Two of the Top Eight Most Gentrifed Zip Codes Since 2000 are in Philadelphia (homes, construction jobs)

[thedirtypirate]

Originally Posted by kyb01

20 years! How about 10 years or less.

I hope so but 10 years is a short time in a macro sense. It took decades of decline to get where we are now, I hope the city successfully fights back in a much shorter time period.

Originally Posted by BK_PHL_DEL

Hawthorne Park and the new streets carved out are a great example of well-spaced setback from the sidewalk and what I assume are buried power lines. There are no power poles and ugly hanging power lines obstructing the vertical view:

https://goo.gl/maps/Qfjnrh9YiM72

Completely agree. They did those the right way and it really shows. The little things make all the difference.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

Public housing at the heart of neighborhood revival

Interesting article about the success of the Hawthorne Projects in South Philadelphia.

Blowing up the towers and replacing them with houses that blend into the existing neighborhood makes those living in the projects feel more apart of the community than the impersonal world that the towers created.

I wonder if there are any plans to emulate MLK plaza in Sharwoods. I am optimistic about the area and hope in 20 years we view Sharwoods as we do Hawthorne.

Two of the three Norman Blumberg towers were demolished. The third, the one for the old folks, remains standing.

And the PHA took tons of properties around the project in the middle of a process where it was supposed to be planning Sharswood's future with the community rather than executing its own plans in spite of it. (This is one story I broke that I regret not pursuing more aggressively after I broke it.)

And the PHA has no concrete plans that I can identify for actually building something other than its own headquarters on the land it took. Sure, that map shows what kind of housing it wants to put on the property it already owns as well as what it seized, but they're nowhere near as far along in producing it as the agency was when it imploded the MLK Plaza towers. There, they already had a development partner identified and a plan for building the new housing at the ready.

Maybe in 10 or 20 years we will be talking about Sharswood the way we talk about Hawthorne now. But I have this feeling that we will be gazing upon urban prairie for most of this time span before something happens.

[thedirtypirate]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Two of the three Norman Blumberg towers were demolished. The third, the one for the old folks, remains standing.

And the PHA took tons of properties around the project in the middle of a process where it was supposed to be planning Sharswood's future with the community rather than executing its own plans in spite of it. (This is one story I broke that I regret not pursuing more aggressively after I broke it.)

And the PHA has no concrete plans that I can identify for actually building something other than its own headquarters on the land it took. Sure, that map shows what kind of housing it wants to put on the property it already owns as well as what it seized, but they're nowhere near as far along in producing it as the agency was when it imploded the MLK Plaza towers. There, they already had a development partner identified and a plan for building the new housing at the ready.

Maybe in 10 or 20 years we will be talking about Sharswood the way we talk about Hawthorne now. But I have this feeling that we will be gazing upon urban prairie for most of this time span before something happens.

Which is why I said 20 years. The towers needed to go, should it have happened without more of a concrete plan? Probably not.

Everyone and their mother is coming out of the woodwork to protest Temple for whatever reason.

North Philly residents oppose Temple’s proposed community center

The proposed 4-story, 95,000-square-foot development, dubbed, “The Alpha Center,” would sit at 1301 West Diamond Street—which is now a vacant lot—and feature a, “full service, interdisciplinary educational and community engagement center,” according to the project proposal. The project, which has been referred to as an early childhood development center will, “include multiple services that benefit children and their families from North Philadelphia,” the proposal said.
The project was discussed at a Civic Design Review (CDR) meeting this week, during which members of the design team discussed the layout of the building, which includes a playground area that’s raised from the the sidewalk and classes for adult education. It will also include a dental office and psychology and counseling services.
“We want to return life to this piece of the street,” Chris Kenney, Principle at Strada Architecture, the firm handling the development, said during the presentation.
That comment—and the potential effects of the development as a whole—angered many community members, who came out in droves to oppose the project during Tuesday’s meeting.

I saw this else where, but the woman quoted in opposition to the community center is a member of the new black panther party according to her social media profiles. the NBPP is deemed a hate group for their anti-white antisemitic viewpoints by the Southern Law Poverty Center. Great woman to represent the community. /s

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

Which is why I said 20 years. The towers needed to go, should it have happened without more of a concrete plan? Probably not.

Another reason I'm not keen on what the PHA has done in Sharswood is that it uprooted the seeds of organic renewal that were beginning to sprout on the neighborhood's edges.

At the same BSCCA meeting I attended where PHA's assistant director outlined the land grab, several people ppresented plans for new infill housing on some blocks near Sharswood's southwest corner.

