Ed Rendell’s housing director says Philly’s main challenge is still poverty
John Kromer, Philadelphia's director of Office of Housing and Community Development throughout the '90s, shares thoughts on the state of the city ahead of a new mayor.
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John Kromer served as Ed Rendell’s director of the Office of Housing and Community Development throughout the 1990s, the last decade where Philadelphia lost population every year.
Since then he’s taught about urban policy and politics at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a consultant for clients ranging from the city of Reading to the Ford Foundation.
But he’s always remained plugged into Philadelphia politics, watching the arena that he left in 2001 and keeping track of the policies pursued by subsequent administrations. His book, Fixing Broken Cities: New Investment Policies for a Changed World, was reissued this year with chapters that take deep dives into local policies pursued in Philadelphia, Camden, and other local municipalities.
The Inquirer talked with him about his advice for the incoming Cherelle Parker administration and how the city can more effectively get its vacant land into more productive use.
A lot of the conversation around cities is focused on words like gentrification. But do you ever worry about the city facing the opposite — sliding back to the days of managing decline?
We’re already there. The highly respected city planner Alan Mallach has pointed out that if you look at a map of a city like Philadelphia, and look at the areas that are threatened by gentrification, and then you look at the high-poverty areas, the latter are far more predominant.
The real crisis still is dealing with poverty. We’re still struggling with the disinvestment. Although it was much more visible 40 years ago, it is still a crisis for the city. That’s why education is so important and why I really hope that there’s a constructive response to the finding that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s approach to education is unconstitutional.
Between 2006 and the pandemic, Philadelphia’s population grew every year. That’s the first time the city expanded since the 1950s. These past few years we’ve lost population again. Does that worry you?
I’m not so concerned about population decline, in part because the NIMBY philosophy has taken such a firm hold in the suburbs, and in part because there’s still so many opportunities for work in the city and to have fun in the city. As the suburbs apparently become more and more restrictive in terms of housing development, I expect there will continue to be more demand for housing and more opportunity for population growth in places like Philadelphia.
You wrote about the city’s management of vacant land. The Philadelphia land bank was created to rationalize that process, but there is agreement the institution does not work well. What are the flaws in the city’s management of vacant land? Is there a fix that leaves City Council’s hyperlocal control of land use intact?
Well, number one, there are too many regulations and it’s still too hard to understand how to get a property through the land bank. And then secondly, the district Council person is sitting in the room, at the same time as the land bank staff is trying to transact real estate business.
I think there are opportunities for the city to identify properties that it wants to have withheld from sale by the land bank but then just [take] the small stuff, the individual lots that are the size of the rowhouse, and put them on the market, the way that any other developer or property auction firm would do.
The Philadelphia Housing Authority did that over 10 years ago. It was basically an auction. They contracted with an auctioneer to sell a lot of vacant rowhouses and vacant lots with a qualifier: that if development did not begin within a certain time, the property would return to PHA’s ownership. It was a tremendous success. It put many properties back on the city’s tax base and generated some revenue for the housing authority. So with small properties that size, I don’t think there’s any need to go into a detailed workforce development and community benefit strategy. I think the pros should be just put them on the market and sell them, subject to a commitment to develop.
I think the processes are more important than the staffing, and the roadblocks that you can run into when you have City Council members in the middle of the process are a problem.
You’ve noted the success of the Center City District. Do you think the BID model could be undermined by remote work? Commercial property owners may challenge their tax assessments, which could limit funding to CCD.
Center City District isn’t just a tax collection entity and a mechanism for [creating] clean and safe [services], important as those functions might be. It also has a real strategic planning brain, and the ability to participate in dialogue and decision-making about the future of Center City, from the perspective of benefits for the city as a whole. That resonated with Paul Levy and it seems clear that that will continue with Prema Gupta. It’s not your ordinary business improvement district.
The future of downtown is a lot more residential and a lot less office, and I think the Center City District is well-positioned to analyze the effects of that, and to make some plans that would be consistent with that opportunity. More so, I think, than the Philadelphia City Planning Commission currently, which I think unfortunately has been downgraded under the current administration.
The Planning Commission needs to play a bigger role in policymaking and decision making. And I think the evidence is in the 76ers arena dialogue. There’s no point person from the city. Who is the senior person working closely with developers, who speaks for the mayor with respect to planning dialogue that is going on with respect to the 76ers arena? That’s a big drawback.