A grassroots movement
As that work continues, OnePA is planning a series of public actions aimed at convincing the city to invest in these properties. There will be rallies, visits to City Hall and likely a large town hall event in May.
The group has previously gone door to door to engage with every Neighborhood Restorations tenant. More recently, they’ve started holding informational meetings to educate residents about their rights and to potentially mobilize them around the potential sale.
Braxton said tenants and homeowners are deeply concerned about the prospect of these properties — mostly a mix of single-family homes, duplexes and triplexes — going to a buyer who wants to turn them market-rate. Most, if not all, of these renters would be unable to stay if that happened, forcing them to relocate.
“These aren’t just transient folks that are coming and going. They are part of these neighborhoods,” Braxton said.
The average tenancy for these renters is roughly 11 years, according to Neighborhood Restorations.
Their monthly rents are price-restricted, affordable to households earning between 20% to 60% of the area median income. That translates to between $23,880 and $95,520 for a family of four.
Fredrica Lightfoot lives in a duplex near Cobbs Creek with her 29-year-old son. While her experience hasn’t been perfect, the retiree said, particularly when it comes to response times for maintenance requests, her apartment was a “breath of fresh air” compared to her last rental in South Philadelphia, where the landlord refused to make needed repairs.
When she moved in six years ago, the unit was essentially new. The whole building had been renovated following a fire.
“You take the good with the bad, and you kind of flow with it,” said Lightfoot, who pays about $1,000 in rent each month.
She lives on a fixed income, relying on monthly Social Security and disability checks. She said she’s joining the fight to preserve these homes because she doesn’t want her or other tenants to lose their housing simply because they are low-income. She’s also been displaced before and doesn’t want to go through it again.
“It’s very devastating to have to regroup all over again,” Lightfoot said. “Just leave on a good note, and try to keep the properties affordable.”
To Carlos Boothe, who lives nearby in a building for older adults, the city owes it to him and his neighbors to buy Levin’s units, keep them permanently affordable and avoid mass displacement.
“If you have 3,000 extra people coming into the marketplace that’s already overcrowded and there are not enough places for the people that are looking … that’s going to make things extremely difficult,” Boothe said.