Yet such changes also came with a cost: the social disruption and displacement of existing residents. He also confirmed Penns involvement in a new mixeduse development in the 4600 block of Pine Street. Many residents wonder if this is an example of gentrification, with a shiny development pushing out a community institution, or if the center fulfills an actual community need not currently met. But as she saw how the situation impacted more vulnerable people in the Townhomes, Alexander decided to get involved. In West Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania worked with the citys Redevelopment Authority, starting in the 1950s, on a massive program of urban renewal that cleared the way for its expansion. Follow The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia on Instagram Residential gentrification soon followed the growth in commercial activity. Tang additionally suggested that state interventions needed to deal with displacement, because gentrification has been driven by the deregulation of the housing market. It succeeded in upgrading real estate values but also faced criticism from long-established residents. Johnson says one small breakthrough came when they helped defend a resident facing an immediate eviction and were able to stop that process. In 2014, Philadelphia City Council enacted the Longtime Owner Occupants Program (LOOP). Or does it help low-income communities? Churches and synagogues, relics of the neighborhoods immigrant past, were converted to market-rate lofts. In 2020, Philadelphia Housing Action was part of the core of another dynamic housing struggle in the city. And no one can question the rapidity with which its occurring. The encampment also received support from organizations like Labor for Black Lives, which pulled together several local union chapters to demand Mayor Jim Kenney and city leaders preserve the Townhomes. At first, so-called streetcar suburbs allowed the gentry to retreat to the leafy streets of Cedar Park and Upper Darby. Penn was in search of a grant for urban renewal at the time; but the grant stipulated that the neighborhood needed to be blighted (i.e., so unsafe, uninhabitable, or dilapidated that it is a candidate for eminent domain). Penns status as the largest employer in Philadelphia, its large endowment and the socioeconomic position of its students and staff complicates its existence in West Philadelphia. South Street, its once-bustling commercial thoroughfare, lost customers to suburban shopping malls. Johnson notes that these actions started out small but were continuous and built up over time. The first area to undergo this ambitious makeover was the Society Hill neighborhood in southeast Center City. These arrivistes chose to live inand work to renewa historic and diverse part of the city. Many of these working-class immigrants were employed in restaurant and domestic servicesa sector that grew along with Philadelphias affluent urban class. Alexander also describes the struggle, and the encampment specifically, as having generated more unity, even providing space for the children in the Townhomes to have a movie night outside, paint, dance, learn to skateboard, and become more directly involved in defending the Townhomes. When a judge ordered the encampment evicted, the sheriff could dismantle the pallet barriers and tents but could not diffuse the energy and momentum the gathering had created. Get 34th Street's newsletter, The Toast, delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. Dr. Palmers family was evicted from their home in 1969. And resentment towards Penn simmers in the West Philly community. Sandy Smith In their wake, others moved to the newly-dubbed neighborhood for reasons that were cultural as much as financial. In rapidly changing neighborhoods like Old City, minority residents often suffered the brunt of such measures. Seemingly overnight, gastropubs and vintage clothing stores appeared along Girard Avenue, Fishtowns commercial corridor. The area where the UC Townhomes sit used to be known as Black Bottom, a neighborhood of largely working class and working poor African American residents, who were displaced through eminent domain to create UCSC and University City High School, as John L. Puckett, professor emeritus of education at the University of Pennsylvania, writes. Waging a struggle against the rights of property owners seems like an uphill fight in a capitalist society, but it is not the first time that some of the organizers have been involved in such a pitched battle. After serving in the United States Navy during WWII, Bacon joined the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and became the executive director of the committee in 1949. Soon, real estate prices began to creep upwards. In 1970, the neighborhood was nearly 50 percent Black. In doing so, it prompted the mass displacement of the neighborhoods poorer residents. By 1933, Wilbur & Sons chocolate business had outgrown the facility and the building changed ownership and remained underutilized until an investment company purchased the property in 1986. The most comprehensive, authoritative reference source ever created for the Philadelphia region. Longtime residents complained about loud parties and unkempt rental properties. In 