How many meetings does it take in Philadelphia to build 57 affordable homes? A lot.

The Philadelphia Housing Authority has been trying to build dozens of affordable homes and apartments in Strawberry Mansion since 2019.

The project spans 14 city-owned lots in the neighborhood and is backed by federal, state, and local funds. But because the project has taken so long to break ground — unfolding over three presidential administrations — some of the funding may now be in peril.

Gregory Hampson, PHA’s vice president for capital projects, told the zoning board on April 22 that inflation had caused a $5 million increase in the project’s budget.

“If we do not [build] this project, we’re going to lose the $13 million Low Income Housing Tax Credit that we’ve been awarded,” he said. “And in light of some administrative changes that we’ve seen, we don’t know that this funding will ever come back.”

The housing authority and its development partner, Pennrose, argue that further delay could kill the project as tariff-driven inflation marches on and federal housing aid cuts are threatened by the Trump administration.

Pennrose and PHA’s plans have been subject to intensive neighborhood scrutiny, the clashing priorities of two successive City Council members, and multiple Zoning Board of Adjustment hearings. Even with all that vetting and the support of most local political actors and community groups, the project has not received final approval.

Over six years, the project’s cost has ballooned even as the number of units has shrunk. Political and regulatory hurdles created with good intentions have repeatedly stymied the project.

Academic research on public engagement has found that participants in meetings generally aren’t representative of their larger communities: They are older, more likely to be homeowners, and more likely to oppose new development.

Its an “ad hoc process that isn’t really representing community interests because there’s an unrepresentative group of people who typically participate in these hearings,” said Katherine Levine Einstein, professor of politics at Boston University and author of Neighborhood Defenders.

Gathering of input also eats up a lot of time as the development process drags on to that point where “we’re also not getting housing that the city of Philadelphia desperately needs,” said Einstein.

The struggles of this project point to the larger barriers that face Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration and the Philadelphia Housing Authority, which both have ambitious plans to expand the city’s housing options in coming years. Multiply this experience across the city’s housing industry, and the scale of the challenge becomes clear.

PHA issued a request for proposals on the site in early 2019 and selected Pennrose as its development partner later that year.

Because the project is being built on city-owned land, the district Council member is required to introduce legislation to move property from the city’s control to the developers. That meant they had to first meet the requirements of former City Council President Darrell L. Clarke, and his chosen Registered Community Organization (RCO), the Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp.

Those priorities were hashed out over the course of multiple neighborhood meetings between 2020 and 2024 and negotiations with the Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp.

To win support of Clarke and the community, they agreed to restrict the scope of the project. Among other concessions, the number of units was reduced from 77 to 57, plans for duplexes were scrapped in favor of single-family townhomes, and the size of a senior apartment building was reduced while moving it from 33rd and York Streets to 3230-38 Diamond St.

Finally in 2023, a resolution introduced by Clarke was sent to City Council to transfer the city-owned land to the housing authority.

Six months later, when Clarke was succeeded by Jeffery “Jay” Young, the main hurdle left for the developers was minor approvals from the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA).

Zoning Board approval is fraught with delays under the best circumstances, especially since the pandemic. But in this case, the new Council member also made his displeasure with the project known, which further postponed its hearing.

During his first year in office, Young chose a new group to replace Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp. as the coordinating Registered Community Organization (RCO).

That group is Strawberry Mansion Community Concern, which is led Young’s staffer Bonita Cummings and is known for opposing most new housing in the neighborhood. (She retired in December but was working in Young’s office when he made her group the coordinating RCO.) The developers unsuccessfully sought to meet with Cummings, delaying the zoning board meetings further.

When the hearing was finally held, the board heard supportive testimony from a variety of neighborhood groups, labor leader Ryan Boyer, a close ally of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker; a local pastor, and letters from the area’s state representative and senator.

“I strongly support this project, as we need more units in Philadelphia,” Boyer said. “It is a great project to have, and I’m firmly in support of all 14 parcels.”

But Young contends there is widespread opposition to the proposal, although when asked on April 22 to name other opponents, Cummings was unable to do so.

“At every meeting that I went to talk about this project, there was opposition to this project at open public community meetings,” Young said at the hearing.

Young specifically alleges there haven’t been public meetings on the proposed location for a 21-unit senior apartment building on Diamond Street, which was moved from York Street in response to earlier feedback from Clarke’s favored neighborhood groups.

Young did not respond to a request for comment.

Cummings, who served as a special-projects liaison in Young’s office, is more broadly critical of the project.

“Like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, like the high-rise public housing experiment, you’re being asked today to allow us to be an experiment of low rises that will have us on top of each other in terms of the number of units that some of these locations are asking you to approve,” Cummings said at the April 22 meeting.

At the meeting, the zoning board approved many of the variances the developers needed to move forward with the project. But when the hearing stretched on so long that they were forced out of the meeting room, board members delayed approving the Diamond Street project for another week.

The project narrowly avoided being detained by yet more public engagement April 22 when the Planning Commission’s David Fecteau suggested he could postpone his testimony — and the Diamond Street project’s consideration by the ZBA — until Young and Cummings held another community meeting.

“We’ve made many, many attempts to have open public community meetings, and they’ve all been ignored,” said Alex Goldberg, the developers’ zoning lawyer. “We’ve gotten to a point where this doesn’t move forward, the project may die.”

Goldberg got his way, and the Diamond Street project was approved April 30, although the ZBA will not address the project’s final permissions until June.

Assuming no further delays, the process will have taken over 6½ years from PHA’s request for proposals and the project breaking ground.

But that’s assuming no federal funding cuts.

This story has been updated to reflect that Bonita Cummings retired from Young’s office in December, although she was still listed among staff on his city website as of May 7, and the Council member responded to a question about her employment only after publication.