How developer Mo Rushdy rose to become Philly’s latest political power player

During Philadelphia City Council’s first session of the year, developer Mohamed “Mo” Rushdy stood inside the entrance of the ornate chambers and greeted a parade of politicians, staffers, and lobbyists.

The new head of the Building Industry Association, which represents residential developers, has enjoyed a rapid rise in Philadelphia politics.

Rushdy boosted his profile by raising millions for multiple political action committees, and last spring — with the backing of Pennsylvania’s richest conservative — launched a controversial super PAC to attack progressives running for mayor and Council. He landed a spot on the Land Bank board and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s transition team.

It’s unusual for a midlevel developer to be so visibly political. But his rise comes as the progressive movement has amassed power in the city and fought for policies such as mandated affordable housing and rent regulation.

Rushdy, a moderate Democrat who lives in Moorestown, N.J., presents himself as an antidote to those housing policies, according to interviews with more than a dozen politicians, operatives, and developers. His ideas — and his business — are focused more on homeownership for working-class residents. Rushdy’s company, the Riverwards Group, has developed hundreds of homes, many of them on vacant lots in Kensington and Port Richmond.

“My priority as BIA president is to provide solutions that can be executed fast and provide homes for working-class people making $20 an hour,” said Rushdy, 44, who became the head of the BIA on Jan. 1. “We’ve seen what the alternative is: no scale, little things here and there, while the need grows.”

That vision closely aligns with Parker, who campaigned on uplifting “middle neighborhoods” and getting more residents on a “path to self-sufficiency.”

“He absolutely believes in the power of government to make things better,” said Chief Deputy Mayor Aren Platt, who formerly consulted for Rushdy’s super PAC focused on Council candidates. “There’s a lot of people, especially in the business community, who look at politics and government as a tool to affect their bottom line. That’s not who Mo Rushdy is.”

But critics fear Rushdy’s rise is an example of the development industry’s influence growing at the expense of Philadelphia’s lowest-income residents. Some community groups and neighborhood activists say his housing vision could monopolize scarce resources and crowd out rental housing accessible to longtime residents of changing neighborhoods.

“I’m not against developing housing for lower-middle-income people,” said Will Gonzalez, executive director of Ceiba, a coalition of Latino groups. “But we want affordable housing for the poorest big city in the country.”

Rushdy moved to San Francisco from Egypt in 2004 and began working for Toll Bros.

When his family moved to Philadelphia in 2005, he worked on the company’s Naval Square development in Graduate Hospital. From there, he got a job with Westrum Development Co., managing the construction of a huge senior community on the site of the notorious Byberry mental hospital in the Northeast.

Then in 2009, amid the financial crisis, Rushdy and his partner, Lawrence McKnight, took over a stalled effort to build three Fishtown rowhouses. As the Riverwards Group, they’ve since built 709 homes with another 1,280 in the pipeline.

“We’re neighborhood developers,” Rushdy said. “We’re building product that targets the median income of Philadelphia. We cannot target the top 10%. That’s not who we are.”

Riverwards doesn’t use direct public subsidies. To keep prices down, they’ve depended on low interest rates, the 10-year property tax abatement, and cheap land.

Low-value land in neglected areas marked an opportunity for Rushdy. While other developers competed over condos or high-end rentals, he could target a different market and help revive neighborhoods like Kensington.

The company sold market-rate homes for between $325,000 and $390,000, and units backed by a municipal mortgage subsidy for between $230,000 and $280,000. The company’s apartments are targeted to renters with incomes between $45,000 and $55,000.

“These numbers might seem unaffordable, and I’m sympathetic to that, but these are numbers that you won’t see for most new construction,” Rushdy said.

Neighborhood advocates nonetheless argue Rushdy’s units are too expensive for people in the communities where he is building.

“We oppose this and any project on city land that does not provide for a majority share of real affordable units,” said Talia Giles, of the Philly Liberation Center, about a Riverwards Group project that sought publicly owned parcels from the Land Bank, which controls much of Philadelphia’s city-owned vacant land.

