Philly Council votes against Mayor Parker’s vision for her signature housing plan, signaling a win for progressives

For almost two years, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has dominated Philadelphia City Hall with an unbending approach to negotiations.

On Wednesday, City Council signaled those days may be over.

During a combative hearing on legislation related to Parker’s signature housing initiative, Council President Kenyatta Johnson on Wednesday afternoon refused to allow a vote on an amendment brought by the Parker administration and instead advanced Council’s version of the proposal over the mayor’s objections.

» READ MORE: City Council took a rare stand against Mayor Parker by allotting more housing funds to the poorest Philadelphians

In a voice vote, Council’s Committee on Fiscal Stability and Intergovernmental Cooperation approved its own changes to the legislation — authorizing the city to take out $800 million in city bonds to fund Parker’s Housing Opportunities Made Easy, or H.O.M.E., initiative — without considering the mayor’s requested tweaks.

Councilmembers Brian O’Neill, Anthony Phillips, and Curtis Jones Jr. signaled their support for Parker’s vision by voting against the measure, which now heads to the Council floor for a final passage vote or further amendments, either of which could come as soon as January.

It is unclear how Johnson’s handling of H.O.M.E. will change the tight working relationship Parker and Johnson have maintained since both took office in January 2024. Wednesday’s vote marked their most contentious public disagreement during their tenures. Both officials still agree on many policy goals and have plenty to gain politically from maintaining their alliance.

» READ MORE: Mayor Cherelle Parker and Council President Kenyatta Johnson are trying to bring back the ’90s in City Hall

The dispute between Parker and Council centers on income eligibility thresholds for two of the housing programs that will be funded by bond proceeds: the Basic Systems Repair Program (BSRP), which provides funding for needed home improvements to eligible owners who might be displaced by costly repairs, and the Adaptive Modification Program (AMP), which funds projects to improve mobility for permanently disabled renters and homeowners.

Parker had structured the H.O.M.E. initiative with unusually high income cutoffs to make its programs more easily accessible to middle-class households, saying they are often left out of city assistance programs despite being crushed by rising costs.

“The whole debate over income eligibility limits for BSRP and Adaptive Modifications is to make sure that we leave no working Philadelphian and no qualifying Philly rowhome owner excluded from these vital programs,” Parker said in a statement Wednesday. “If we don’t save Philly rowhomes, we’re going to become a city of used-to-be neighborhoods, blocks that used to be nice but now are showing signs of age and decline. I will not allow that to happen — not on my watch as Mayor of Philadelphia.”

In a win for progressives, Council instead stuck to its plan of prioritizing lower-income Philadelphians.

» READ MORE: City Council took a rare stand against Mayor Parker by allotting more housing funds to the poorest Philadelphians

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who chairs the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and the Homeless, said Wednesday’s vote sent the message “that Council takes its job seriously as a steward of taxpayer money in the city of Philadelphia, that we are not here to just rubber-stamp in a proposal, that we’re here to work together.”

Wednesday’s vote appears to mark the first instance of Parker’s hard-line negotiating tactics failing her since she took office. Even when she could not get negotiating counterparts to bend to her will in the past, Parker has largely prevailed.

Last year, for instance, Council declined to vote on one of Parker’s school board nominees. But the nominee, incumbent board member Joyce Wilkerson, then pulled out a letter from Parker instructing her to remain on the board until the mayor names a replacement, which she still has not done.

And in July, when the largest union for city workers went on strike to try to squeeze larger raises out of the administration, Parker stuck to her guns amid increasing pressure to fold as trash piled up across the city and 911 wait times grew longer. The union ultimately folded after an eight-day work stoppage with a new contract that closely aligned with Parker’s last offer before the strike began.

» READ MORE: ‘They are my people’: Mayor Cherelle Parker on why she stood firm in the DC 33 city worker strike

But this time, Parker appears to be out of options to prevent Council from getting its way because she cannot veto another key piece of legislation to keep the housing initiative in motion that needs to pass before the city can issue the bonds. That measure — a resolution setting the first-year budget for H.O.M.E. that received preliminary approval in a Council committee last week — could see final approval as soon as Thursday.

In a last-ditch effort to rally public support for her version of how the H.O.M.E. bonds should be spent, Parker on Sunday barnstormed across 10 Philadelphia churches.

“We’ve got to take care of the people who are most in need, but we can’t penalize the people who are going to work every day, pay their taxes, contribute to the city, and they can’t benefit from home improvement programs,” she said.

