA) has invested in the newdevelopment, its most ambitious to date.

But to a lot of people in this working-class corner of South Philadelphia, there’ssomething wrong when the public housinglooks nicer than the private housing - espe-

cially when those private homes belong toyou.

“Economically, I give it all a big plus,”Umbrell said of the new construction. “Interms of fairness to the neighbors, I give ita minus 99.”

All over the city, neighborhoods arelearning to live with the new public hous-ing. In most cases, the learning process is apleasant one.

In North Philadelphia and Grays Ferry,in West Philadelphia and East Falls, theforbidding towers and barracks-like com-pounds that bred crime and drug use aregone, replaced by attractive, open, low-risecomplexes with amenities such as centralair-conditioning.

The changed mix of people is widelyviewed as an improvement as well. New eli-gibility standards guarantee that a largerpercentage of residents are working peopleas opposed to welfare recipients.

But each neighborhood has distinctissues and concerns - pressuring PHA tolive up to its commitments, or making theresidents of public housing feel they arepart of the community, or worrying aboutgentrification.

In Grays Ferry, the problem is deeper,and residents of public housing know it.Listen to Marguerite Harris, a leader of theresidents’ council inside the development.

“They [the neighbors outside] don’tthink we deserve anything this beautiful,”she said from the living room of the year-old, two-bedroom unit she shares with hergrandson. “If you look at their houses andour houses, there’s a heck of a difference. Iknow they’re talking. If I was living outside,I’d probably be talking about it, too.”

Many of the disgruntled neighbors out-side are white. Almost all of the residentsinside are black.

Grays Ferry has a history of racial ten-sion. This is where then-PoliceCommissioner Frank L. Rizzo, nightsticktucked inside his tuxedo cummerbund,came in 1969 to break up a racial con-frontation. This is where Nation of Islamleader Louis Farrakhan joined marchers toprotest racial violence in 1997.

The current resentment among neigh-borhood whites is directed more at PHA

The walk home from school takes on the glow of a late-fall idyll for three boys in the newGreater Grays Ferry Estates.


MIXEDBLESSINGS

Both delight andenvy greet the newpublic housing.


The former Tasker Homes project, in 1992. It’snow Greater Grays Ferry Estates, PHA’s mostambitious turnaround.

Inquirer Archives

Second of three parts


MONDAYDEC. 5, 2005

than the tenants. The problem, said RobertGormley Jr., president of the Grays FerryCommunity Council, is that no income-eli-gible residents of Grays Ferry have beenadmitted into the development - where alot of people are paying rents of $200 permonth.

Having a few locals there, Gormley said,would help ease hard feelings: “We’re thelast ones to have a chance to live in thatbeautiful community.”

PHA Executive Director Carl R. Greenedenies there has been any conscious effortto shut out neighborhood residents. Hesays they were slow to apply for housingwhen the development was being built -when they would have received preference- but they remain welcome to apply now.

Despite the strains, groups inside andout, black and white, are seeking to forgelinks between the public housing and therest of Grays Ferry.

The Greater Grays Ferry Brotherhood, acommunity organization based inside thedevelopment, is working with other groupsto try to restore Lanier Playground, a vast,trash-strewn square block on the develop-ment’s northern border.

This summer, the brotherhood’s leader,

Michael Johnson, organized a block partyon the 1700 block of South 29th Street. Oneside of the street is mostly black publichousing; the other is mostly white privatehomes. Although few whites came, a posi-tive signal was sent.

“There are a lot of old wounds here,”Johnson said. “But this is a new day.”

West PoplarThe neighborhood known as West

Poplar - just north of Center City, just southof Temple University - always had develop-ment potential based on its location.

The problem was the public housing.For years, the neighborhood was domi-

nated visually by the two 14-story towers ofCambridge Plaza, and psychologically byRichard Allen Homes, a vast, eight-square-block sprawl of run-down three- and four-story buildings.

At one point in the 1980s, only one inevery 14 households in Richard Allen hadeven one person working. It was a depress-ing and frightening place.