As Rushdy’s business interests grew, he got more involved in local politics. In 2020, he worked with then-BIA head Leo Addimando to rally support for a 1% construction tax earmarked for community development.

Many in the real estate industry hated the tax, but BIA leadership saw it as an opportunity to salve negative feelings about development and show they were not reflexively opposed to new taxes and regulation. Among the programs bolstered by the tax is one that offers subsidized mortgages on moderately below market-rate homes for city workers.

“He tries to meet [Council] where they are in terms of what their constituents want,” Addimando said. “Developers have been taking a long time to get with the new program, and that new program also needs a new face. That’s Mo.”

The following year, Councilmembers Jamie Gauthier and Maria Quiñones Sánchez championed mandatory inclusionary zoning, which requires developers building more than 10 housing units in some parts of the city to make at least 20% of them affordable.

The BIA opposed it, saying developers would build elsewhere and growth would stall. The legislation passed and has been in place for about two years. No projects that meet the affordable housing requirements are under construction in the areas where it applies, though Gauthier maintains it needs more time.

“Sometimes it feels like the whole city is supposed to stop because developers can’t realize the profit they need,” she said. “The whole city also needs to stop when people are getting forced out of neighborhoods because they can’t find affordable housing.”

That zoning fight led Rushdy to get involved in electoral politics. He began running a super PAC in 2022 that boosted Council candidates he believed would be open to policies he prefers.

By early last year, progressive former Councilmember Helen Gym was one of several front-runners in a crowded mayoral race. Rushdy feared she would champion ideas unfriendly to developers, and business leaders whispered about launching a super PAC to oppose her. But no one took charge — so Rushdy did.

He formed a second super PAC called the Coalition for Safety and Equitable Growth, the first in Philadelphia created solely for oppositional purposes. It bought hundreds of thousands in ads questioning Gym’s ethics.

The super PAC raised $1.4 million in less than three months, with the biggest contribution coming from conservative billionaire Jeffrey Yass, a charter school proponent and conservative donor who gave $1.1 million — drawing fury from progressives.

“No one in Philadelphia should be taking money from Yass,” said Steve Paul, executive director of One PA. “[Yass] funds those who want our Black and brown [people] not to have our voices heard.”

But Rushdy argues Yass was just one of 20 donors. Other contributors included a contractors’ association that gave $50,000, and Josh Kopelman, a venture capitalist and chairman of The Inquirer board, who also gave $50,000. The Laborers District Council, led by Ryan Boyer, one of Parker’s top backers, gave $25,000. Rushdy personally kicked in $25,000.

Gym finished third in the Democratic primary.

Rushdy resurrected the Coalition last fall to unsuccessfully oppose Council candidates from the left-wing Working Families Party. Yass contributed another $300,000, and a handful of developers and business leaders donated.

“Going public was viewed as a very risky proposition,” said Bill Hankowsky, former CEO of Liberty Property Trust. “I give Mo a lot of credit for having courage to say, ‘Why don’t we try to participate in this process and have some impact on the future of the city?’ ”

After the general election, Rushdy served on Parker’s transition team as a vice chair of her housing, planning, and development subcommittee.

The administration’s 100-day plan aligns with Rushdy’s vision, including developing “affordable luxury” housing, plus reviewing the Land Bank to “expedite the return of vacant and tax-delinquent properties to productive use.”

Under Parker, Rushdy says he hopes developers can supersize efforts like his company’s in Kensington. That means selling cheap land for moderately priced homes without new tax incentives or direct subsidies — though he emphasizes he doesn’t want to see affordable housing developers excluded, as his foes claim.

Politically, Rushdy says he has no interest in running for office. He will donate to President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, and the BIA will contribute to state legislative races, but he has no big fundraising plans for the state or national level.

Instead, he’s concentrated on City Hall, where housing policy is decided.

“For the longest time, we have forgotten the people who are making $45,000 a year,” he said. “We think they’ll just figure it out. But I think that’s a segment that the private sector can come in and get these units done.”