How parking undercuts affordable housing | Real Estate Newsletter

Many Philadelphia residents and visitors have strong feelings about the availability of parking in the city.

We talked with an author who studied how Americans’ obsession with parking has undercut affordable housing, walkable communities, and the fight against climate change. Parking policies, he says, have shaped our streets and cities.🔑

Keep scrolling for that story and to read an Inquirer investigation as Philly marks 10 years since a deadly Market Street building collapse, learn some home painting tips from a professional, and peek inside a Phoenixville farm property.

📮 If you own a car, where do you park it? A personal garage or driveway, an alley, a public garage, the street? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me.

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— Michaelle Bond

Parking policies such as minimum numbers of spaces for new housing projects have quietly transformed almost every element of the human landscape, author Henry Grabar says in his new book.

He told my colleague Jake Blumgart that parking “is not only expensive to build, but it also takes up a lot of space and makes it impossible to build your classic Philadelphia rowhouse.”

Topics covered during their wide-ranging conversation included:

🚗 how more parking incentivizes more driving

🚗 the effect that the location of parking has on driving habits

🚗 how reducing the amount of parking or raising prices falls on the backs of working-class people

“We have a severe shortage of housing in this country,” Grabar said, “and by restricting who can live in the city, or in a suburb, we push those people into houses that are further and further away with less access to jobs and amenities where they have to drive more and more.”

Learn more about parking’s effects on communities.🔑

Over the 3½ years that I’ve covered real estate, I’ve heard story after story of Philly homeowners dealing with damage to their rowhouses because of construction or demolition next door.

Windelin Adorno’s North Philly rowhouse has been in her family for more than 50 years. A complete rehab before she moved in cost $40,000.

“It was your typical perfect starter home,” said Adorno’s partner, Michael Gonzalo Moran.

Then, in 2019, workers started taking apart a neighboring rowhouse. The couple noticed their home’s façade was separating. Cracks climbed their walls. Their new kitchen started sinking. They were scared their house would fall on them and their young son.

In the words of my colleague Samantha Melamed: “The family’s plight is a highly predictable outcome of a city whose building codes and enforcement mechanisms have not caught up to its aging infrastructure and surging redevelopment.”

In an investigation marking the 10-year anniversary of the deadly Market Street building collapse onto a Salvation Army thrift store, Melamed looked at construction-related damage to rowhouses.

When I was in high school, one of my best friends, Erin, asked me to help paint her bedroom. The idea made me nervous.

Luckily, by the time I was called in, her walls had already been freshly painted a pretty light blue, and Erin just wanted me to help paint clouds. When I said I was worried I’d mess up, she told me we’d be fine, and we had fun. And as far as I remember, our clouds looked like clouds.

Not everyone has the time and talent to paint their own homes, but even DIY-ers can benefit from talking to a professional.

So I asked a residential specialist at CertaPro Painters, which has a headquarters in Montgomery County, for some wisdom. He shared how to think through whether to tackle a paint job yourself and flagged some common mistakes.

One tip: beware the paint swatch.

Check out my story for some home painting advice.

A 10-acre property in rural Phoenixville includes two large stone houses built at right angles to each other, a pond, a barn, and natural springs. It has character and charm.

For Kim and Kirk Morgan, finding it was the culmination of a 15-year search for the perfect small farm. As Kim, an interior designer, noted, “They don’t come on the market very often.”

One of the houses on Strawberry Hollow Farm was built in 1833. The other was constructed in 1995 and needed a near total renovation. Now, the two sides of the home have symmetry.

The home also has unusual chandeliers, stained-glass doors to the wine cellar, and a library ladder to a storage loft.

Peek inside to see how the Morgans made two joined structures work together.

Twenty-six states built homes in Philadelphia’s West Fairmount Park for the 1876 Centennial. The only house still standing is a Victorian Gothic structure recently renovated to be the new home of the Fairmount Park Conservancy.

Question: Which state built this only remaining Centennial house?

A) Delaware

B) New Jersey

C) Maryland

D) Ohio

This story has the answer.

Do you know the location this photo shows?

📮 If you think you do, email me back. You and your memories of visiting this spot might be featured in the newsletter.

No one knew the answer to last week’s photo quiz, but it was a tricky one. A lot of the homes in Shore towns look alike. Ocean City was the most popular guess, but that photo showed homes farther south in Sea Isle City.

Last week, I asked how old you were when you bought your first house.

Greg M. was 31 when he and his now spouse bought their first townhouse in Mount Laurel.(Coincidentally, a townhouse in that Burlington County town was my first home as a newborn.) Greg’s former home is now worth about three times what he paid for it in 2001.

Happy National Home Ownership Month! Enjoy the rest of your week.