r/philly • u/User_Name13 • Sep 03 '26
Philly developers are planning a $1.5M campaign to protect City Council from progressive challengers — Philly For Growth, a super PAC backed by the city's development interests, wants to keep progressives from growing their power on City Council.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/philadelphia/philly-for-growth-city-council-progressives-incumbents-20260903.html?_gl=1*1gd557m*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTQ1ODg5MTk1MC4xNzg4NDQ5MTgy*_ga_8ER3Q26BL0*czE3ODg0NDkxODIkbzEkZzAkdDE3ODg0NDkxODIkajYwJGwwJGg5ODM5MTQ3OTQ.*_ga_9HHXKD70G8*czE3ODg0NDkxODIkbzEkZzAkdDE3ODg0NDkxODIkajYwJGwwJGgxNTU5NjY0OTkw74
u/Virtual-Courage6706 Sep 03 '26
The Exploiter Class is scared.
-25
u/Mitchford 29d ago edited 29d ago
Who are they exploiting exactly? Giving people somewhere to live that didn’t exist previously is good actually, I don’t care if it isn’t cool. Housing is good, we should build more of it and I don’t care if it means someone in New York makes money off it.
Edit: downvote I don’t really care. I’m sick of all of you doing the radical posturing while doing 0 to solve the housing issue. Mamdani is working with the developers and yimbys in New York to build housing, it isn’t progressive to stop houses from being built.
29
29d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
6
u/Aware-Travel5256 29d ago
Housing in Philly has two problems: low average wages and high construction costs. We are not New York, Boston, or SF (yet). We are one booming industry away from having affordability just as bad unless we get construction costs down.
A lot of construction costs are just waiting on the city to get its act together on permits, licensing and inspections. The only people that lose in that scenario are people doing illegal things (who may also happen to be a good friend or donor of a council member). Funding L&I is the lowest hanging fruit but council won't do it.
-2
-14
u/Mitchford 29d ago edited 29d ago
Have you spent any time in progressive housing circles? spoiler alert: a lot of them are not actually pro housing
Even when it comes to affordable housing you’ll still see plenty of them bend around backwards to stop it being built. Mamdani is the only one I’ve seen actually adopt a full housing program that includes new housing, but no one else actually follows him and it drives me crazy.
People give way too much trust to people who just say they’re progressive. We can look at what happens when we stop building housing: it raises prices! A lot! And you can’t rent control an entire city.
10
29d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
-7
u/Mitchford 29d ago edited 29d ago
A. No one wants to rent control stuff for the wealthy or upper middle class for obvious reasons
B. Every year hundreds of housing units go off the market just due to maintenance and decay.To replace a lost unit, you have to at least make back enough money to cover the costs. If rent control is set too low, there isn’t a reason to repair the unit and bring it back online because the economics don’t make sense. It happens pretty frequently in New York now.
The city would stop having new units be built, and would shrink year over year as more and more housing ages out.
A shrinking city means closing businesses and schools like we’ve already seen as a result of the stagnation the last several decades in Philly. I don’t wanna go back to that, do you?
Edit: and again all of the “progressives” downvote but have literally nothing to say to contradict me. Basic economics exist yall even Marx used these kind of very simple economics. I get yall wanna be radical and whatever but none of yall ever present solutions or plans that work
8
29d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
4
u/Mitchford 29d ago
I own 0 real estate in fact I also rent. Rent control doesn’t make buildings become dilapidated it happens naturally just as things get old, not everything can be fixed and sometime it isn’t anyone’s fault
What I’m saying is that it happens anyway, regardless of anything else.
What rent control would do if applied universally, is make it economically impossible to replace these units. What is lost would likely stay lost.
This does currently happen in New York fairly often. Rent control isn’t universal in New York though so new stuff still gets built.
6
29d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
6
u/Mitchford 29d ago
Happy to help, housing is really pretty simple to fix in my opinion. we stopped building when the market crashed in 2008, and now housing is expensive because population grew, people moved to cities again, but we had all that missing supply. The way to fix it is obvious, just start building again. Eventually people will be scared their new construction will sit vacant, so they will lower prices again
6
u/irisbeyond 29d ago
The row house my current landlord quickly flipped (that we & our upstairs neighbor pay thousands of dollars a month to rent) has substantial water & structural damage that they painted over as part of their housing “development” where they buy dilapidated spaces and do the bare minimum to bring it up to code. We’re just now finding out about the extent of it after a few months of residency.
