Renovating a home can be stressful. Tackling it with a romantic partner can either ease or add to the stress.
A 2025 survey found that some couples felt that renovating or building a home was fulfilling. Others considered breaking up.
We have some tips on how to protect your relationship while designing the home you want.
Keep scrolling for that story and more in this week’s edition:
Coming together: See how this local county — Pennsylvania’s second wealthiest — is addressing homelessness.
Built for speed: Learn how luxury home sales in the Philly area compare with luxury sales in other markets.
Renter protections: Read about efforts in New Jersey and beyond to prevent landlords from discriminating against potential tenants for using public assistance.
Bringing nature in: Peek inside this Bella Vista apartment in a rowhouse that had been abandoned for three decades.
— Michaelle Bond
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Picture this. You’ve been with your romantic partner for years, and you’ve seen each other through all kinds of ups and downs. Your relationship seems unshakeable. Then you decide to renovate your home.
Renovations can be a source of stress for individuals and for a relationship.
As a couples therapist in Center City put it, “the list of things that can trigger people during a renovation is very long.”
The home remodeling and design platform Houzz surveyed hundreds of couples for its 2025 report on remodeling and relationships.
According to the study, couples most often fight over:
🙎🏽 staying on budget
🙎🏽 deciding on products and materials
🙎🏽 agreeing on the project’s design or scope
Don’t feel bad if a renovation strains your relationship. Even a local couple who builds homes for a living had to bring in a third party to help settle disagreements on the design of their own home.
Sometimes you need a mediator. Keep reading to learn more tips to make sure your relationship lasts through a renovation.
At the end of 2024, Montgomery County had no full-time shelters, even though the number of people without homes was growing as the cost of housing increased.
Now, the county has three emergency shelters.
The county’s Democratic and Republican commissioners have led an unusually bipartisan effort to tackle homelessness. The Republican commissioner said he and his colleagues came to the job with similar goals around addressing the issue.
It’s not unusual for residents to fight against new homeless shelters and low-income housing in their backyards. The county commissioners have been getting personally involved in pushing local governments to allow more housing.
But 2026 will bring more challenges.
Keep reading to find out what’s ahead this year, where shelters have been built, and why one commissioner says that making sure residents are housed takes “political courage” from local officials.
The latest news to pay attention to
Luxury homes in the Philadelphia area sell faster than in most other markets.
New Jersey will soon explicitly ban landlords from discriminating against people who use public assistance to pay for housing.
Philly’s chief fiscal watchdog has promised to examine Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s H.O.M.E. plan and Philly’s port in her new term.
The shopping mall between two of Philadelphia’s most iconic skyscrapers is for sale.
This first-time homebuyer purchased a South Philly rowhouse that was much smaller than her apartment.
Survivors told us there was a persistent gas smell, lack of concern by staff, and a smoke break before an explosion at a Bristol nursing home.
A Phoenixville shopping center sold for more than $7 million.
House of the week: For $599,900 in Abington Township, an expanded four-bedroom Colonial near a park that’s only open to township residents.
Luxe listing: For $9.9 million, you can own this Lower Merion mansion and a bonus house next door.
What is it with Philly and trees growing in houses?
While I was reporting my story about dangerous vacant homes last year, I came across two families in two different neighborhoods who were living next to empty houses with trees growing in them.
And now Nate Carabello says that when he bought a rental property in Bella Vista in 2005, the rowhouse had been boarded up for 30 years and a tree was growing in the middle of it.
The house is now home for Katie Kring-Schreifels, who lives in one of its apartments.
She’s filled her space with art and things she’s found in a variety of places, including a Habitat for Humanity ReStore, eBay, and Ikea. A leather trunk in her bedroom was her great-grandmother’s. Her mom found the flock of paper bluebirds at a craft show.
Peek inside Kring-Schreifels’ home and see how she’s furnished her apartment’s balcony.
📷 Photo quiz
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.
Last week’s quiz showed a photo of the “Weaver’s Knot: Sheet Bend” public artwork on the Delaware River Trail along Columbus Boulevard. The stainless steel piece is between the Cherry Street and Race Street Piers.
Shoutout to Lars W. for getting that right.
Enjoy the rest of your week.
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