» READ MORE: Amid City Hall tensions, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker seeks public support at Philly churches for her H.O.M.E. initiative

That maneuver did not appear to go over well with lawmakers, who likely did not appreciate the mayor encouraging their constituents to oppose Council’s version of the plan.

Even before chief of staff Tiffany W. Thurman presented Parker’s amendment at Wednesday’s hearing, lawmakers sounded off, with Gauthier saying the administration was spreading “misinformation” and Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke calling Parker’s approach “Trumpian.”

“It was in response to misinformation being spread during that tour,” said Gauthier, who, along with fellow progressive Councilmember Rue Landau, led the charge to lower the income eligibility thresholds included in H.O.M.E.

Gauthier noted that Council’s version of the bill still increases those thresholds beyond what is offered in existing programs.

“Obviously, the mayor, all of us, have the right to go and talk to our constituents,” she said, “but we have to be operating from a fact-based perspective, and telling folks that the Council proposal excludes them is not factual.”

The legislative process for approving the city bond issuance — the centerpiece of Parker’s H.O.M.E. initiative, which she first proposed in March — has been long and tortured.

Council initially approved the bond authorization in June, but lawmakers at that time inserted a provision requiring the administration to get their approval for annual budget resolutions determining how the proceeds will be spent.

» READ MORE: Council takes up Mayor Cherelle Parker’s $800M housing bond request — with a catch

Johnson delayed a vote on the first H.O.M.E. budget resolution for months before allowing it to be approved last week by the Committee of the Whole. But lawmakers made major changes over the mayor’s objections, including granting themselves the right to set income thresholds for the initiative’s programs.

It was the first sign that Council was serious about enacting its own ideas even if Parker was not on board and, in Council’s view, would not negotiate. In a twist, lawmakers took their latest stand Wednesday at a time when the mayor’s team came to the table with a significant, albeit last-minute, counteroffer.

Council’s changes to the eligibility requirements for BSRP and AMP would require 90% of the H.O.M.E. bond proceeds for those programs to be spent on households making 60% of Philadelphia’s area median income, which is about $71,640 for a family of four.

Thurman on Tuesday proposed a compromise in which only 60% of bond money would be set aside for those households. She told lawmakers that Parker, in part, wants to ensure H.O.M.E. helps city workers, who are required to live in Philadelphia but often struggle to make ends meet on municipal salaries. (Parker pointed to the H.O.M.E. plan during the strike as evidence she backed city workers despite opposing higher wages.)

Johnson responded that he hopes “one day our city workers are getting paid enough where they don’t have to sign up” for assistance programs.

“You know as well as I do we agree,” Thurman replied, prompting Johnson to cut her off.

“I’m not acknowledging you yet,” Johnson said, referring to a Council hearing procedure in which the chair must recognize speakers.

Parker’s latest offer, which came months into the standoff over H.O.M.E., appears to have been too little, too late.

Phillips — who voted for the Council budget resolution last week but said he has since changed his mind to support Parker’s vision — wanted to call up the administration’s amendment for a vote, he said in an interview.

“This week I changed my mind because that’s where my mind really has been,” said Phillips, who represents the Northwest Philadelphia-based 9th District that Parker held when she was on Council. “The 9th District neighbors — they’ve made abundantly clear that our housing policy needs to reflect them. … They’re long-term homeowners, residents who are on fixed incomes, multigenerational families.”

But under Council rules, only Johnson could put forward amendments to the legislation in committee.

Johnson still could have allowed the vote to take place if he offered the amendment on behalf of the mayor, which would not have been uncommon, and it likely would have failed. But instead he blocked, prompting Jones, Parker’s most vocal ally on Council, to protest.

“We should do the right thing always, even in spite of its inconvenience and time,” Jones said during Council. “Resolutions and amendments need to be introduced so that they can get the light of day and be heard.”

Johnson said he pushed through Council’s version because the mayor’s administration did not engage with him about its new proposal ahead of the meeting.

“Just for the record … I had not officially seen any official amendment prior to this actual hearing,” Johnson said. “The administration just showed up.”

Despite Wednesday’s vote, the fight over H.O.M.E. may not be over. Councilmember Mike Driscoll, a Parker ally who voted to advance the bond authorization, signaled there may be further changes.

“I wanted to keep the HOME initiative process moving,” Driscoll said in a statement, “but still hope to influence a reasonable solution which includes program support for row home Philadelphians.”