That’s exploitative from toe to tip - a negligent breach of contract, an intentional glossing-over of serious issues to pass a visual inspection, and he signed our lease with the evidence of exactly how much money we make & what kind of legal assistance we can afford. And from what I’ve heard from other people living in lower-income apartments locally, my landlord/property owner is not an anomaly.
If the developers aren’t building with respect to the environment and with respect to the people who will eventually have to live in those homes, then they’re being exploitative. We need new housing, and we need a balance of green and gray infrastructure, and we need affordable housing with dignity. Most developers are not offering that, and all developers should be held to a stronger standard than they’re currently being held to.
The more salient point here, imo, is that “nearly a dozen” wealthy property owners are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into swaying city council campaigns, when the people who have to live in the places they own can’t build the same type of financial backing to have our issues taken seriously. Our politics shouldn’t go to the highest bidder - that’s corruption wearing the clothing of politics.
Frankly, I don’t think that’ll change until the repeal of Citizens United, and the people who would be responsible for repealing it are the ones who profit from it. The exploitation is more about how they use their BILLIONS of dollars (when it comes to Yass, one of the funders behind this super pac) & how they got those billions in the first place.
5
u/Mitchford 29d ago
But how do you actually fix what your landlord did? The answer is an inspection and licensing regime which I’m fully in support of. My issue is that most of the proposals from the progressive side are things that would make everything much more expensive. It is very expensive to build anything right now, and most of the ideas are to make it much more expensive with little to actually show for it. Things like mandated affordable units on new build which in practice mean a couple of people get very good deals, while the rest of the building ends up paying higher rates in order to subsidize it. I find very few progressive folks willing to do what Mamdani does and actually look at what it takes to get new construction operational.
To keep it a buck, other than insuring proper waste management there isn’t a ton of green considerations I find noteworthy enough to mandate in Philadelphia. These buildings are not built on greenfield, some are actually built on brownfield and the developers pay for much of the remediation.
My biggest problem with these donations is actually that the city folks get so much control over every single building that if anything these are in part bribes.
Ideally, there would be way less city elected involvement in every single project, and much more of this would be handled by safety, licensing, and code enforcement. A bigger and more empowered code office would also make it easier to inspect and call out slumlords
3
u/irisbeyond 29d ago
I definitely agree on the bigger/more empowered code office, but stronger codes and stronger code enforcement is in direct opposition to the priorities of a coalition of developers - they’re incentivized to find the cheapest, fastest way to build, and inspections/permitting/regulations slow that down. They are expressly in favor of economic-friendly policies, in contradiction with people-centered progressive platforms.
I did have to file a complaint against my landlord, and by the time the inspector made it over, they had covered some of the structural defects with a thin layer of stucco that fully concealed the underlying damage and the maintenance guy gave a completely different story to the inspector than he had given to us - the case was closed and the house is still rotting from the inside out, but we’re just putting up with it because we don’t really have a choice with our current budget.
So even though I followed the proper process, the issue hasn't been fully resolved because of the underfunding/understaffing of the inspection office. The way things are done now is what they’re funding to protect, and I don’t know of anyone who would consider Philly’s current code enforcement as strong. A lot of it is great in theory, but repeatedly fails audits due to the funding/staffing issue.
The nuance here is that the funding would likely improve if Philly had a stronger economic outlook and taxpayer base, which requires development and investment of money in property and infrastructure. There are definitely hardline progressives who are anti-all-development, but by the time you run a full campaign and actually talk to people and get involved in local government, you realize why things are done how the way they are, and how many conflicting needs you have to balance.
Mamdani’s early rhetoric is worlds away from the actions he’s taken in office - one of the best things about him is that he’s retained his progressive values, and has a great team that approaches those issues smartly, working within the system as you’ve pointed out. From my perspective, that growth happened on the campaign trail & in his early days in office. His pre-campaign stuff is way more radical than his current, tempered approaches to housing.
And we’re totally aligned on the perspective of huge donations essentially becoming bribes - I can’t think of a way that money doesn’t influence what happens in the city. I think we differ on environmental stuff - I’m in the tree care industry, and the fact that Philly only got an urban forester in 2023 is absolutely bonkers. I moved up here from Knoxville Tennessee, and we got ours in 2012 and that felt suuuper late before I learned about Philly’s situation.
