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Dominique Johnson has cleaned up litter, removed weeds and trimmed trees on a vacant lot beside his family’s home in North Philadelphia for around 20 years.
He hoped to acquire the lot from the Philadelphia Land Bank and said he submitted two expressions of interest for the land, without realizing these notices were not formal applications. Then in March, Johnson said he found a flyer indicating a proposal to build a home on the lot that could sell for up to $280,000. He worries that the project will not be affordable for long-term residents of the neighborhood and that the construction could harm his family’s home.
Johnson is a member of a new coalition of dozens of residents who care for the vacant lots beside their homes, called the Philadelphia Land Steward Union. The group formed last fall to draw attention to the benefits that side yard stewards bring to their communities and advocate for their interests in city land disposition policies.
The group launched its platform publicly Saturday at a meeting at the Hartranft Community Center in North Philadelphia.
For years, the city’s process of transferring vacant city-owned land to private owners has been criticized as slow and convoluted. The city revamped this process starting in 2019 after a WHYY investigation found a backlog of over 18,000 expressions of interest submitted by parties looking to buy vacant lots from the city. But advocates say the process is still slow and opaque for residents looking to gain formal ownership of vacant lots next to their homes before they are developed.
Johnson said he joined the coalition in hopes of making the land acquisition process “a little bit clearer, making sure things like this don’t happen again to individuals.”
Report finds side yard stewards strengthen neighborhoods but risk losing land
The tens of thousands of vacant lots in Philadelphia are disproportionately concentrated in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods where there is a history of redlining, according to a report by Temple University Beasley School of Law students presented at Saturday’s launch event.
The report found that, while vacant lots can attract trash and decrease quality of life when left untended, they can also help reduce crime, promote social cohesion and improve mental health when they’re greened and cared for.
“Parks are too far away, especially for the kids and older people,” said Gloria “Smooches” Cartagena Hart, a member of the new coalition who transformed a vacant lot on her street in Kensington into an outdoor space for community events. “The lot is a safe haven. A place to come together, for neighbors to know each other.”
Nearby residents like Cartagena Hart often step up to care for these vacant lots. But if there are unpaid taxes on vacant land, it can be sold at a sheriff sale, where developers with deeper pockets and lawyers often “out maneuver” nearby residents, according to the report.
“One of the biggest challenges [is] that, as [residents] invest in greening this land and bettering our communities, it then becomes valuable to outside developers who displace those same community members,” Claire Hirschberg, one of the authors of the report, said.