Now, those crime-infested fortresseshave been replaced by attractive one- and

Renewal begets its own problems

Marguerite Harris fetches the morning newspaper from the lawn of her home on South Hollywood Street in GreaterGrays Ferry Estates.


“They [the neighbors

outside] don’t think we

deserve anything this beauti-

ful. If you look at their houses

and our houses, there’s a heck

of a difference. I know they’re

talking. If I was living outside,

I’d probably be talking about

it, too.”

Marguerite Harris, Greater Grays FerryEstates resident

MIKE PLACENTRA / Inquirer StaffArtist

Sources: ESRI; TeleAtlas

two-story homes with yardsfront and rear. Where oncethere were 1,696 units of publichousing, now there are 532.Where once there was concreteand shadow, now there is brickand grass and sky.

And that long-smotheredpotential is starting to be real-

ized.“You’d have to be an idiot not

to want to live in this neighbor-hood now,” said Margie Pierce,who runs the West PoplarNeighborhood AdvisoryCouncil. “This is going to be likethe Art Museum area.”

Signs of revival are every-

where. In the blocks just northof Spring Garden Street, indi-vidual rowhouses are beingrehabbed.

In the vacant, overgrown lotsalong 10th and Wallace Streets,back near the train trestle,developer Lawrence Rust plansto build 52 townhouses, 20 con-dominiums, and 5,000 squarefeet of commercial space. Hecalls it Spring Arts Point.

A few blocks away, at 11thand Brandywine, developerAbby Schiff is proposing to con-vert the nine-storyIndependence Press buildinginto Brandywine Loft, with 110condos priced from $195,000to $1.2 million.

“There’s no way you’d havethese plans without the changesin public housing,” said CityCouncilman Darrell L. Clarke,who represents the area.

In the virtually all-blackareas closer to Girard Avenue,old-timers marvel at the sightof white people passing throughon foot and on bikes, lookingutterly comfortable and unhur-ried.

After years offocusing on sur-vival, the old-timers are startingto worry about theside effects of revi-talization, such asrising property-taxbills and higherrents.

“I would like to

meet one person who couldhonestly say they predicted thatthis area would take off the wayit has,” said Muriel Reviere,who lives in one of theNehemiah Homes, a group ofmodest, owner-occupied hous-es built with federal subsidiesin the late 1990s. “If you findone, put him on a lie detector.We’ve just proven everybody sowrong.”

The change for the betterbegan in 1998, when much ofRichard Allen was demolished.The high-rises at CambridgePlaza were razed three yearslater. Redevelopment movedforward in phases, with thefinal step, the completion ofCambridge, coming this pastsummer.

“Most people appreciate thechange, and they’re taking careof their places,” said WendyWashington, who has spentmost of the last 30 years inCambridge Plaza.

This is not to say that thechanges in public housing havemade every urban problem goaway.

West Poplar still struggleswith drugs and violence; neigh-bors point in particular to twocorners - 11th and Parrish, 10thand Brown - where young menhang out day and night.

There still are vacant lots andempty homes, unemploymentand poverty.

There has been little newcommercial development; a

The old Independence Press building at 11th and Brandywine is set to become110 condos. This private-sector project likely would not have occurred absent therenovation of nearby housing.

The corner of 10th and Brown Streets, in the new RichardAllen Homes, exhibits a neighborhood resolve to be drug-free.

The Word War-II era origins of the old Richard Allen Homes — theywere built in 1941 — are evident in this October 1954 photograph. itwas one of Philadelphia’s first public-housing projects.

Inquirer Archives

shopping center on GirardAvenue stands fenced-off andderelict. The area needs a gro-cery store, and those planned,upscale residential develop-ments have yet to breakground.

But in West Poplar, with thenew public housing,the future looks farbetter than the past.

East FallsThe transforma-

tion of public hous-ing in East Falls hasbeen decades in themaking. And it’s notover.

It has been 29years since the mas-sive twin 15-storytowers known asSchuylkill Falls wereclosed, deemed unfitfor human habita-tion; nine yearssince their implo-sion; six since resi-dents were movedout of the low-riseunits on site.

Now, at long last,a new neighborhoodis taking shape onthe hillside over-looking RidgeAvenue. When fin-ished, it will offer abroad range of pub-lic and private hous-ing for the poor andthe middle class.

