Powelton Village is not alone in trying to preserve its single family residential neighborhood in the shadows of a major university. The following is a sampling of effective strategies that various communities have enacted:
Possible Strategies to Increase Home Ownership
1) Encourage faculty and staff to purchase homes within a designated homeownership zone. Offer mortgage guarantees and cash incentives.
Case Study: University of Pennsylvania
a.) Guaranteed Mortgage Program- Offers employees a 105% mortgage.
b.) Enhanced Mortgage Program- A $7,500 forgivable loan, as an incentive for faculty and staff interested in living in West Philadelphia.
*All of the Powelton Village study area is within the Enhanced Mortgage Program boundaries.
2) Rehab loan programs for owner-occupants.
Possible Strategies to Regulate Rental Housing
1) All applicable zoning/building code regulations should be enforced to reduce the number of unrelated individuals permitted in a single-family house
*Philadelphia’s definition of family ¬– “a person living independently or a group of persons living as a single household unit using housekeeping facilities in common, but not to include more than three persons unrelated by blood, marriage or adoption.”
2) Neighborhood Overlay Districts can be implemented where single-family rental housing is maintained at no more than a specified percentage.
3) A voluntary online training program for landlords can be created.
Case Study: Ithaca, NY
a.) Smart Landlord Program- Assists landlords in understanding their rights and responsibilities, and to promote proper screening of tenants.
b.) Such a program can be implemented in Powelton Village with full endorsement from Drexel University.
c.) After successfully completing such a training program, a landlord can receive a Certificate of Completion that they’re asked to display or mention on all marketing materials.
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What has made Powelton Village so distinctive a residential neighborhood in the past is our racial diversity -- that was a conscious decision by the Quaker groups that led the revitalization efforts here after WWII.
ReplyDeleteWe have been losing our diversity because of economic pressures. Now it's time to reach out toward Mantua and embrace our neighbors to the north in an effort to improve both neighborhoods.
As there is land available in Mantua for development at lower price than in Powelton, shoe-horning retail with an uncertain future into our small footprint makes little sense.
Most fundamentally, we lack a reasonably-priced grocery store, hardware store, and pharmacy within walking distance.
Many people from both neighborhoods buy fresh produce from John King on Saturday mornings when he sets up his stand year-round at Powelton and Lancaster Avenues. Aldi, a discount grocer, at 45th and Market Sts near the El is also thriving drawing customers from Powelton, Mantua, and West Philadelphia. We need a basic grocery store, not Trader Joe's which is already convenient via trolley or car at 22nd and Market.
A full-service grocery store situated on Haverford Avenue would be a traffic-builder drawing from both neighborhoods, as John King and Aldi do.
What we have in Powelton now is a high percentage of the two most price-sensitive groups in the population:
1) Students
2) Seniors over 55
Even the Farm-to-City Program failed here as we were resistant to the prices offered.
Bringing in retail stores that will fail because they are not patronized sufficiently is a reckless vision for the future.
We need to be careful, cognizant, and specific to our particular population about what we envision. Change is not always improvement.
I agree that we should be focused in discussion on commercial development in powelton. Do we want the neighborhood to have a large commercial component? Do most of us have cars where we can drive to whole foods or a hardware store? I think people are interested in convenienve and might be willing to pay for that for some items (basic convenienve/grovery items). This would be difficult to pull off because, as Carol noted, people in this neighborhood are very price sensitive....
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