When Columbia Avenue was Jump Street, and Ridge Avenue was a
vital commercial artery that snaked through the heart of North Philly, the
neighborhood known as Sharswood was a place where black doctors and teachers
provided a middle-class buffer against the scourge of poverty.
That changed in 1969, when the Philadelphia Housing
Authority (PHA) completed construction on the Norman Blumberg Apartments, a
low-income, high-rise public housing development. The housing project brought
with it the kind of impoverishment that was hard to overcome. The middle class
soon left the neighborhood, and those who stayed behind watched a once-thriving
community become a haven for crime and abandonment.
The projects, and the surrounding community, remained that
way for years. Then last year, PHA Executive Director Kelvin Jeremiah.
I decided to visit the development alone, sans suit and tie.
He was appalled. Jeremiah told me in an interview that he was told by brazen
criminals during an evening visit to Blumberg that he might be shot if he went
to a certain area. I understood what he meant. I’d had the same experience
while reporting a story in the shadow of the projects’ high rises.