The developer could not win the support of community groups, who wanted to see city-owned land reserved for housing affordable to people with the lowest incomes.
for the city to sell him dozens of properties in the Norris Square neighborhood at a very low price so he could build modestly priced units for homeownership.Neighborhood groups and local community development corporations opposed the idea from the start. The project would have been orchestrated through, which subsidizes homeownership for working-class residents with preference for city employees.
Rushdy pushed forward anyway, asking the Land Bank board to at least vote on his plan. Consideration was hampered multiple timesAt the same time, Rushdy attempted to tailor the project to win community and Council support. He narrowed the project’s scope from 75 properties, some at market rate, to 45 properties that would be sold only with Turn the Key subsidies — to no avail.
“Public land should be for the public good,” said Will González, executive director of Ceiba, a coalition of Latino groups. “This effort has solidified the community around the need for affordable housing, and the Latino CDCs are looking to be more innovative in terms of securing financing .” Rushdy, who is also president of the Building Industry Association of Philadelphia, said the saga demonstrates why most developers avoid the Land Bank to acquire property.
While the housing wouldn’t have been affordable to the lowest-income residents, he said, it also wouldn’t have been priced like new market-rate homes in“We need so much more subsidies if we are going to just focus on lowest income,” Rushdy said. “If we’re going to wait for that money, we’re not going to do much.”
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