West Philly tenants still fighting to preserve affordable rentals<\/p>\n
Housing advocates pressed the city to reach a deal while it had the ability to put forth a priority bid to buy the units. That yearlong window ended last week, meaning Neighborhood Restorations is free to start marketing these homes to the general public, which could translate to higher rents that current residents can\u2019t afford.\n<\/p>\n
That\u2019s concerning for longtime tenants like Burgess. She lives with mother and teenage daughter and doesn\u2019t want to leave her home \u2014 what she calls her \u201cpeace station.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
She\u2019s not sure how she would afford to even if she did.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m staying optimistic about it. I truly believe that we will keep our home. I truly believe that the city would not allow 3,000 people to be displaced. It will look extremely bad on behalf of the city and Cherelle Parker,\u201d said Burgess, a single mom who works as her mother\u2019s personal care assistant.\n <\/p>\n
In May, OnePA West\/Southwest Rising formally launched a pressure campaign<\/a> aimed at convincing the Parker administration to take on Levin\u2019s portfolio. To date, there has been no formal commitment to invest, angering tenants and elected officials who say there is plenty of money to put toward a bid.\n<\/p>\n Advocates argue that some of the funding could come from the Parker administration\u2019s $2 billion plan to build and preserve 30,000 units<\/a>. The first phase<\/a> of the plan \u2014 the Housing Opportunities Made Easy<\/a>, or H.O.M.E., initiative \u2014 includes $46.1 million for affordable housing preservation.\n<\/p>\n Generally speaking, the city doesn\u2019t buy properties. But it will help finance property transactions with developers by effectively subsidizing those deals. In that way, the city doesn\u2019t need to take ownership.\n<\/p>\n Fredrica Lightford, another longtime tenant, said she has become cynical about a potential sale involving the city, particularly after a meeting with the administration that she said ended without any concrete assurances that the properties would remain affordable.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThis is just something that wasn\u2019t in her gameplan,\u201d Lightford said. \u201cThat\u2019s the feeling that I\u2019m getting.\u201d\n<\/p>\n So far, she hasn\u2019t looked into moving, but she\u2019s heard other Neighborhood Restorations tenants are preparing to leave rather than wait for the final outcome and risk scrambling for housing.\n<\/p>\n She said she doesn\u2019t blame them.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Philly tenants still fighting to preserve affordable rentals Housing advocates pressed the city to reach a deal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2313,69,71,70,2312,22114],"class_list":["post-242106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-affordable-housing","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-planphilly","tag-renters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}