Housing activists and residents combat gentrification in West Philadelphia

by Jared Ware

This text was initially printed at Prism.

On Sept. 29, simply minutes into freshman convocation, Liz Magill’s first main speech as College of Pennsylvania president was disrupted by about 100 protesters. The protesters, together with college students, chanted “Save UC Townhomes” and “cease Penn-trification.” After sitting briefly, Magill tried to proceed, making the disrespectful suggestion to the protesters (amongst whom have been native residents going through eviction) that “Democracy can’t work except folks can stay collectively, be taught from each other and, paradoxically, disagree.” Amid steady chants, Magill was unable to complete her remarks.

The motion that disrupted this occasion has develop into some of the dynamic forces in Philadelphia in latest months. It’s galvanized round a wrestle to defend the College Metropolis Townhomes, a 70-unit housing complicated that has operated underneath a Part 8 project-based subsidy program for the final 40 years.

Residents say Magill has ducked assembly requests for months. Whereas she is likely to be new to her position, her establishment’s legacy is inescapable; native NPR/PBS affiliate WHYY has famous that Penn has undertaken “insurance policies that produced a number of the most acute gentrification Philadelphia has ever seen.”

In July 2021, the proprietor, IBID Associates LP, introduced they’d permit their contract with the Division of Housing and City Improvement (HUD) to run out, and indicated their intent to promote the property. The resident-led wrestle to defend these houses has galvanized folks in Philadelphia across the protection of housing for Black, brown, working-class, poor, aged, and disabled residents. It’s not a combat about lofty plans for the longer term, however a couple of neighborhood’s skill to defend their precise houses.

In describing why the residents have fought so vigorously to defend their houses, UC Townhomes resident Sheldon Davids provided the next remarks at a latest Ruth Wilson Gilmore e book discuss on the Philadelphia Public Library. “It’s one of many few locations the place people who’re on public housing vouchers can nonetheless entry” issues like public transportation, a public library, medical care, markets, native shops, and different important facilities “with relative ease,” stated Davids. He described how he was capable of “discover his method” as a younger immigrant from Jamaica a long time in the past because of the convenience of entry, and painted an image of the “natural safety.” Townhome residents have been capable of present for the neighborhood’s youngsters.

“There’s a magic in that. That doesn’t occur loads. So that’s price preventing for. The neighborhood is price preventing for,” Davids added.

Gaining belief

The identify “College Metropolis” is the results of a College of Pennsylvania-supported advertising and marketing marketing campaign. The world the place the UC Townhomes sit was once generally known as Black Backside, “a neighborhood of largely working class and dealing poor African American residents, who have been displaced via eminent area to create UCSC and College Metropolis Excessive College,” as John L. Puckett, professor emeritus of schooling on the College of Pennsylvania, writes. Residents resisted these displacement efforts as nicely, though in the end the colleges—Penn, Drexel, and College of the Sciences, which is now a part of Saint Joseph’s College—gained out with the federal authorities’s backing, and hundreds of Black residents have been dispersed to different components of town. After these preliminary displacements, the UC Townhomes have been constructed on actual property that on the time was not fascinating to middle- and upper-class white residents. Nevertheless, gentrification and racialized displacement have intensified in recent times as Penn has continued focused investments. For instance, when the college partnered with the varsity district to fund Penn Alexander Elementary in 2001, 57% of the scholars in its catchment space have been African American; as of 2021, Black college students represented lower than 17% of the coed physique.

The wrestle to protect the UC Townhomes had humble beginnings. Sterling Johnson, an organizer with Philadelphia Housing Motion, remembers a small assembly final fall with Gerald “Sid” Bolling from the Black Backside Tribe that included some residents. Johnson attended the assembly alongside together with his collaborator Wiley Cunningham, people from Police Free Penn, a police abolitionist pupil group from the College of Pennsylvania, and members of Penn Housing 4 All.

Whereas they understood {that a} mass eviction of 69 households was deliberate for July 2022, it took the organizers time to achieve traction and construct belief with the residents. Johnson says one small breakthrough got here once they helped defend a resident going through a direct eviction and have been capable of cease that course of. That demonstrated to different residents that preventing again may very well be efficient.

Rasheda Alexander, a resident council member on the growth, remembers seeing just a few organizers tabling close to the car parking zone on weekends within the winter. She admits that originally she and most different residents weren’t concerned. However as she noticed how the scenario impacted extra susceptible folks within the Townhomes, Alexander determined to become involved.

“No one had gotten vouchers; no person was actually capable of get in touch with the relocation specialist. We had lots of senior residents and lots of people with disabilities who simply don’t have anyone to advocate for them,” stated Alexander.

Whereas there are numerous different residents and organizers concerned within the coalition at this level—together with over 50 organizations listed as allies on their web site—Alexander and Johnson symbolize a core facet of the wrestle: a decent relationship between militant housing activists and fiercely dedicated residents preventing for his or her neighborhood and for the power to defend their houses from the profiteering motive of the property proprietor.