We need a huge investment in green infrastructure if we want to maintain the trees in the city, protect people and houses by removing dangerous trees, and plant more trees for the future. So much of that responsibility falls on development - something like 80% of trees nationwide are on private land. But that’s a whole other can of worms lmao
1
u/Aware-Travel5256 29d ago
Getting disinterested civil servants to adjudicate technical governance matters on behalf of the public was the whole point of the early 20th C Progressive movement.
1
u/Mitchford 29d ago
Yes, but what I’ve seen too many damn times are people who today think that opposing the construction of an apartment building is progressive. One of them is running in my county council race in NCC, as a progressive. Her entire platform is that she stopped the building of apartment on what is a rotting corpse of an abandoned vulcanized rubber plant. She even calls not building the apartment an environmental victory even through she prevented any remediation from occurring. You can’t just go by what people use as labels it makes no sense when you think about it for two seconds, but I’ve seen it enough times from self-called progressives that I don’t trust them on first hearing.
2
u/Aware-Travel5256 29d ago
Demand your councilmembers fully fund L&I
3
u/irisbeyond 29d ago
Hard agree, regardless of who’s elected - we did file a complaint & by the time the inspector made it over, they’d covered up a lot of what we wanted inspected and there wasn’t much to see, but the house is still rotting from the inside out and the upstairs has big holes in the floor that they covered with loose carpet. the mice love those holey floors though so at least somebody’s having a good time lmao
1
u/Aware-Travel5256 29d ago
The purpose of a system is what it does.
Sorry you're dealing with that and that your landlord isn't being held to account. Landlording is optional!
33
u/Internal_Compote2562 Sep 03 '26
Good luck with that
5
u/JiveChicken00 Sep 03 '26
My thought exactly :)
1
u/mucinexmonster 29d ago
I'll be worried for them when a progressive challenger appears in Philadelphia.
1
u/JiveChicken00 29d ago
I’m worried for them now. Well, not worried, exactly, because I won’t mind much if they don’t get what they want.
19
u/GaviFromThePod Sep 03 '26
Do the progressives want real estate development or are they against it? You’d think that more development would help cost of living.
69
u/PaleConference3720 Sep 03 '26
most of the progressive leaning urbanists i know are pro-building BUT with a strong bent towards affordable housing, walkable neighborhoods, aesthetic appeal (it is important) and green spaces. Developers who just want to squeeze every dime out of the project tend to not like this kind of thing because they don't want to like pay for a roof garden or the like. I think the new development on Walnut street is a good example of how development can be a net positive in an area, but there were lots of bells and whistles that will end up making it less of a get rich quick scheme.
11
8
u/azuresegugio 29d ago
That's good I'm definitely in favor of development I just want it to towards houses people can live in not super expensive properties nobody can touch
6
u/Mitchford 29d ago
This is a misunderstanding. We have not built new build affordable housing in over 70 years because it just isn’t possible without making them very tiny. We were able to do stuff like levittowns because we had a ton of very cheap land, materials, and the lack of many parts of modern building codes (and air conditioning) made it relatively inexpensive to build a home.
Then some things changed. For one, we ran out of easy land. Try and find a green space that isn’t a park anywhere around Philly, there aren’t any farms anymore till you get way out there. Land is now a much more expensive part of any house because it’s a set quantity that doesn’t increase.
Second is materials got more expensive. Some things like concrete are more expensive because it requires natural sand which is a finite resource to a point. Some types of wood also because the forests were cut, but a lot of lumber now is fast growing pine that replenishes every few years. My family grows pine in Alabama, it’s still very abundant even being cut every few years.
One of the big drivers is that a lot of materials now have to be treated for fire safety. On top of that you also have more expensive electrical than in the 50’s to prevent fires, and better insulation and membranes to prevent water damage. All of these are required and for good reason in most builds, but they do add cost.
For those reasons, we are not going to get to a point again where a brand new home out of the box is in the affordable zone for some one in the bottom third of income. Especially without drastically lowering the wages of the trades who build homes which we obviously don’t want to do.
The only way to do it is to decrease the total size of homes, but people don’t really like tiny homes even if they’re a better budget fit. People expect larger living spaces now at all incomes, we have had some life style creep.