Already in place,as part of PHA’sFalls Ridge develop-ment, is a four-story,50-unit building forseniors as well as 45townhouses and 40apartments for thepoor and near-poor,rentals all. Still tocome are 28 homes for sale on asubsidized basis.

On the other side of MerrickRoad, market-rate housing -townhouses, condominiumsand apartments - is to be builtby Westrum Development Co.

on land it has agreed to pur-chase from PHA for $2.8 mil-lion.

Getting this far has been astruggle.

After the towers wereimploded, PHA initially prom-ised a mixed-income communi-

ty for the site. But when theauthority announced plans tobuild low-income housing first,East Falls residents filed suit infederal court in 2001, seekingto force PHA to make good onits pledges.

The lawsuit’s settlement twoyears later led to the authority’splans to sell some of the land toWestrum for market-rate hous-ing.

Now, longtime residentshave a new set of concerns.

One is the need to fill the

half-dozen storefronts that runthe length of the seniors’ build-ing along Ridge Avenue. Allhave stood vacant since thebuilding opened early in 2004,although a bank is moving intoone.

Filling those storefronts withneeded services would helpintegrate the development withthe rest of East Falls. Emptyspaces send a signal that some-thing is wrong.

Greene, PHA’s executivedirector, blames the site man-

ager, PennroseManagement, forthe delay. KimberlyA. Fry, Pennrose’spresident, said thather company negoti-ated with PHA for 18months beforesecuring a go-aheadin August to leasethe stores.

The conflict,which extends toother matters, hasnot been resolved;the authority hasfiled a formal noticein Common PleasCourt of its intentionto sue Pennrose andto oust it from FallsRidge.

A second concernis the size of theWestrum market-rate development.

Current plans callfor 318 units to bebuilt in two phases.Sharon Jaffe, presi-dent of the EastFalls CommunityCouncil, noted thatthe number is“more than origi-nally proposed.”

It’s also more,three times more,than PHA thoughtWestrum plannedto build. Kirk Dorn,the authority’sspokesman, saidthe total must comedown, or else the

Westrum deal wouldbe in jeopardy.

Longer-term is the challengeof making the residents of FallsRidge feel a part of East Falls.

The early signs of a comingtogether are positive. This fall, anumber of Falls Ridge residentsattended the “Ribs, Rhythm &

In East Falls, public housing has a new name and look. This is Falls Ridge, a low-density development with a suburban feel


For decades, this was the face of public housing in East Falls.Schuylkill Falls, abandoned in 1976, was not razed until 1996.

Inquirer Archives

Blues” picnic that marked thebeginning of the East Falls FallFestival.

“We feel very welcome,” saidJoyce Siler, who lives in theseniors building. “It’s our com-munity now, and we care aboutit, too.”

Mill CreekFor the Mill Creek area of

West Philadelphia, the newLucien E. Blackwell Homes area stunning upgrade.

In a 100-year-old neighbor-hood with dozens of abandonedand crumbling homes, the low-rise, red-brick, suburban-styledevelopment around 46th andFairmount represents urbanrevitalization at its most ambi-tious.

The project, which includes40 houses that are being sold atsubsidized prices, stands onland once occupied by the MillCreek Apartments. Those three17-story towers, razed in 2002,were among the worst of PHA’shousing stock.

While the area isn’t far fromthriving University City, it’smuch closer to the site of theLex Street massacre, where

seven men were shot to death ata crack house five years ago.

So it’s not the kind of placeprivate builders would havechosen to redo on their own.The locals know and appreciatethat.

“The redevelopment is a wel-come change,” said the Rev.Terrence Hensford of WardA.M.E. Church at 43d andAspen. “The neighborhoodneeds it. No one is reallyagainst it.”

Yet, there is some tensionhere - over the plans of PHA(with help from the cityRedevelopment Authority) tobuy vacant lots and some exist-ing homes to extend the devel-opment eastward.

Moving beyond the footprintof the previous housing projectis an ambitious undertaking.And the extension would not beone contiguous mass; rather, itwould be groups of new houses,160 in all, throughout the oldneighborhood.

