Mayor Cherelle Parker attempted to head off objections to her $2 billion housing plan during a town hall-style meeting Wednesday night, just days before the City Council is set to formally interrogate her administration about the proposal.
She told residents and stakeholders gathered at a Southwest Philadelphia charter school that “there’s some people already attempting to poke holes” in the Housing Opportunities Made Easy, or H.O.M.E., Initiative.
Specifically, critics will argue that the funding should be targeted to lowest-income residents and neighborhoods, Parker said.
“I want you to be leery of anybody who’s telling you that we should just be trying to deliver this housing in one way to one group of people,” she told the crowd.
Parker, in rolling out the plan, has repeatedly stated she does not want to “pit the have-nots against those who have just a little.” Her initiative would expand income eligibility guidelines for some programs, and she has touted the potential impacts for municipal employees, many of whom make too much to qualify for some housing benefits.
The mayor is asking lawmakers to approve issuing $800 million in bonds, with the first half to be borrowed in the coming months. An additional $1 billion worth of city-owned lots would be utilized for the plan, and the remaining funding is cobbled together from a variety of sources.
“What I really want you to know, and this is important to me, the program that I introduced is a $2 billion program,” Parker said. “Never before in the history of the city of Philadelphia have we attempted to make that significant of an investment in housing.”
Parker’s goal is to create or preserve 30,000 units of affordable housing through the H.O.M.E. Initiative, and Tiffany Thurman, her chief of staff, said Wednesday that shovels could hit the dirt as soon as this fall, provided Council approves of the plan.
About 1,600 affordable homes are currently in the process of being built or rehabilitated, according to a dashboard the city set up earlier this month.
As proposed, the H.O.M.E. plan would introduce, expand and continue a myriad of programs aimed at helping homeowners and renters. In conjunction with that effort, Parker’s team has produced a list of recommended regulatory and policy changes to facilitate housing production and repairs.
While Parker published an overview of her housing strategy March 24, a detailed, line-by-line budget for each program has not been released. She said that her office would work over the Easter weekend to finalize that information before an all-day H.O.M.E.-focused Council hearing Wednesday, April 23.
Lawmakers are expected to question top administration officials about the initiative as part of ongoing municipal budget negotiations. Council leaders and Parker are required to adopt a spending plan by June 30.
The H.O.M.E. plan is advancing alongside the budget.
“We’re not in competition. We collaborate,” Parker said, speaking about her relationship with Council. “That’s what leaders do.”
Wednesday’s town hall was part of a series of community meetings Parker is holding across Philadelphia to discuss her budget and housing proposals. She said she prefers direct engagement as a way to counter “lies.”
“Marian Tasco taught me to go straight to the people,” Parker said, referring to the former Council member who brought the now-mayor into politics as a teenage intern. “I’ve been doing this since I started.”
A second housing-related town hall is scheduled to take place May 29 at a yet to be determined location in the 6th Council District, according to the city’s website.
Council, for its part, has also been hosting community budget town halls, in addition to the formal City Hall hearings, some of which feature public feedback portions.