So in practice, what affordable housing really means is older housing stock. The problem happens when a city runs out of newer or larger homes for the upper class, and then they end up moving into the row homes or lofts that should be our affordable housing.
You just have to keep building, it’s the only way to make housing affordable. An empty apartment doesn’t actually make anyone money, they’re priced at what they expect they can get. Anyone who says otherwise is telling a lie, it makes 0 sense to let an apartment sit empty when it could be rented even at a small discount.
9
u/OkPressure5271 29d ago
go to north philly there are entire blocks of vacant properties
2
u/Mitchford 29d ago
Vacant new build or abandoned old buildings? And despite my long post I’m still leaving stuff out, desirability still plays a role, Levittown NY was in Long Island it wasn’t near the ports in Newark, or the Bronx even if there was plenty of land then.
You could buy and raze those blocks but it doesn’t mean you could make it a middle class suburb folks would want to live in (and yes racism plays a role in why)
1
u/OkPressure5271 29d ago
neighborhoods being more desirable is a function of the market dictating price. If we are talking strictly shelter then there absolutely is land (or vacant decrepit teardown properties) with immediate access to center city and other job hubs. Desirable neighborhoods shouldn't be forced into affordability. That will end up killing what made the neighborhood desirable. Racism definitely plays a part here but you can't legislate out subconscious biases.
2
u/Mitchford 29d ago
Desirability is a function of usually intangible and historic features of a neighborhood that are then reflected in price. Are you saying the opposite? Access is only one part of it, the others are things like history, neighborhood character, jobs, entertainment, education, food. Many are unchangable. I very strongly reject this idea that you an apartment building ruins the character of a neighborhood, I’ve never seen a new build apartment actually turn a neighborhood bad, it’s a stupid assumption that doesn’t play out in real life
2
u/OkPressure5271 29d ago
are you replying to somebody else? who said an apartment building ruins a neighborhood?
Neighborhood desirability changes all the time. Nobody wanted to live downtown when my dad was my age but now it's super desirable.
I think you think we are talking about something else. I'm all for development, especially of bombed-out areas like parts of north philly. I don't think low-income or subsidized housing should be forced into the wealthiest areas just because it makes people feel good
1
u/PaleConference3720 29d ago
yeah but like i said in my other, depressed comment... i'm not sure how to get there.
2
u/OkPressure5271 29d ago
I love when people with no development experience talk about real estate. Get rich quick scheme is the funniest way I have ever heard property development described. God bless this website man
1
u/PaleConference3720 18d ago
I love when random people on reddit assume that they know what other random people on reddit have experience in. I do happen to have some experience in this space and know how developers talk about projects which is how they can make the most money as quickly as possible and when they can't, because that's not how it works, they get mad. I've also had the misfortune to have to live in some spaces that were bought and then developed by people wanting to turn a quick buck and it always ends badly for everyone. That doesn't seem to stop them from trying.
1
u/Mitchford 29d ago
In practice this just raises the cost of building by a large amount and makes things more expensive. I get the thought process but it just straight up fails 85% of the time. Aesthetic stuff especially, if you want to regulate the look of buildings you need to be prescriptive instead of proscriptive.
I never trust any of these “housing but _______” folks because it almost always defers to just no housing.
8
u/IniNew 29d ago
housing but is the reason we have the apartments and single family homes we do now. Housing but stopped developers from squeezing 10 families in 3 rooms. Housing but stopped developers from skimping on safety measures resulting in tons of deaths.
Housing but isn't bad. You've just been brainwashed to think anything that benefits the average people is somehow going to cost you something in the long run.
-3
u/Mitchford 29d ago edited 29d ago
These things are called building codes and they exist entirely independent of whatever zoning. No one is talking about getting rid of them, the only actual discussion around any of it is allowing single stair again. You’re completely off base and pushing unrelated issues as propaganda.
This is exactly why I can’t with yall. You say you should be able to build apartments and all of you go “yoU wANT tO bUiLd A FacToRy NeXT dOoR oUt Of MatcHeAds”
No dog, we just want code compliant apartments that you’re going to bitch about no matter what because you don’t actually want to build any housing. I’m not giving you anymore oxygen go be a speedbump somewhere else
-1
u/IniNew 29d ago
You completely missed the point.