This was direct spillover from Brewerytown.

The PHA's land grab removes the feedstock for this.

Everyone and their mother is coming out of the woodwork to protest Temple for whatever reason.

North Philly residents oppose Temple’s proposed community center



I saw this else where, but the woman quoted in opposition to the community center is a member of the new black panther party according to her social media profiles. the NBPP is deemed a hate group for their anti-white antisemitic viewpoints by the Southern Law Poverty Center. Great woman to represent the community. /s

Leaving aside the critic's bona fides for the moment:

I've said on several occasions now that whenever Temple attempts to run plays from the Penn Urban Revitalization Playbook (aka "the West Philadelphia playbook"), it botches them.

I think Temple's reputation in the community has become stuck so far in the mud that if it announced it was going to build marble mansions for every resident of the area, people would suspect its motives.

[thedirtypirate]

The Fed: No sign of homeowners getting pushed from gentrifying neighborhoods

The study, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, researched the connection between tax delinquency, homeowner mobility, and gentrification over the last two years.
Researchers found that while tax delinquency is about 4 percent higher in gentrifying neighborhoods than in those that have not seen a steep rise in household income, homeowners aren’t moving out any more rapidly than they are in nongentrifying areas.
In fact, the study found that in the last two years the probability that someone ages 55 to 84 will move actually went down 3.3 percent in those neighborhoods.
“Elderly homeowners as well as homeowners with lower credit scores are no more likely to move out of gentrifying neighborhoods,” the authors wrote.


The study credits city programs that help longtime homeowners, like the Homestead Exemption and the Longtime Owner Occupants Program (LOOP), with preventing displacement. LOOP was implemented after the city reassessed properties in 2013 and some homeowners saw properties jump in assessment by 300 percent. Under that program, homeowners were eligible for a 10-year tax break if they earned 150 percent of poverty income, or no more than $124,800 for a household of four.

Thoughts?

[gg]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

I saw this the other day and saw it again today, so I figured I would share.

A report last week detailed the most gentrified zip codes in the country since the year 2000. The city of Philadelphia had two, zip codes on it: 19146 and 19123.

19123 has gentrified the 4th most in the country. The zip code is bounded by Callowhill St. to the South, Girard Ave. to the North, Front St. to the East, and Broad St. to the West.

19146 has gentrified the 8th most in the country. The zip code is bounded by Lombard St. to the North, Tasker St. to the South, Broad to the East, and the Forgotten Bottom to the West.

This LA neighborhood is the most gentrified in the US—and these other zip codes made the top 10



Those are pretty large portions of the city that saw dramatic demographic shifts already. I expect these areas to continue to gentrify for quite awhile.



If this study was done again in 2030, where do you think the most 'gentrified' places will be? Will it move north to 19125 or 19122? Will gentrification make it's way to Gray's Ferry eventually?



Is gentrification a good or bad thing?

Great news for Philly. I hope it continues as it will sure help with the crime there. Good luck to you guys.

[T. Damon]

Originally Posted by gg

Great news for Philly. I hope it continues as it will sure help with the crime there. Good luck to you guys.

Agree, Philly is a great city with urban densities unrivaled but for just a few cities in the country, and its historic housing stock is probably the best of them all. Hope it continues for a great urban, if imperfect, gem.

[inmyownwords15]

I thought I’d check and ask this here. Are there any books you guys would recommend on gentrification specific to Philly?

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

The Fed: No sign of homeowners getting pushed from gentrifying neighborhoods




Thoughts?

This jibes with some other studies I've read that suggest the same thing: the rate of population turnover does not increase when a neighborhood gentrifies; the only real change is in the income levels of the newcomers.

We do seem to have a unique opportunity here in Philadelphia, though, to track the phenomenon and take steps to ameliorate any possible negative side effects before things spin out of control. I wouldn't dismiss Nora Lictash's worries out of hand. Seems that Tax LOOP is proving effective in this regard.

[thedirtypirate]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

This jibes with some other studies I've read that suggest the same thing: the rate of population turnover does not increase when a neighborhood gentrifies; the only real change is in the income levels of the newcomers.

We do seem to have a unique opportunity here in Philadelphia, though, to track the phenomenon and take steps to ameliorate any possible negative side effects before things spin out of control. I wouldn't dismiss Nora Lictash's worries out of hand. Seems that Tax LOOP is proving effective in this regard.

Do you think all of the affordability legislation coming out of council this year is necessary? Some of my more conservative peers view these additional steps as 'bleeding' the working tax base even further.