The Philadelphia Land Bank is a mess. What is Mayor Parker’s plan to fix it?

For Mayor Cherelle L. Parker to meet her goal of 30,000 homes built or repaired in four years, Philadelphia needs to activate its thousands of parcels of vacant land.

A tool exists, in theory, to do just that.

Created in 2013, the Philadelphia Land Bank was meant to make it easier for the city to get its vacant land into productive use and acquire abandoned private land. It would combine the city’s publicly held land under one easy-to-use system as opposed to scattering it across multiple agencies. And it would give the municipal government priority in acquisition when tax-delinquent properties were offered at sheriff’s sales.

But the Land Bank hasn’t lived up to its promise.

In the decade since its creation, the Land Bank sold only 892 lots and created 992 homes, while at least 7,680 lots sit fallow under municipal ownership. Sheriff sales never resumed post-2020, so the Land Bank hasn’t acquired more property in years.

“Mayor Parker has laid out a bold vision of 30,000 units of housing, and the only way that works is if we have a functioning and fast moving Land Bank,” said Aren Platt, one of Parker’s top advisers.

The dozen former and current city workers, Council members, developers, and advocates interviewed for this article agreed that the agency’s dysfunction stems from multiple shortcomings. The Land Bank is understaffed, and applicants have long complained that it is hard to work with. Basic transparency and reporting requirements have not been met since 2019. The website baffles users. The board has been riven by faction and often unable to keep a quorum needed to make decisions.

Then there is City Council’s role. Legislation must be passed to move land from the city to a new owner, a veto point that advantages influential actors and the loudest voices in the room.

Few land banks in the United States require such political oversight, which effectively ensures Philadelphia has 10 land dispensation policies based on the priorities of the 10 district City Council members.

Without elaborating, Platt promises “real reform” is in the works. Parker’s effort to improve the Land Bank began with appointing a fresh slate of board members, as did City Council, which should at least address quorum issues.

But Platt says that big changes are not expected in leadership. Executive director Angel Rodriguez, who’s helmed the Land Bank for seven years, will remain. And the administration hasn’t requested more funds for the Land Bank in the new budget.

Still, boosters see signs of improvement. In this fiscal year, 253 lots are moving through the land dispensation process. The activity is fueled partly by City Council’s interest in the Turn the Key program, which subsidizes homeownership units for working-class municipal employees.

Parker allies say just having a mayor who prioritizes the institution can solve problems of recalcitrant bureaucracy and hyperlocal Council politics without requiring new legislation or a fight over councilmanic prerogative.

“With her priorities, there’s only one solution, and that’s to get this working,” Platt said. “That’s why you are seeing the uptick in movement in the Land Bank.”

During last year’s mayor’s race, the Land Bank’s reputation for opacity and sluggishness made it a regular target for barbs on the campaign trail. One candidate suggested abolishing it.

Log on to a Land Bank board meeting, and it’s easy to see why that was an applause line. Neighborhood activists wonder why more parcels aren’t being reserved for deeply affordable housing, or fret about the future of a community garden. (Since its creation, only 23 lots have been disposed for that purpose.) Most developers have learned to avoid the Land Bank.

“With other land banks, things move faster,” said Ryan Spak, a midsized developer based in West Philadelphia. “I wouldn’t go down the road of doing a land bank project in Philadelphia because I’d be concerned that it might get stuck in a bottleneck somewhere.”

The Land Bank was created to make it easier for groups with less political influence — nonprofits, community gardeners, and smaller developers like Spak — to access city-owned land.

The previous process for acquiring publicly held vacant land was Byzantine and riven with shadowy veto points. Data was in scant supply, and policies for land disposal were not public. Only the most politically connected developers could hope to navigate the process.

Compared to those days, the Land Bank is more effective. In the early years, legally mandated reporting requirements were followed, and a lot of land was moved from other agencies into the bank. In 2018 and 2019, the agency acquired over 600 properties.

But while the Land Bank eliminated many veto points that advantaged politically connected actors, it left City Council’s power over land disposition intact. If a Council member doesn’t like your proposal, or just doesn’t like you, chances of acquiring the land are zero.

If they do like you, oversight is scant. The Inquirer broke stories about former City Council President Darrell Clarke steering cheap land to an ally for student housing and about current City Council President Kenyatta Johnson allowing a childhood friend to access city land for affordable housing that he instead flipped for profit.

“If you need checkoffs from City Council on every single transaction, why have a land bank?” asked Jim Rokakis, author of The Land Bank Revolution and a national expert on the topic. “You don’t want to get into the vicissitudes of political issues because you get a sporadic system that moves very slowly.”

» READ MORE: Five advocates offer advice on what the land bank needs in its second decade

Council’s grip on land sales resulted in Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration taking little interest in the Land Bank, some observers said. It became a bureaucratic backwater, with a small budget and an undermanned, underqualified staff.

“We had a mayor who looked at the housing portfolio as a priority for district Council people,” said former Council member Maria Quiñones-Sánchez, who wrote the Land Bank legislation. “I don’t think the current Land Bank staff has the capacity to move hundreds of properties a year to get to [Parker’s] goal.”

Although the city maintains an online map highlighting its vacant land holdings, it is difficult to navigate. There’s no simple way to find out what’s available.

The Land Bank’s annual progress reports haven’t been updated since 2019 even though they are mandated by law. The same goes for the strategic plan, which is supposed to be refreshed every three years.

For Quiñones-Sánchez, a recalcitrant bureaucracy and lack of transparency are at the core of the Land Bank’s issues.

“[You shouldn’t] put the burden on Council people with seven staff when you have multiple land holding agencies who are responsible for doing the vetting,” Quiñones-Sánchez said. “When even I couldn’t get cooperation, how am I going to get other Council people to trust the process?”

Parker’s administration wants to get the Land Bank and City Council working together.

The new Land Bank board chair, elected in May, is Herb Wetzel, who worked in municipal housing policy for decades for City Council. He was a close aide to former Council President Clarke, who fought to ensure Council maintained control over property sales when the Land Bank was created.

“We’re not here to rewrite the legislation on the Land Bank,” Platt said. “The administration, the Land Bank staff, and the board led by the new board chair, Herb Wetzel, are working closely with district Council members to find ways to improve the speed of the process.”

While it isn’t yet clear what reform will look like for the Land Bank, there are plenty of ideas. Policymakers have long advocated for a publicly available tool to track every property through the process, to highlight where delays are occurring and who is at fault. Quiñones-Sánchez says that restarting the mandatory annual reports and making it clear who is obtaining land could serve a similar purpose.

More basic tweaks could be made with the online mapping, data, and planning tools that the city offers. Such changes would be aided by a revamped and expanded Land Bank bureaucracy, fortified with staffers with expertise in real estate finance.

“We need the Land Bank to work ... that means immediately restarting required public reporting, an inclusive planning process to set the Land Bank’s policies and priorities, and something as basic as a functioning website,” said Jennifer Kates, a former Quiñones-Sánchez staffer who helped write the Land Bank legislation.

A Land Bank spokesperson says that the land management dashboard, the online map, and the failure to update annual reporting and strategic plans were the result of the previous administration and the pandemic, and would be updated soon.

While observers say it’s good to see the Parker administration actually paying attention to the Land Bank, more will be needed to succeed.

“We have a mayor who knows this is important and articulated very ambitious goals,” Quiñones-Sánchez said. “Now the staff has to do it. But there has to be an increase in the budget; there has to be an increase in capacity.”