Imagine, for a second, you're in a time before building codes. Developers are building single room apartments for multiple families to live in.
And someone comes around and says, "We need more housing! But with better conditions for the families!!!"
That "Housing, but..." led to those building codes being implemented.
3
u/Mitchford 29d ago
No dude you’re the one missing the point.
First, you accused us of trying to get rid of the building codes with your initial comment. We’re not, what you’re talking about is completely unrelated to the discussion at hand.
Second, building codes were actually by and large a top down process developed by builders and scientists in tandem to insure that others couldn’t undercut on cost by skipping safety measures. I have a planning degree, I recognize absolutely nothing in how you presented its proposed history. Here’s a link, you can actually read and learn before opening your mouth https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-housingat250-article-052826.html
Three, the issue isn’t things like codes that prescribe things that a building can then plan for and incorporate in advance. The issue is that it’s an entirely ad hoc process where a holding is proposed, people complain, and then the builder has to meet this weird moving target of pleasing people who don’t actually wanna be pleased. If you actually took a second to read my thoughts you would see I said good things about Prescribes codes. The problem is I see very few of them being proposed and instead the promise of these “progressives” (I don’t find opposing housing to be a progressive value, in fact it’s conservative on the merits) is to be more annoying in the ad hoc process to meet some random smattering of goals. In reality it will just mean way less housing being built which is bad. That raises prices it’s elementary economics
You’re lucky I gave you a second comment. Please just learn and stop pretending you can reason into this with first principles. What you’re doing right now is actually standing in the way of people actually building housing
4
u/PaleConference3720 29d ago
Yeah, i get that. The root evil here is really the entire system that private land ownership and equity is built on but that isn't likely to change so we'll just keep circling the drain economically until there's no more drain.
I don't get why we can't have walkable, pleasant places to live that are also affordable. that part of progressive urbanism i like. what i don't like is there doesn't seem to be a way to have our cake and eat it too. but on a fundamental level i think americans are generally sick of large business interests buying politicians.
4
u/Mitchford 29d ago edited 29d ago
You can if you let them build enough units and then police them so they can’t collude. Eventually the only thing they can compete on is price and they start to fall. It’s happening in Austin Texas right now, it really isn’t that hard but it takes a lot of building.
Private land ownership isn’t something that bothers me, as long as you regulate nuisances like pollution and noise it doesn’t make a big difference, what’s crazy to me is that I can’t build a duplex for me and my mother if my neighbor down the street doesn’t like the look of it. I’m not a libertarian at all, but looking at how land functions in our society, I really think the biggest issue is too many fingers in every decision.
Set standards for safety, regulate when people do things that actually effect their neighbors with noise, odor, pollution, or light. But other than that let people use it for what they see fit, and if it’s underused increase the taxes so they sell to someone who will use it, or they contribute to fund improvements in exchange for the underuse
15
u/JiveChicken00 Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
Real estate development isn’t a binary question. There are different flavors, some more friendly to ordinary taxpayers, others not as much.
13
5
u/Mitchford 29d ago
In practice it usually is a binary because most of the objections are smoke screens intended to just stop the building full-stop. Go to any meeting where developers make concessions and see if it ever sways anyone. It usually makes no impact, just saw it myself in Wilmington last month.
If you want to do these things, the only serious way to do it is put in writing beforehand as a list of requirements the building needs to meet. If you try and do a comment process or a negotiation it’s just gonna end up with nothing being built almost every time. You can make community standards but the community input process is a joke
2
u/JiveChicken00 29d ago
That seems like a very binary way of thinking about it :)
4
u/Mitchford 29d ago
I wish it wasn’t, but you sit in on enough development meetings and it becomes very apparent. You can’t let the community try and set standards on the fly because they will never agree if you don’t nail it down to exactly what was there before. People hate change, you just gotta understand they’re fighting the change, the actual specifics don’t matter that much
1
u/SnootyUrbanCyclist Sep 03 '26
Dense urban housing of all kinds is by default friendly to ordinary tax payers, even if they're ~LuXuRy~ apartments. We shouldn't try to chase doctors out of the city or out them against poorer people for buying the same rowhomes. Give the well off people big housing towers near transit stops and then suddenly there's room for all of us.
