A Temple University president will live in its North Philadelphia neighborhood for the first time in decades

Temple University president Jason Wingard plans to move from Chestnut Hill to a North Philadelphia rowhouse to be closer to campus and the school’s surrounding community.

He will be the first Temple president in decades to live in the neighborhood. He and his wife, Gingi, will sell the house they’ve owned for more than 20 years and move to a university-owned, three-story rowhome in the 2000 block of Carlisle Street, a block from the campus border.

Wingard has been pushing the campus to engage more with the community since he arrived and Tuesday’s announcement that he will live in the neighborhood signals a big step in that direction.

He plans to move as soon as the house can be renovated, likely by early April. The house is in the university police patrol zone, just a block behind Broad Street and near Norris Street.

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His wife and 13-year-old son will join him. The couple’s three older children are in college and one is in boarding school, but they sometimes will be there, too, he said, acknowledging that the three-bedroom house might be a bit snug at times.

Wingard, who became Temple’s first Black president in July 2021, said he and his wife have wanted to live near campus since he took the job, seeing that as vital to better understanding and leading the 33,600-student university community.

“It’s what I believe is necessary for the president and the first lady of the university to be able to engage fully with the students, with the faculty, with the staff, to attend plays, to go to games, to engage with the community, to frequent local businesses and shops,” Wingard, 51, said in an interview in what will be his new kitchen. “All of that is necessary to have a meaningful relationship in this place.”

Anything that happens on campus now, good or bad, “allows me to be at ground zero,” he said.

His wife said the new proximity will allow her to increase her involvement with the university community as well. The family, she said, hosted international students at their home for Thanksgiving and the students had to Uber to Chestnut Hill. Next year, they’ll be able to walk over.

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The move comes as worries mount about violence in Temple’s neighborhood. Temple student Samuel Collington was fatally shot less than two blocks from a campus building in November 2021. There have been shootings on and off campus and a string of home invasions and armed robberies in neighborhood areas where students live.

Wingard and his wife said they are not worried and hope their presence will demonstrate they believe the campus community is safe.

“If safety were a concern for us, we wouldn’t want our own children to be living here,” said Wingard, a former dean at Columbia University and vice dean at Wharton who has degrees in sociology and education and who also has worked in the business world.

He said he hopes he gains better understanding of the violence problem by living nearby.

“There may be additional ways that Temple can be a resource for the community and being on the ground here, firsthand, I may learn what some of those opportunities are,” he said.

The modest three-story redbrick rowhome sits on a block mostly occupied by students. In fact, students will be living on both sides of him. He said he isn’t worried about parties.

“That all comes with the territory of living in the campus community,” he said.

The house is owned by Temple and had been used by the community relations arm of campus safety, which will move its operations to another house on the street, said Ken Kaiser, senior vice president and chief operating officer.

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The house will have an office for the president on the second floor and an entertainment area to host guests on the first. It will undergo up to $150,000 in renovations to make it handicapped-accessible. Some mold remediation and heating and air-conditioning repairs are needed, too, as well as removal of a low stairwell ceiling — at 6-foot-4, Wingard would have to duck a bit, otherwise.

Wingard isn’t the first university president to live on or near his or her campus. It’s rather common. The University of Pennsylvania has a president’s house on campus in West Philadelphia where both former president Amy Gutmann and current president Liz Magill have stayed. Haverford College president Wendy Raymond lives on campus. So does West Chester University president Christopher Fiorentino.

But previous Temple presidents have not. Richard M. Englert, who preceded Wingard, lived in South Jersey. Neil D. Theobald, Ann Weaver Hart, and David Adamany stayed at a university-rented apartment on Rittenhouse Square. Peter Liacouras, whose tenure stretches to 1982, lived in a private residence along the river.

Temple has had a bit of an uneasy history with its neighborhood, facing criticism from residents who say the school has increasingly encroached on surrounding areas and created trash, parking, and noise problems as more students moved in and parties followed.

» READ MORE: Police say three home invasions involving students in Temple University neighborhood could be related

“He’s going to get to hear it,” said Cassandra Knight, a Temple housekeeper who has lived on Wingard’s new block for 40 years. “He can see exactly what the neighbors are dealing with. He’ll probably be able to help us with some of the homeowners on the block who don’t enforce anything with students as far as the parties and all the trash.”

Knight, 59, whose sister and mother also live there, said all but three houses are filled with students now.

Students said they hope the president will come to understand their experience better, too.

“I think it just says he cares,” said Landen Lloyd, 20, a computer science major from Kutztown.

» READ MORE: Police say three home invasions involving students in Temple University neighborhood could be related

Wingard, a Pittsburgh native who grew up in West Chester, told residents of his coming move at a community meeting Monday. He said one resident again invited him to join neighbors for backyard Friday night cigar-smoking. A local barber offered to cut his hair. Someone gave him directions to the local polling place. Some asked if this was real.

“This is where we will eat and sleep,” he said he told them. “This is where we will have Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is home.”