Philly debuted an exciting affordable housing pilot in 2024. Will Mayor Parker plan more like it?

At the northwest corner of 13th and Bainbridge, The Parker apartment complex opened in October with a third of its 45 units earmarked for affordable housing. Thanks to a unique agreement between the city and the development firm, it could be the start of a new method of bringing affordable rental housing to Philadelphia without stretching the city’s limited resources.

The project was developed by Benchmark Real Estate Partners, a small private firm, which built these affordable units with no government aid beyond the cheap land that the City of Philadelphia provided. The units are also supported by rents from the majority of apartments where tenants pay the market rate.

“It maintains affordability in a neighborhood that is going to get more rich and more exclusive,” said Kenneth Penn, president of Benchmark. “We have people making anywhere from $38,000 a year to people making $180,000 and they’re living in the same building.”

Five of the units are reserved for residents making 50% of area median income (AMI), or about $38,000 a year. Nine units are reserved for those making less than 60% or an income of around $50,000.

The city still holds a ground lease on the land The Parker is built on, which allows it to intervene if the developer does not hold up their end of the deal. It’s an innovative twist that allows for permanently affordable housing, unlike many federal programs where subsidies often expire after a few decades as was recently seen with the University City Townhomes.

“This sounds very similar to what we’re seeing cities and housing authorities do across the country,” said Paul Williams, executive director of the Brooklyn-based Center for Public Enterprise. By “using public resources more creatively” many cities have managed to build new kinds of mixed-income housing without scarce federal government aid.

It is a similar idea to a community land trust — a popular idea where a nonprofit like a community development corporation owns the land — but in this case backstopped by a city agency, the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation (PHDC).

Philadelphia has seen some examples where community groups that own land for affordable housing fade away. Large municipal institutions have more staying power.

“When you are talking about perpetuity, a great deal of skill and expertise is required,” said John Kromer, Philly’s director of housing in the 1990s. “Both the Housing Authority and [the city housing agencies] currently have the capability to play a land trust kind of role as illustrated in [The Parker]. More power to them.”

For some policy experts, The Parker is a prime example of what Philadelphia should be doing with its vacant land in areas like Hawthorne, where city-owned property sits in the midst of a hot real estate market. It’s an alternative to using city-owned land for home ownership or just selling it off.

But Penn warns that the city doesn’t own many other properties of this size in neighborhoods where the rents from market rate units would be high enough to subsidize the affordable units.

“You need to really be in a market where the land is very expensive,” said Penn. “19147 is probably one of the one of the richest zip codes you can have, so it makes that easy. If you’re trying to do this in North Philadelphia, it’s not going to work.”

The land at 13th and Bainbridge has a long history. It was among the parcels seized by the city through eminent domain in the late 1990s. A long neglected public housing high rise had recently been demolished in the area, and policymakers sought to remake the neighborhood with mixed-income housing.

National affordable housing developer Pennrose and South Philly’s Universal Companies obtained the rights to develop the property at 13th and Bainbridge in 2005, but the plans floundered.

The land was part of the 2020 federal indictment of Council President Kenyatta Johnson — whose district covers the area — when prosecutors accused him of helping Universal Companies to retain control of the land in 2014 after years of inaction from the nonprofit (where Johnson’s wife worked at the time). The Johnsons were acquitted of all charges by a federal jury.

In the midst of that controversy, the land reverted back to municipal control. That’s when PHDC requested proposals for a mixed-income project with permanently affordable housing on land the city would still control.

The development process included community engagement with some skeptical neighbors who critiqued an earlier version that included no parking. Now, 13 vehicle spaces are included in an interior courtyard on the first floor, and an additional half fourth floor was added so no residential units were lost.

The building is named for KeVen Parker, the late owner of Ms. Tootsie’s restaurant that once occupied the 1300 block of South Street.

Council President Johnson attended the ribbon cutting for the project in October, and praised it in an Instagram video as a model for future affordable housing projects.

“This high-quality project has a mixture of affordable and market rate for both longtime and new residents,” Johnson wrote. “This new way of creating affordable development projects makes for a great and equitable future for the city of Philadelphia.”

Policymakers could have the chance to emulate The Parker’s success next year. In 2025, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker is expected to unveil the details of her housing plan, which she has said she will use to build and repair 30,000 units of housing over her first term.

Parker is a major proponent of Turn The Key, a program that also utilizes city owned land but incentivizes developers to build single family homes for more affordable ownership.

While that program is expected to feature prominently in her housing proposal, Penn says the city could also seek to replicate the success of The Parker — if it can find other publicly-owned properties in high rent neighborhoods

“The city needs to decide if this is something that they want to do going forward,” said Penn. “Personally, I would like to see these types of deals more but they have to be in the right location.”