The goal, Greene said, is tomake sure that PHA’s invest-ment in Blackwell Homes does-n’t get swallowed up by the sur-rounding blight.

Neighbors, though, worrythey may be forced out just as

their Mill Creek community ispoised for the better.

“They want to push out thepeople who grew up here,” saidRosetta Winston, 54, who livesin the 600 block of North PallasStreet. “They want to bring thepeople from the suburbs backinto the city, make it cheaperand easier for them.”

In September, angry home-owners won promises from thecity that no owner-occupiedstructure would be taken with-out the owner’s consent. Evenso, suspicions persist.

“Those new houses downthere are beautiful,” said TedMuse, 71, a retired butcher whohas owned a home in Mill Creeksince 1966. “But if they tell meto move, I’m not going. I’ll go tojail first.”

At a City Council hearing inSeptember, the Rev. JosephOkonski, pastor of St. Ignatiusof Loyola Roman CatholicChurch at 43d and Wallace,summarized the feelings of theneighborhood:

“We are very grateful for allthat is happening, but the peo-ple who are still living herehave lived here for years andhave lived through a lot of diffi-culties.

“They’ve endured crime.They’ve endured the drugs.They’ve endured all the aban-doned homes. And it is theirneighborhood.”

Down with the old, up with the new: At left, the three high-rise towers of Mill Creek Apartments came crashing down inNovember 2003.Above, the Lucien E. Blackwell Homes that replaced them.

MIKE PLACENTRA / Inquirer StaffArtist

Sources: ESRI; TeleAtlas


The recent transformation ofpublic housing in Philadelphiahas been good for the peoplewho live in the new develop-ments, good for the surround-ing neighborhoods, good forthe look and feel of the city.

But the move to suburban-style homes and apartmentshas not benefited many of thecity’s lowest-income residents.

Today, nearly 46,000 fami-lies have their names on wait-ing lists for various forms ofpublic housing, including fed-erally subsidized vouchers.

That compares with 13,000in 1997, when the PhiladelphiaHousing Authority (PHA) wasjust beginning the demolitionand rebuilding of its crowdedand crime-infested projects.

“You look at the supply, youlook at the need, and the gap is

extraordinary and getting big-ger,” said George Gould, whoheads the housing practice atCommunity Legal Services.“The housing available for thelowest-income people has beendramatically reduced.”

The lower density of the newdevelopments makes themmore attractive, physically andsocially, than their much-maligned predecessors. But thechange means fewer units in acity with a vast shortage ofaffordable housing.

And thanks to new eligibilityrules designed to create abroader, more stable incomemix, thousands ofPhiladelphians are actually toopoor to qualify at some sites.

Kenknisha Patterson, 29,who was staying at a homelessshelter in North Philadelphia

last week with three of her fourchildren, has been on the PHAwaiting lists for five years.

“It’s really frustrating,” saidPatterson, a former welfarerecipient who works the frontdesk at a suburban hotel. “If Icould get some help from PHA,I’d use it as a stepping stone. Iwant to be a homeowner. That’smy dream.”

To some degree, PHA offi-cials say, the long waiting listsare a vote of confidence; manyof the people on it have placesto live now but are drawn to thenew PHA developments.

Beyond that, though, theauthority acknowledges it can-not keep up with the demandfor low-cost housing, not whenthe number of Philadelphiansliving in poverty rose by 34,000during the 1990s, according tothe census.

Nora Lichtash, of theWomen’s CommunityRevitalization Project, saysthere is a “crisis” in affordablehousing; a 2003 study by theUniversity of Pennsylvania esti-mated that Philadelphia has57,000 fewer such units than itneeds.

Over the last decade, thenumber of public housing unitsin the city has fallen from21,000 to fewer than 15,700.

The loss is most pronouncedat sites the authority has rebuiltfrom the ground up.

Richard Allen Homes inNorth Philadelphia went from1,324 units to 408, SouthPhiladelphia’s Martin LutherKing Plaza from 537 to 245.