1977, against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding Penn, the University of Pennsylvanias Real Estate Development Office called the Powelton Village Development Agency (PVDA) to a meeting. Eastwick is, as he says, super residential, replete with rowhomes and momandpop shops. I think for now Eastwicks outside of [Penns] reach, Phil said wryly. A NYC cannabis community space is harming their workers and Black-led businesses, Industrialized water containment projects ignore the needs of Indigenous communities, Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. Sterling Johnson, an organizer with Philadelphia Housing Action, recalls a small meeting last fall with Gerald Sid Bolling from the Black Bottom Tribe that included some residents. The University bought the land and the building and now uses it as an incubator for local startups and student research. In the West Philadelphia area around Mantua, gentrification is a constant, looming concern. About 75 people took part in the event, held four days before a critical vote at a Zoning Board of Adjustments hearing. Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy, TheEncyclopedia More than 240,000 households citywide (40% of all households) are forced to spend 30% or more of their income on housing. This initiative froze tax increases for residents who had occupied their homes for more than ten years and faced higher assessments as a result of skyrocketing property values. While the pace of Philadelphia-area redevelopment lagged behind other rapidly revitalizing citiesnotably, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C.the specter of displacement troubled government officials and longtime residents alike. Cedar Park is one of the hottest areas in the city, and housing values are spiking dramatically. Galleries and restaurants followed the arriving middle class. To him, its untouched by the tentacles of development, a community similar to West Philly 20 years ago. There were teach-ins, rallies, marches, and protests at the property owners offices outside the city. Empty buildings and older housing with little government or private investor support led to declining populations and social institutions throughout industrial neighborhoods. This article was originally published at Prism. March 29, 2021 / in Liberation Radio / by Liberation Center Staff. In 2013, there were still 4,000 buildings and over 10,000 lots sitting empty in Lower Northeast Philadelphia. Restrictions created by the Old Philadelphia Development Corporation prevented new homeowners in Society Hill from drastically altering their historic homes, but regulations for new construction were more lenient. Newcomers cosmopolitan tastes contributed to the alienation of the neighborhoods working-class residents. There is a stereotype that gentrification refers to low-income African Americans being pushed out by rich whites, but this is not the case in many of the areas in Philly where gentrification is occurring. This "process" is very dangerous as it has a notorious reputation of displacing old residents and creating terrible living situations for those it has not displaced. The old Gothic auditorium will be turned into a coworking space and a coffee shop. The University City Townhomes has provided affordable housing for nearly 40 years. As in Society Hill and Queen Village, the gentrification of Graduate Hospital triggered striking demographic changes. Specifically, in the case of the UC Townhomes, the struggle exposes the purported and well-defended right of members of an elite property-owning class to make exorbitant profits (some have estimated a sale price of $100 million) from the sale of units that have stood as subsidized housing for 40 years. As of 2010, the neighborhood is majority-white for the first time since 1970, a stunning reversal . An average row house costing $7,400 in the 1960s sold for over twenty times that amount in 1990. Ed Datz, Executive Director of Real Estate at Penn Facilities and Real Estate Services (FRES), noted that his office is always looking at whats happening in the surrounding neighborhoods and at residential opportunities.. The concept of gentrification is a muddled one. With their artistic connotations, these post-industrial spaces attracted white-collar workers looking for a taste of bohemian lifestyle. Protect Squirrel Hill, a coalition of neighbors in the Squirrel Hill area of West Philadelphia, rallied April 3 against a proposed luxury apartment building. To achieve the transformation of the area, the City Planning Commission called for the elimination of blighted late nineteenth-century buildings and retail establishments. That's typical for a gentrifying city. The late 1970s saw the arrival of thousands of Southeast Asians; in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, they were joined by waves of Indians, Koreans, Chinese, and Mexicans. The apartments were inexpensive for residents but they only provided basic housing and residents complained that the Housing Authority was not responsive to maintenance issues. Old Philadelphia funded a national advertising campaign that recast the neighborhood as a desirable historic enclavethe better to attract aesthetically-minded middle-class homebuyers. "They're creating enclaves of whiteness," said Chad Dion