North Philly’s Fairhill will get more public housing than it lost, plus a rehabbed rec center with an indoor pool

The Philadelphia Housing Authority on Tuesday revealed plans to preserve both its two high-rise towers at the Fairhill Apartments, a remnant of the traditional — and now much maligned — public housing style that has largely been slated for demolition.

The two towers will undergo a three-phase rehabilitation project that will create a combined 202 senior units, along with 150 newly constructed town houses, and the reopening of the shuttered Hartranft Community Center.

“It’s not your grandmother’s public housing,” said Kelvin Jeremiah, president of the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA).

Former tenants who were relocated will be given the right to return to the new properties when they are complete, Jeremiah says.

In 2019, the housing authority planned to demolish one of the Fairhill towers along with the accompanying low-rise housing around it, which had fallen into serious decay. A WHYY report from the time noted a repair backlog of $31 million. The plan at the time called for a one-for-one replacement of the existing 264 units.

Two years ago, the last residents were vacated from the Fairhill apartments, and in 2023 demolition began on the low-rises. At the same time, the housing authority filed for condemnation of 89 parcels of empty lots and vacant homes around the site.

With that additional land secured, the new plan now calls for 352 units, built or rehabbed across three phases.

“We’re continuing to maintain affordability in those locations and repositioning the assets that we have there,” said Jeremiah. “And we are adding to the portfolio as well, which is why we didn’t want to demolish one of the two towers. We believe it was even better public policy to retain it.”

The project will also include the rehabilitation of the long vacant Hartranft Community Center, which is about a block from the housing site. PHA acquired it from the city last year, and is rehabilitating the building and its grounds with a mix of federal, state, and local funds. It will include outdoor space, a basketball court, and an indoor swimming pool.

The first phase of the project will commence this year with the gut rehabilitation of one of the two towers, with 101 units of senior housing, and 30 new town houses around the tower on land the housing authority has long owned. This phase will also reintegrate the superblock site around the old public housing complex into the surrounding city streetscape.

The superblock was originally set up in a tower-in-a-park format that cut the public housing off from its surroundings. A proposed new public street called Boston Place now will carve the site in two, dividing the two towers and their attendant new town houses and parking lots.

The second phase will include the gut rehab of the other tower for another 101 units of senior housing and 35 new town houses adjacent to that high rise. Each tower’s accompanying town houses will be built to front the surrounding streets, with parking lots for 54 spaces sited behind them and taking up much of the cleared park area.

Then the third phase will feature the construction of an additional 85 town houses, including 10 for homeownership, on the land surrounding the superblock that was acquired through the condemnation process.

“Half of the parcels were in public ownership, the rest were vacant land and blighted buildings,” said Jeremiah of the additional land the housing authority acquired for the third phase. “I don’t believe that there were any occupied units.”

Jeremiah says the housing authority is still in touch with many of the previous tenants of the Fairhill apartments, and that they are being keep up-to-date with the rehabilitation project.

“They have an agreement between themselves and PHA, signed by me directly, that gives them the right to return,” said Jeremiah. “Once the unit is rehabbed, or built, we are required to first go to them.”

In practice, housing authorities have historically had a hard time bringing tenants back to projects they have been displaced from. Given that major development and construction projects take many years to complete, families may move away or be evicted from other housing authority holdings. Many may not want to return at all, especially if they were able to relocate to higher opportunity neighborhoods using housing vouchers.

“They don’t have to return if they choose not to,” said Jeremiah. “A lot of the times, they remember what it used to be and now that they left they’re good. But when they see the quality of the housing, oftentimes, they’re like, ‘I’m coming back.’”