PHA has made up the gapwith Housing Choice Vouchers- once known as Section 8 - cre-

Still not where she wants to be, Eva Kelly says she feels trapped inher 10th-floor unit at the older Fairhill Apartments. She wants toreturn to Cambridge Plaza, which is now completely rebuilt.


Last of three parts


A longer wait for housingFor the poor, new units aren’t nearly enough.


TUESDAYDEC. 6, 2005

ating tensions in some struggling neighbor-hoods.

The number of families using vouchers,which function as rent subsidies in the pri-vate market, has risen from about 8,500 in1998 to 16,614 now. The waiting list forvouchers grew so long that PHA closed it in2001.

At the same time, in keeping with feder-al policy, PHA has shifted some of itsefforts toward serving people who areabove the poverty line - not just the poorestof the poor.

Two-thirds of the units in some PHAdevelopments are reserved for familiesmaking $20,640 to $34,400. New PHAhouses are being sold to families making asmuch as $55,040.

“For people making less than $20,000,these changes are devastating,” said NancySalandra of the Philadelphia AffordableHousing Coalition.

In new developments financed thoughfederal tax credits - which help attract pri-vate investment capital for affordable hous-ing - tenants no longer have utilities includ-ed in their rent, generally set at 30 percentof income.

“I had wanted to go back,” said BertramMartin, 56, a former resident of TaskerHomes, now Greater Grays Ferry Estates,who now lives in an older PHA apartmentwhere utilities are included. “But I’m notstupid. I can do the math.”

PHA Executive Director Carl R. Greenemakes no apologies for his agency’s newdirection.

He says that many units at the old proj-ects were unsalvageable, uninhabitableand, in the final years before demolition,actually vacant. So the effective loss in

units was far less than raw numbers wouldindicate.

“Even the very poor were exercising theprinciples of market economics and reject-ing the quality of what we were offering - byleaving,” Greene said. “Whenyou add in vouchers, I’mactually serving more peoplethan I did before.”

PHA currently has almost80,000 clients, up almost 11percent since March 2002.

Spokesman Kirk Dorn saidthat such figures indicate that“we at PHA have not aban-doned our primary mission:providing quality, affordablehousing for low- and modest-income families.”

And since rents are tied to income, PHAneeds some tenants who aren’t poor - toproduce enough revenue to satisfy privateinvestors in developments financed withtax credits.

As for those displaced during redevelop-ment, Greene said they were given choicesand “all ended up in far better places thanthey left.”

Eva Kelly, 64, is one of the displaced, andshe’s not happy. For 25 years, she lived in arowhouse in North Philadelphia’sCambridge Plaza, until demolition forcedher out. She expected to return to the new

version, completed earlier this year.But today, Kelly still lives where PHA put

her in early 2001, a mile and a half away.Alone on the 10th floor of the authority’s43-year-old Fairhill Apartments, she feels

trapped and unwanted,afraid to ride the elevatorunless one of her four sonsis visiting.

“I lived in Cambridge dur-ing the hard times, and Iwas never late with the rentor anything,” she said. “Thenew places down there arereally beautiful. I want to getback, and they tell me Ican’t.”

Some former residents ofthe now-demolished proj-

ects did return to the new versions - afterextensive credit, criminal and housekeep-ing checks. But not many.

At Cambridge Plaza, less than 10 percentof the former residents are back. At othersites, the rate of return has ranged from ahigh of 34 percent to a low of 5 percent.

Those who did not return went to oldersites, found housing with vouchers, or dis-appeared from PHA’s view.

The heavy use of vouchers, some expertssay, has its advantages. Susan M. Wachter,a former HUD assistant secretary now atthe Wharton School of the University of

A struggle to shelter the poorest

Kenknisha Patterson, mother of four and now in a homeless shelter, has been on PHA wait-ing lists for low-income housing for five years.


“For peoplemaking less than$20,000, these

changes aredevastating.”

Nancy Salandra,housing advocate

Eva kelly in her Fairhill Apartments kitchen,wants to return to the rebuilt CambridgePlaza. She is among 90 percent of the formerCambridge Plaza residents who haven’t beenable to return there.

