Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Last month, housing valuations, and therefore property taxes, increased by 3% across the city. Valuations in Kensington, however, went up an average of 15%<\/a>, with Mantua<\/a>, Grays Ferry, and Kingsessing<\/a> not far behind.<\/p>\n What do all of the latter communities have in common? They are all under pressure from rapid gentrification<\/a>, and they are all communities where residents are the least equipped to pay the property taxes associated with the increased home valuations.<\/p>\n Response across the city was surprise \u2014 as if the warning signs had not been there all along.<\/p>\n Some people have remained willfully ignorant about the pressures of gentrification in Philadelphia\u2019s neighborhoods because they don\u2019t want to acknowledge that long-standing city programs were not built to prevent this moment from occurring.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Current plans to \u2018fix\u2019 Kensington won\u2019t work. Here is what will. | Opinion<\/a><\/p>\n Another set of people are feigning surprise, but are not really surprised at all, because this was the plan all along and part of the displacement strategy of \u201cfixing\u201d these neighborhoods.<\/p>\n And then there are those who are honestly surprised because they simply weren\u2019t paying attention.<\/p>\n While we have acted surprised, we have missed the point that the system that created these conditions is operating exactly as it is intended to function, and that without addressing the city\u2019s reliance on property taxes and its detrimental impact on those least able to pay, we won\u2019t find a way forward and dangers foretold will progress.<\/p>\n Challenges foretold<\/p>\n We should not be surprised.<\/p>\n As a Kensington<\/a> resident, and the executive director of New Kensington Community Development Corp., I \u2014 along with many others \u2014 have been sounding the alarm, ringing the warning bells about the likely displacement of long-term community residents for years.<\/p>\n In 2018, I made clear to Philadelphia\u2019s managing director that without a clear plan that addresses the unsheltered population in Kensington, there would be both long- and short-term impacts for the greater community as we went from \u201ccamps of unsheltered citizens to the construction of $369,000 homes mere feet away.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n The cycle repeated again in 2024, with new public officials in charge, embarking on their latest plans to \u201cfix\u201d Kensington<\/a>.<\/p>\n After a period in 2017-2018 that left Kensington ripe for massive investment by prospectors and developers, I warned in an opinion piece in The Inquirer that without a greater plan cocreated with the community, \u201cKensington will be turned over to privatization and the free market \u2014 neither of which have ever been kind to people of color and those with limited means.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2024, while the opportunity was there, it was critical that \u201cany effort to fix Kensington should not just be about eliminating the drug economy or ending Kensington as a containment strategy for the city; it should be about preserving a community,\u201d and that \u201cif none of these answers exist, the second stage of displacement \u2014 this time of long-term residents \u2014 is already underway\u201d and that \u201cwithout a greater plan to address the long-term needs of residents that\u2019s cocreated with the Kensington community, my neighbors and I could be cheering our own demise.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: It\u2019s essential that Mayor Parker\u2019s H.O.M.E. plan prioritize resources for \u2018people-first\u2019 housing | Opinion<\/a><\/p>\n In 2025, I warned of not only the corporate commodification of our community\u2019s housing stock<\/a> and the detrimental effects that has on communities, but also how in communities such as Kensington \u2014 with high rates of poverty and old housing stock \u2014 we would see increases in purchases of homes by private equity. Those would then be turned into rentals where new corporate landlords would evict tenants from previously owner-occupied homes at three times the rate of small investors.<\/p>\n At the time, my organization saw that 70% of the more than 500 evictions we had prevented over the last few years were in properties owned by LLCs \u2014 many of which were from out of state.<\/p>\n Others issued warnings, too.<\/p>\n In 2025, the Reinvestment Fund reported that corporate investors are most active in Black and brown neighborhoods where they are responsible for more than one in four residential purchases, therefore \u201ccreating more extraction through landlords rather than creating and maintaining wealth among homeowners.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Missed opportunities, new crisis moment<\/p>\n Because we did not act when we were warned or take advantage of the opportunities presented to us, the system is working exactly as it was designed to function \u2014 and that has created additional pressures and crises.