Waging a wrestle in opposition to the rights of property homeowners looks like an uphill combat in a capitalist society, however it’s not the primary time that a number of the organizers have been concerned in such a pitched battle.

In 2020, Philadelphia Housing Motion was a part of the core of one other dynamic housing wrestle within the metropolis. Together with others, they led a direct motion motion with a big group of town’s homeless inhabitants that included squatting in vacant houses and a number of giant encampments. These actions lasted for months and have been ultimately settled via an settlement by Philadelphia Housing Authority and the Metropolis of Philadelphia at hand over 50 vacant publicly owned homes to a neighborhood land belief.

What these struggles make plain is the violence that’s basically intertwined with non-public property rights and the shadowy public-private partnerships usually concerned. Particularly, within the case of the UC Townhomes, the wrestle exposes the purported and well-defended proper of members of an elite property-owning class to make exorbitant income (some have estimated a sale worth of $100 million) from the sale of models which have stood as backed housing for 40 years.

Philadelphia Housing Motion, for its half, has labored to decommodify housing by “experimenting with collective possession,” Johnson stated in an interview on the Millennials Are Killing Capitalism podcast, making an attempt to take away properties from the unrelenting throes of the housing market.

Gilmore’s definition of racism, “the state-sanctioned or extralegal manufacturing and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to untimely demise,” can also be instructive by way of what residents and organizers are preventing in opposition to.

“The factor that we gained’t have is you evicting dozens of, a whole lot of aged Black folks and placing them on the road and probably resulting in their early deaths. That’s what occurred in different conditions,” Johnson not too long ago stated in an interview on Kelly Hayes’ Motion Memos podcast.

Preventing Again

The Save UC Townhomes motion has confronted many key architects and executors of displacement in Philadelphia. Johnson notes that these actions began out small however have been steady and constructed up over time. There have been teach-ins, rallies, marches, and protests on the property proprietor’s workplaces outdoors town. It’s exhausting work. Each Alexander and Johnson attest that fixed conferences and forcing the proprietor to increase the HUD contract a number of occasions has been annoying on the residents.

There have been spectacular moments, but in addition low factors: Whereas Johnson says he all the time believed it may very well be achieved, he acknowledged that at first of July, “it didn’t look like folks have been going to concentrate, however that’s why there was the encampment.”

The month-long encampment within the Townhomes’ courtyard by residents and supporters was one of many watershed moments within the combat. It garnered media consideration; introduced the neighborhood into the combat; and helped residents construct larger reference to activists, college students, and arranged labor within the metropolis. When a choose ordered the encampment evicted, the sheriff may dismantle the pallet boundaries and tents however couldn’t diffuse the vitality and momentum the gathering had created.

Alexander additionally describes the wrestle, and the encampment particularly, as having generated extra unity, even offering area for the kids within the townhomes to have a film evening outdoors, paint, dance, be taught to skateboard, and develop into extra instantly concerned in defending the townhomes.

The encampment additionally had symbolic significance in accordance with Johnson: The tents have been a projection of the true byproducts—homelessness—of mass evictions of poor residents. The encampment additionally obtained help from organizations like Labor for Black Lives, which pulled collectively a number of native union chapters to demand Mayor Jim Kenney and metropolis leaders protect the UC Townhomes.

Three weeks after the encampment was dismantled got here the disruption of Penn’s freshman convocation, bringing much more Penn college students into the motion. College students began one other encampment at Penn, demanding the college divest from fossil fuels, cease the eviction of UC Townhomes’ residents, and make funds in lieu of taxes to the varsity district. The coed solidarity work has drawn disciplinary proceedings by the administration.

Days after the protest at Penn, a big group of residents, organizers, and protesters caught the Constructing Business Affiliation of Philadelphia (BIA) abruptly. After rallying at Metropolis Corridor, protesters stormed the BIA networking occasion on the Pennsylvania Academy of the Superb Arts, confronting builders and public officers.

Nationwide religion chief Bishop William J. Barber II led an interfaith rally on the UC Townhomes days later, providing to maneuver into the townhomes to place extra strain on the proprietor and town if vital.

The disruptions of convocation and the BIA assembly and Barber’s gathering all led to a response from a college consultant deflecting and downplaying Penn’s involvement within the sale. However no person may deny the effectiveness of the organizing, which has compelled the property proprietor to increase its contract with HUD once more, this time till the top of December.

At this level, organizers and residents each converse to a purpose of preserving the UC Townhomes as housing for low-income residents. Alexander notes that even when some residents find yourself leaving, she and different resident council members wish to make sure the townhomes stay for future generations of low-income households. And whereas that purpose may need appeared outlandish to many within the winter of 2021, it appears fairly potential now.

Jared Ware is a contract journalist primarily masking social actions and prisoner organizing. He’s the co-host and producer of the podcast Millennials Are Killing Capitalism.

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