2 blocks: 1 renewed, 1 blighted
For every block that has experienced NTI, whether demolition and new construction or housing-preservation loans, there are many more blocks that remain blighted.
For every block that has experienced NTI, whether demolition and new construction or housing-preservation loans, there are many more blocks that remain blighted.
Javier and Saly Rivera live with their two children, Ashley and Javier Jr., on N. Seventh Street near Berks not far from Temple University.
They were able to buy their beautiful new home through a subsidy program at Asociacion Puertorriquenos en Marcha (APM), whose community-development arm got substantial NTI money for demolition and land acquisition, as well as other city and state subsidies.
Rose Gray, APM vice president for community development, said that without Neighborhood Transformation Initiative funding, her group would never have been able to develop the 138 homes that will eventually rise in the neighborhood.
"What we're trying to do is create that old-fashioned, mixed-income neighborhood," she said. "And we're fortunate to have a very diverse neighborhood."
After moving in on May 21, the Riveras have turned their home into a showcase with extensive landscaping and fencing.
"It's a dream come true," said Javier Rivera, who works as a senior supervisor for Ready, Willing and Able, the nonprofit agency that helps homeless people enter the job market.
But miles away in West Philadelphia, Pat Bryant, a block captain who has lived for 25 years on Beaumont Street near 56th, complains about the dozen vacant, boarded-up homes, some now owned by the city, that drag her street down.
From the back alley you can see the houses sagging in collapse. On the next street over, Florence Street, the city has taken down four or five homes and greened the vacant land.
For the last four years, Bryant says she's pressed City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell to get funding to rehabilitate the vacant homes. Bryant said tearing them down just creates more problems.
Asked about Mayor Street's NTI program on her street, Bryant said: "I think it's a failure. When you tear a house down, the weeds grow up. The city isn't taking care of the lots and you walk by and you don't know if someone is going to jump out and rob you."
Though one private developer is doing a total rehab to one vacant home on her block, Bryant says the city could better spend its money saving the existing housing stock.
"I just wish they'd do something so that the people who have lived here for years and owned their homes can get some value out of them if they decide to sell," she said. "The way things are now, they aren't going to get anything." *