Pennsylvania, has called vouchers “a moreefficient way of delivering affordable hous-ing” than conventional public housing.

Other analysts say that vouchers help thecity by putting people in older homes thatmight otherwise be abandoned.

But they also can put low-income peoplein places they’re not welcome.

From 1998 through 2002, the demoli-tion of housing projects sent several thou-sand poor people on vouchers into theNortheast. Anger over their presencebecame an explosive political issue, domi-nating the bitter 2000 congressional racebetween Democrat Joseph M. Hoeffel andRepublican Melissa Brown.

(PHA has imposed a seven-year limit onhow long a family can receive vouchers.)

Even with the growing need, PHA offi-cials say that financial constraints limithow many units they can build.

Since 1993, federal housing policy hasbeen dominated by the HOPE VI program,which has provided cities with more than$6 billion - at least $176 million going toPhiladelphia - to demolish old projects andbuild new ones.

The Bush administration has been tryingto kill the program. It also wants to allowhousing authorities to charge higher rentsand restrict how long people can stay inpublic housing.

“What’s missing is a federal commitmentto low-income housing on a large-enoughscale,” said Deputy Managing Director RobHess, the city’s homelessness czar. “Either

we’re committed to low-income housing orwe aren’t.”

Reacting to a push from communitygroups, the city has created the HousingTrust Fund. It provides up to $15 millionper year to help those groups build an esti-mated 275 affordable units, repair 900 pri-vate homes, and prevent 1,000 familiesfrom becoming homeless.

“The overall strategy PHA has pursued isa very sound one,” said Liz Hersh, execu-tive director of the Pennsylvania HousingAlliance, a statewide advocacy group. “It’s anecessary strategy. I just don’t think it’s asufficient one.”


On Sept. 27, a young socialworker named KehindeOladapo bought her first home.

It bothers her not at all thatit’s part of a public housingdevelopment.

“I’m so excited about thefeeling of connectedness, thesense of community, the oppor-tunity to buy when propertyvalues are skyrocketing,” said abeaming Oladapo, 26, as shestood by her front door earlierthis fall. “This is a huge step forme.”

Her new, four-bedroom,red-brick rowhouse in the MillCreek section of WestPhiladelphia came loaded withamenities, including centralair-conditioning, yards frontand back, a driveway, wall-to-wall carpeting, a dishwasher, arefrigerator, and a garbage dis-posal.

Not to mention a very attrac-tive price set by the seller, thePhiladelphia HousingAuthority.

Thanks to federal subsidies,PHA is offering for sale 40 unitsin the Lucien E. BlackwellHomes development, at$95,000 to $120,000 apiece.

Which is about half of what

they cost to build.“The price is a blessing, and I

accept this blessing,” said MarkWallace, who works at a gro-cery store and is the proudowner of a new, three-bedroomtwin a few blocks away fromOladapo. “It’s our time.”

Making new homes availablefor purchase at reduced pricesis a small but growing piece ofthe new public housing inPhiladelphia. Besides BlackwellHomes, the program is in placeat Greater Grays Ferry Estates,and soon to come at MartinLuther King Plaza in SouthPhiladelphia and Falls Ridge in

East Falls.PHA Executive Director Carl

R. Greene says that somehome-ownership is essential tocreating a “balanced communi-ty” and encouraging neighbor-hood stability and pride.

It also helps bring in peoplewho aren’t particularly poor;prospective buyers of PHAhouses can earn from $20,000to $55,040. The ceiling is set bya federal formula, representing80 percent of the medianincome for families in theregion.

Buyers must undergo finan-cial screening, get counseled on

home ownership, and then gothrough a normal mortgage-qualification process.

If an applicant qualifies for amortgage equal to the homepurchase price, no governmentsubsidy is provided - beyondthe discounted selling price.

For those who don’t qualifyfor a full mortgage, PHA takesout a second mortgage to makeup the difference.

Of the first 85 buyers to signagreements of sale at BlackwellHomes and Greater GraysFerry Estates, about half gotsecond mortgages, the largestbeing $43,000. About 10 per-cent of buyers were cityemployees, all with eligibleincomes.

