City Council’s Committee on Rules approved a plan on Tuesday
that would allow the Philadelphia Housing Authority to acquire 1,300 properties
in the North Philadelphia neighborhood surrounding the Norman Blumberg
Apartments, at 23rd and Jefferson streets.
If the plan is approved by the full Council, as early as
next Thursday, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority will be authorized to
use eminent domain to condemn more than 800 privately owned properties in the
area and transfer those, along with 500 publicly owned properties, to PHA. The
Housing Authority plans to tear down the Blumberg Apartments, which includes
510 units spread across three towers and 18 other buildings, this fall,
according to PHA President Kelvin Jeremiah. It received federal approval for
the demolition last week, Jeremiah said.
See a list of all the properties slated for condemnation here.
If the Authority completes the redevelopment according to
plan, those apartments would be replaced with 1,200 new units, including nearly
700 affordable rental units and 320 affordable homeownership units. PHA also
plans to build 200 market-rate units for rent and for sale, 500,000 square feet
of retail space on Ridge Avenue, a renovated school and recreational center,
and new athletic fields.
The transformation would double the number of affordable
housing units at the project. That would be a break from PHA’s projects over
the last few decades, which have focused on tearing down high-rise projects and
replacing them with lower-density developments, resulting in a net loss of
almost 7,000 affordable units. Jeremiah said on Tuesday that the Authority is
hoping to reverse the trend and make up for the loss of affordable units by
developing 6,000 new units over the next five years. (In the 1990s, the federal
government scrapped a rule that required a 1-to-1 replacement ratio for
demolished public-housing units.)
The rate of poverty at Blumberg is more than 50 percent,
according to Jeremiah’s testimony, and only 16 percent of the project’s
residents over the age of 18 are employed.
“Blumberg houses some of the city’s most vulnerable and
hard-to-house residents, who require intensive case management and supportive
services,” Jeremiah said in prepared testimony to the committee. “The long-term
outcome for Blumberg residents is dismal, with incidences of social pathology
higher than any other PHA site. The area around Blumberg suffers from a violent
crime rate that is twice that of the rest of the city.”
A small group of witnesses, including some who own
property that’s slated for demolition, testified in opposition to the plan on
Tuesday. Alice Lawrence, a nurse who lives in the area and is planning to
retire soon, said she had dreamed of opening an ice cream parlor on one of the
properties that PHA is looking to acquire. Judith Robinson, a community activist
and owner of Complete Real Estate Services, characterized the plan as
government-sponsored gentrification in hyper-speed. She said it would strip
existing property owners of everything they’ve struggled for.
The Redevelopment Authority says that only 73 of the 800
private properties slated for condemnation are occupied. Of those, 57 are
residential and 16 are commercial. Brian Abernathy, PRA’s executive director,
said the agency has so far made contact with the occupants of 45 of those 73
properties. The remaining occupants have not responded to repeated mailings and
site visits, Abernathy said.
The Authority developed its plan after receiving a
$500,000 Choice Neighborhood Initiative planning grant from the federal
government. Council President Darrell Clarke, whose district includes the
neighborhood, helped the Housing Authority secure a nine-percent Low-Income
Housing Tax Credit from the state Housing Finance Agency to use toward the
project, according to Kelvin Jeremiah.
That state tax credit helped PHA raise $12 million in
private financing for the first phase of the project, which involves the
development of 57 affordable rental units. The total cost of that phase is $21
million, or $368,421 per unit.
The Redevelopment Authority will begin sending out
condemnation letters with proposed condemnation amounts after the full Council
approves the plan.
Source: PlanPhilly
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