Lassiter, a social worker, lifelong. From 1970 to 1990, Philadelphia lost over 18 percent of its remaining residents, its population falling to nearly a half a million people below its postwar peak. Her father, David Comberg, teaches in the School of Design at Penn, but the family initially moved to the area for his job at UArts. Ella is critical of her former school, and how she thinks it serves the University and its facultys families more than unaffiliated West Philly residents. Penn Alexander receives operating contribution of $1330 per student from the university, in addition to staffing and teaching assistance from Penns Graduate School of Education. With the passage of the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act, developers could enjoy up to a 25 percent tax credit on the cost of rehabilitating certified historic structures. Nearly one-third Latino in 1960, the neighborhood was only 14 percent Latino by 1990. After World War II, suburbanization exploded. The Plans effects were keenly felt in the Black Bottom, a primarily black and disadvantaged neighborhood that earned its name from its place at the bottom of West Philadelphia (from 32nd Street to 40th Street between Lancaster Ave and University Ave). By 2010, only about 5 percent of Queen Village residents were African American. It all comes down, in the end, to money. The gentrification of University City, or "Penntrification," forces Philadelphia's already vulnerable Black population out of their homes and brings white families and students into their former neighborhoods. UCity is just a marketing scheme.. Penn is still displacing people, plain and simple, Casey Lynch (C 18), who has been involved with the Netter Center for four years, said. Penn professors benefit from Penns Home Ownership Services, which helps Penn faculty and staff apply for closing cost assistance for home purchasing and funds towards home improvement. This incentivizes university affiliates to buy property in the area, and to send their kids to school in the district. She is the Highbrow Editor for 34th Street. He was awarded a scholarship and continued his study at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, later finding work in Flint, Michigan, before returning to Philadelphia and becoming director of the housing association. Where is gentrification happening the most? The candy making there gave way to residential development. Disinvestment only intensified after the financial crisis of 2008, as banks tightened up loan requirements and refused to extend credit to the most blighted areas. Refurbished Victorian houses, lofts created from abandoned manufacturing buildings, and newly constructed townhouses provided a variety of living possibilities that reflected Manayunk's history as an industrial outpost of Philadelphia. Sign up for Prisms newsletter to get first access to news and analysis that makes you thinkand act. She admits that initially she and most other residents were not involved. The area of the Dock Street Market in Society Hill was a place of commerce for more than two centuries before it was demolished in 1959 to allow construction of the residential Society Hill Towers. WHYY story by Katie Colaneri. The gentrification taking place in West Philadelphia is often referred to as Penntrification. San Francisco, it seems, is in a later stage of its gentrification timeline than Philadelphia. During the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, newly built suburbs outside of Center City intensified these divisions. And while that goal might have seemed outlandish to many in the winter of 2021, it seems quite possible now. Follow Backgrounders on Twitter As these anchor institutions continued to attract thousands of young, highly-educated residents to Philadelphia, previously disinvested neighborhoodsfrom Spruce Hill, near the University of Pennsylvania,and Washington Square West, which adjoined Jefferson and Pennsylvania Hospitalssaw increases in population and property values. The signs of gentrification can be spotted throughout Philadelphia neighborhoods like Brewerytown, Kensington and West Philadelphia, among others. Universities also continued to play an outsized role in the transformation of their surrounding neighborhoods. One afternoon in 2017, a friend sent me a picture of New Light Beulah Baptist Church being demolished. States must preserve public housing on the urban core, invest deeply in . The Black Bottom is a historically Black community . By the 20th century, Penn had established itself as the most wellendowed entity in West Philadelphia and maintained an uneasy symbiosis with the community. This process accelerated after its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. In 1970, the neighborhood had only 90 housing units; by 1990, it had 1,665. Philadelphia, like other Rust Belt cities, slowly started its transition from an industrial city to a postindustrial city. When students go out and work in West Philly, he sees it as lacking a longlasting partnership., In his estimation, ABCS courses send some untrained, rich, and wealthy students who are not from here out into West Philadelphia, who act like they really understand the neighborhood and know what theyre doing. 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