How Philadelphians feel about housing security and affordability

Black Philadelphians and households making less than $50,000 — populations deeply affected by housing policies from the federal to the local level — are most likely to say housing affordability and homelessness should be top priorities for Philadelphia.

Overall, about three in five Philadelphians think these need to be top priorities for the city’s next mayor to address, according to a Lenfest Institute for Journalism/SSRS poll that surveyed more than 1,200 people about issues facing the city.

Twice as many Black residents as white ones think housing affordability should be a top priority. Three-quarters of Black survey respondents prioritized it, compared with fewer than two in five white respondents.

Overall, Philadelphians ranked crime as the city’s most important issue. But where households can afford to live determines how much they are affected by crime and especially the city’s ongoing gun violence crisis.

Two-thirds of survey respondents who said gun violence has a major impact on their community said affordable housing should be a top priority in the city. They prioritized housing more often than those who are less affected or unaffected by gun violence.

» READ MORE: Black home buyers face barriers from past racist policies and current practices

Black Philadelphians are most likely to be victims of gun violence, to be evicted, and to need help paying for housing. More than 80% of the roughly 20,000 Philadelphia households with rental vouchers through a program commonly known as Section 8 are Black, according to the city.

At a City Council hearing last week, Dionna Roundtree testified about the challenges she faced after she finally got her voucher in 2020 — a year after her youngest son was shot across the street from her Southwest Philadelphia apartment owned by the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

Landlords questioned whether she could actually afford homes. One place she looked at didn’t have any grocery stores nearby.

”I saw a lot of houses where landlords said they would accept the voucher. But once they saw me in person, that flew out the window,” said Roundtree, 50. “Once they saw me in person, that I was a Black woman, that was the end of a lot of searches.”

» READ MORE: To prevent housing-voucher discrimination, renters, housing advocates, and city agencies want more resources

She was eventually able to find a landlord willing to take her voucher.

In the survey, Black and Latino residents and Philadelphians with lower household incomes rated an array of housing policies as higher priorities than other residents did. These included providing funding to help people with housing costs, requiring developers to build more affordable housing in order to receive building permits, increasing the amount of temporary housing, and providing more support for people with serious mental illnesses or drug addictions.

When Marie Jean, a retired certified nursing assistant who emigrated from Haiti in the 1970s, moved to Philadelphia in 2018, a lot of apartments she could afford were not in safe areas. She liked the Bustleton neighborhood in the Far Northeast, so she settled for a studio there.

Rent kept rising, and she wanted more space for her money. But she couldn’t afford $1,150 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. She searched for two years until she found her current place for $940 in the lower Northeast.

» READ MORE: Low incomes make Philadelphia homes less affordable, Pew study finds

“People like me, I don’t have no overtime, holiday time. I only have one check,” said Jean, 69. “It’s like you work all your life and now to find a place to stay, it’s a problem.”

Of the respondents whose households make less than $50,000 per year, 69% said affordable housing should be a top priority for the city. That share dropped to 45% for households making $50,000 to just below $150,000 and fell to 27% for those making $150,000 or more.

Philadelphia has the reputation of being a relatively affordable place to buy and rent homes, especially compared with high-priced neighbors. But Philadelphians’ low incomes make homes less affordable.

Among residents who pay for housing, the city is evenly split between those who think it’s “somewhat” or “very” easy to pay and those who find paying “somewhat” or “very” difficult, according to the poll.

Carol Ferraro, 79, calls herself “one of the lucky ones.” She owns outright the condo she and her husband bought five decades ago in the Far Northeast. “I feel for other people when I see them,” she said.

“They’re building housing for all these people to live that are expensive. How about affordable housing for people who can’t afford those high prices and veterans who need housing?” she said. “You got two or three families living in one home. It’s a disgrace.”

Most people who have been homeless in the last three years but now have homes still find paying rent or mortgage “somewhat” or “very” difficult, according to the survey.

Residents who have been homeless or had unstable housing within the last three years were more likely than those with secure housing to say Philadelphia isn’t a good place to live. And people who have an easier time paying for their homes are more likely than those who struggle to think the city is heading in the “right direction.”

Mike Tan is considering leaving Philadelphia, where he’s spent all 29 years of his life, and moving down south. He said that he’s concerned about crime and drug use and that “the average rent is exorbitant right now. It just keeps going up.”

He got kicked out of his parents’ house and has “been kind of floating around” since age 17, he said. He’s mostly relied on people he knows for housing.

Tan, who works for Shady Brook Farm in Bucks County, and his girlfriend, a server at the Dining Car in Northeast Philadelphia, rent the first floor of a duplex for $1,400 a month there.

“It’s a struggle, to be honest,” Tan said. “I was out of work a couple times, which made it more difficult, but luckily we’ve been able to maintain thus far.”

Philadelphia has long had a reputation as a city of homeowners. According to the survey, just more than half of Philadelphians own their homes.

The more money households make, the more likely they are to be homeowners. Three-quarters of residents with household incomes of $150,000 or more are homeowners. But households all along the income spectrum own homes.

About two in five residents with household incomes less than $50,000 own their homes.

MaryAlyce Rensa of West Philadelphia, a 70-year-old veteran who works part time as a professional counselor, wants to become a homeowner, but life keeps draining her savings. She paid thousands for lifesaving medical care for her beloved cat Diablo a few years ago, and then when she built her funds back up, the pandemic hit.

She wasn’t able to work for almost a year, and her $1,900-a-month Social Security payments weren’t enough. She ran through her savings and had to choose between paying bills and eating. She didn’t make rent a few times.

» READ MORE: High prices and low supply make buying a home harder, especially for Black households

She’d like to work less, but she can’t afford to. Not if she wants to buy a home. That means more clients and more of the sitting that hurts her back.

“It’s still a substantial amount of money I need to have,” she said. “I can’t afford over $100,000. So that’s scary. In this market and what I see out there, that’s scary.”