No down payment isrequired beyond an initial$1,000 application fee andclosing costs that typicallycome to about $4,000. Monthlypayments, including insuranceand property taxes, run in the$700-to-$800 range.

The program, which ulti-mately will encompass about500 homes citywide, is targetedat those who otherwise wouldnot be able to buy. But PHArecords indicate that two of thefirst nine buyers paid the entireamount - more than $100,000 -in cash.

A new objective of public housing: Home ownership

It isn’t fully furnished yet, but it most certainly is home for KehindeOladapo. She bought one of the subsidized units at Lucien E. BlackwellHomes. Home ownership “is a huge step for me,” she said.



Presumably, they could havefound homes without govern-ment help.

Told of the situation, Greenesaid that he would look atchanging the rules to takeaccount of prospective buyers’

assets as well as their incomes.Rules are in place to prevent

buyers from turning a quickprofit. PHA gets 100 percent ofthe proceeds for any resale dur-ing the first three years of own-ership. Its share slides down to

zero after 10 years.That’s no worry for Kehinde

Oladapo or Mark Wallace. Bothsay they’re in for the long haul.

“We have a beautiful home,”Wallace said, seated in his liv-ing room with his wife, Lisa.

“We’re not going anywhere.”


Ed

itor

ials

WEDNESDAYDEC. 7, 2005

Blueprint for successRemember when Philadelphians

grumbled that public housing waspricier and better appointed thantheir own homes? If that ever hap-pened, it hasn't been in decades.But it is now.

Look no further than the envyexpressed by people living near thenewest Philadelphia HousingAuthority (PHA) developments asproof of the ongoing transforma-tion of the city's public housing.

Rising from the ruins of high-riseand boarded-up townhouseprojects demolished since1995, suburban-style com-munities built by federallyfunded PHA are remakinglarge swaths of Philadelphia- for the better.

Not only is the renewal ofpublic housing making overthe landscape, it hasbrought about a 180-degreeswing in how government-subsi-dized housing impacts the city.

Once, public housing bred crimeand community decline. Now, it'shelping to stem lawlessness,improve property values, and pro-mote private real estate investmentand growth.

In a just-concluded series(go.philly.com/pha), Inquirer staffwriter Larry Eichel traces remark-able improvements at PHA sitesonce among the most troublednationally.

Not that the transformation ofpublic housing is problem-free.

It's been hit by constructiondelays, and the new homes are tooexpensive to build - given top-dol-lar rates charged by local unionsunder prevailing-wage rules on fed-eral projects. Were those rates instep with the private sector, the citycould have stretched the $1.2 bil-lion in mostly federal funds spentso far.

From residents' perspective,

there are overly long waiting listsfor new units. While PHA, with80,000 residents, is putting a roofover more people at its rowhousesites and through its housingvoucher program, demand simplyoutstrips supply.

Heightening the squeeze are oth-erwise smart policies to screen ten-ants more closely and to mix infamilies with higher incomes. Itmakes sense to avoid repeating thedisastrous practice of concentratingtoo many poor families in one

place, but that means some of thepoorest have to look elsewhere forhousing.

These are challenges born of suc-cess, though, not failure. That's asea change for public housing here.

Credit for overseeing the renewalgoes to PHA executive director CarlR. Greene, recruited eight years agoby then-Mayor Edward G. Rendell.

But the guiding policy is a legacyof President Clinton and his HUDsecretary, Henry G. Cisneros. With

their 1992 "HOPE VI"program, they turnedaround public housingacross America by demol-ishing high-rise projectshousing only the poorest.

The Clinton blueprint isproving to be a federalgovernment program thatactually produces positiveresults. That has to be jar-

ring to the Republican majority inWashington. In fact, the currentadministration has been trying tokill HOPE VI.

How odd, since the renewal ofpublic housing acknowledges thefailures of liberal '60s policies andseeks to reward people who, asClinton liked to say, work hard andplay by the rules. Sounds like agood, conservative approach thatshould be expanded, not trimmedback.

The PHA is transformingurban landscapes and is

fast becoming a model of afederal program that works.

the new urban landscape areas. “these rising johns, pha’s assistant general manager, says the...

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