Becoming the next Philly mayor is simple: Show up, clean up, repeat

​​​​There was a reason for the sense of déjà vu I felt when Lorraine Falligan reached out recently to talk about a home that’s become a rat-infested blight on her North Philadelphia neighborhood.

A decade ago, Falligan and her neighbors in the 3000 block of North Sydenham Street were at their wits’ end trying to get the city to respond to their concerns over a dilapidated house, broken asphalt, and a slew of other issues.

But no matter who Falligan and her neighbors contacted, they got nowhere — until the women cornered then-Mayor Michael Nutter at a dedication ceremony for a new basketball court nearby and all but dragged him onto the block for a little show-and-tell.

Within a month, the crumbling home was gone, and the street was patched — none of it perfectly, all of it long overdue, but it left an impression about the lengths to which some residents have to go just to get the most basic services in our city.

Still, Falligan didn’t think she would ever have to revisit that script.

“Mayor [Jim] Kenney is trying to get out, so he’s not going to do much,” she said, referring to the city’s lame-duck chief executive who was checked out long before he famously declared last July he would “be happy” when he was no longer in office. “That’s the thing with all these people trying to get elected, they talk a big game until they get the job.”

She’s not wrong. Whether it was failing to show up for families of homicide victims or residents during a water crisis, Kenney never quite appreciated the importance of ground-level politics, of showing up and showing face — and not the grumpy one.

But you know what, there’s less than two months before the primary that, in our overwhelmingly Democratic city, all but determines our next mayor — so Godspeed, Mayor Kenney, and listen up mayoral candidates:

Policy might play in many rooms around the city, but on the streets of Philadelphia, many of which are in desperate need of repair, residents like those on North Sydenham Street just want their basic services met — starting with city departments that need to be a lot more responsive to resident complaints. A recent poll by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism showed 51% of respondents ranked city services among the top priorities for Philadelphia’s new mayor and elected officials to address in the next two years. (Disclosure: Lenfest owns The Inquirer.)

You want votes? Then make sure the streetlights are on, clean up the litter around all neighborhoods, and when residents like those on North Sydenham Street call, show up.

When I stopped by, I didn’t need much help identifying the run-down house with windows stacked high with clutter. Neighbors on Falligan’s block — which is on the border of the Nicetown and Allegheny West sections of North Philly — told me they began noticing problems at the two-story home owned by a New York City real estate company a few years ago.

At first, residents tried to help the tenant — who they suspect lives with mental illness — when she began to fill up the home with all kinds of garbage. Falligan called the tenant’s family. Neighbors tried to reach the landlord. On several occasions, Aaron Sanders, a city Water Department employee who is also a block captain, made arrangements to clean up the front porch, which was attracting rats.

But after each clean-up, the tenant would fill the porch and home with rubbish again. And when she ran out of room in her own backyard, she filled up the yard of the vacant home next door.

“It just all leaves a bad taste in your mouth,” Sanders said of the difficulty in getting a response from city officials. “Being a taxpaying citizen, you expect things to be done.”

A spokesperson from the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections told me this week that the North Sydenham home had long been on its radar, the landlord received multiple code violations in 2021, and the property was deemed uninhabitable that same year when it was found to have no running water. (The case, I was told, will be expedited to the Court of Common Pleas.)

But the tenant continued to live there as it fell deeper into disrepair, affecting everyone on the street.

“One house is holding the whole neighborhood hostage,” Falligan said.

After Falligan’s mother died last year, she couldn’t even host a gathering at her home because of the conditions of her neighbor’s house.

On Wednesday, after Falligan contacted me and Councilmember Cindy Bass’ office, three city employees showed up and placed multiple notices on the home while they tried to coax the tenant into leaving and accepting help.

It seemed that after years of pleas, the residents of North Sydenham were finally getting some results. But as I stood alongside Falligan and Sanders, they seemed to feel less than victorious.

“It’s just sad,” said Sanders.

What if, they wondered, the city had responded when they first started calling? Would there be a tenant in crisis? Or another vacant home on the block? Who can say — and who knows what happens next?

For now, though, the residents of North Sydenham Street are already making plans to continue dealing with the problem house on their block the same way that they always have: by placing a few chairs and planters on the porch — and giving their slice of North Philly at least the illusion of being part of a functioning city.