<\/p>\n Rather than addressing the core problems of poverty and extraction from our most vulnerable, we chose single-issue approaches. How will someone who earns the area median income in Kensington \u2014 $30,000 a year \u2014 pay for a 15% increase in property taxes, while also trying to survive after cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, to Medicaid, and an underfunded transportation system?<\/p>\n Longtime residents of Kensington are nothing if not resilient, but they cannot absorb injury after injury to their already difficult daily circumstances. After this property tax increase, more of them will find themselves considering moving out of their homes.<\/p>\n Like my neighbors in Kensington, I receive five or six calls, emails, and texts every week asking to purchase my home. As the Reinvestment Fund indicated, communities under pressure \u2014 like mine \u2014 are at the greatest risk from outside investors.<\/p>\n A different path forward<\/p>\n I acknowledge we have a number of existing programs to provide relief to homeowners feeling the pressure of increases to property taxes, such as the homestead exemption<\/a>, the Longtime Owner Occupants Program<\/a>, tax freezes, and filing appeals. These programs should be utilized, modified, and expanded, but none of them will solve our greater problems.<\/p>\n We have left housing solutions to the free market, where the goal is to maximize profit and therefore displacement.<\/p>\n We need to address the city\u2019s overreliance on, and benefit from, the $2 billion in property taxes, much of which is also levied from the most vulnerable residents of the city \u2014 and we need to develop a comprehensive affordability plan that is cocreated with the community and those actually implementing anti-displacement strategies.<\/p>\n There are a variety of approaches we can take that mitigate impacts on its low-income residents, and that will counter the rush to displacement:<\/p>\n Address\u00a0poverty by\u00a0advocating\u00a0for\u00a0the state to finally adopt an increase to\u00a0the minimum wage so that our working poor are less exploited for their\u00a0labor, and so they have the money to address these property tax and social safety net changes.<\/p>\n Continue exploring\u00a0and implementing\u00a0some of the\u00a0emergent basic income programs<\/a>\u00a0that have shown success.<\/p>\n Expand home repair programs such as Built to Last<\/a>, which\u00a0make\u00a0necessary repairs\u00a0to prevent homeowners from selling their homes to investors,\u00a0as well\u00a0as\u00a0making\u00a0their homes more affordable through green upgrades.<\/p>\n Utilize\u00a0city\u00a0revenue that\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0burden the most vulnerable and\u00a0truly\u00a0makes a difference to the budget.\u00a0If 10,000 homeowners in upper Kensington all receive an annual increase of $250 to their property taxes,\u00a0the burden is significant\u00a0to\u00a0low-income\u00a0residents, yet\u00a0only generates\u00a0$2.5\u00a0million for the city.<\/p>\n Eliminate\u00a0the recent reductions in the Business Income and Receipts Tax (BIRT),\u00a0which\u00a0cut as much as $300 million annually in revenue for the city.<\/p>\n Hospitals, universities, and churches should pay property taxes, too<\/a>.\u00a0 More than a third of all of the property in the city is owned by hospitals,\u00a0universities<\/a>,\u00a0and churches\u00a0that\u00a0don\u2019t pay\u00a0property taxes\u00a0due to their nonprofit status<\/a>\u00a0while accumulating massive endowments and\u00a0limiting access to healthcare\u00a0as they shift from serving as charitable organizations to\u00a0corporations. As a\u00a0result,\u00a0we receive only about two-thirds\u00a0of the possible revenue from property taxes, leaving at least\u00a0$1 billion\u00a0on the table each year.<\/p>\n The wealthiest should pay their fair share.\u00a0Philanthropy is part of the social contract within capitalism that tries to\u00a0maintain\u00a0a balance between extraction and a point of collapse of the host, the city. It is\u00a0clear\u00a0the extractors\u00a0must do better. We allow people to\u00a0profit\u00a0immeasurably from others\u2019 labor and consumption as long as they give pennies back on the dollar. Philanthropic\u00a0entities are only required to, cumulatively, give 4%\u00a0of what they have gleaned from earned and unearned income sources to recipients of their largess. It is not enough. The host\u00a0is not going to\u00a0survive;\u00a0the contract has been broken.<\/p>\n We are currently at the front end of the budgeting season, when we have the ability to use our collective brain power to develop and implement a strategy that will prevent anyone from ever having to say \u201cI told you so\u201d again \u2014 and for residents to not be victims of the shortsightedness of the city they reside in.<\/p>\n I have just identified billions of dollars in revenue that does not come from the city\u2019s most vulnerable \u2014 and there is much more than what I quickly listed. I write this as an invitation to work with others so we can collectively attack the disease of willful ignorance and the displacement of our most vulnerable with a cure of cocreated solutions.<\/p>\n