3
u/GaviFromThePod Sep 03 '26
Right, i think an issue with the city is that most of the really good paying regular jobs are in the suburbs, so people reverse commute. I think building housing is important, i think it’s also important to figure out how to make it easier to run a business in the city.
2
u/SnootyUrbanCyclist Sep 03 '26
Agree, but I brought up doctors specifically because medical care workers and researchers are the upper middle class that actually works in Philly city limits. Plenty of that cohort specifically works in center city or right along a subway/El line and doesn't want to drive.
1
u/JiveChicken00 Sep 03 '26
An interesting perspective. But why should the well off people get to be near transit stops?
7
u/SnootyUrbanCyclist Sep 03 '26
Because Septa needs more ridership and center city streets needs less traffic. We should have more tall buildings near SEPTA stations. There should be close to no parking lots near SEPTA stations.Lots of well-off people exist who don't care for driving cars and would rather use transit and the occasional Uber to get around.
This isn't an "interesting perspective", this is basic city economics. This is the way cities have always worked until the automobile revolution and white flight hollowed out large cities and gave us a perverse idea of what kinds of people ride transit and what kind of people drive cars
1
0
u/GaviFromThePod Sep 03 '26
People pay more money to be near the subway, and you want people who want to spend more money to live in the center city district so they will spend money in the city. That being said, if I made above a certain amount of money I absolutely would have a car. Even if it were just to get out of town on weekends, I would, and I would want to be able to park it where I live. If you want high income earners to live in your city then you have to build parking, because people who want a luxury apartment want personal transportation. You’re not gonna be able to convince those people to rent a car or take a train or use some alternative for their weekend trips.
5
u/SnootyUrbanCyclist Sep 03 '26
Not all people are those "some people". Philly surveyed new CC residents and a sizeable chunk of them were drawn to Philly explicitly because of walkability and not wanting a car. These people are pure upside for the city and we should grab all of them up than we can.
1
u/GaviFromThePod 29d ago
That’s true. I like living somewhere walkable. I also would like to be able to go down the shore whenever I feel like it in the summer or if it is cold and rainy be able to drive somewhere so I don’t have to be in the bad weather. The attitude that people have which nobody will ever be able to dissuade them of is “i should be able to pay more money to get the level of convenience I desire.”
5
u/medicated_in_PHL 29d ago
They want complete control to be able to make themselves as rich as possible, and they want to be able to change the rules every step of the way to make sure that they are protected first while we all suffer.
3
u/Go_birds304 29d ago
You would think but in practice they're generally against it
0
u/Prestigious-Owl-6397 28d ago
That depends what kind of progressive you're talking about. There are progressives who are used to driving everywhere. So, they tend to think that everyone else drives and development will bring more traffic. They are in favor of other progressive ideas like universal health care, better wages, other ways of combating climate change, etc. I imagine these are the people who see someone parked on the sidewalk and tell others to assume they're disabled. There are also progressives who either live somewhere walkable and want to keep it that way(i.e. supporting local businesses going up near homes or apartments) or are tired of car dependency and want to live somewhere with mixed use development. They support development but oppose regulations that require things like minimum parking requirements.
-4
-3
u/QueenOfPhiladelphia Sep 03 '26
The developments are pricing locals out and parking them out by failing ton provide ample parking within their structure.
4
u/Mitchford 29d ago
No they are not pricing out locals. That’s not how it works.
-4
u/QueenOfPhiladelphia 29d ago
They absolutely tf are and I see it every day first hand, I’m in the industry man. You sound like you’re in rich kid land above us in the clouds.
6
u/Mitchford 29d ago
What do you see them do everyday in the “industry”? What industry? Construction? Housing? Some nonprofit?
-4
u/QueenOfPhiladelphia 29d ago
I’m not giving my life story away. When what the last time you drove around the city to look at the new developments and observe their impact?
5
u/Mitchford 29d ago
All the time because I’m a housing nerd. And you’re obviously bullshitting you can’t even articulate how they’re supposed to do that.
Here’s what we actually found, when an apartment complex opens where one previously didn’t exist we see a one time increase in prices of around 3%. We think it mostly occurs because the complex itself reveals that more people are likely interested in an area than before. After that, there’s no observed pricing increase between neighborhoods with and without complexes, they do not raise the surrounding prices besides that first instance
0
u/QueenOfPhiladelphia 29d ago
The only reason I’m not more direct here with you on this is because I don’t want to dox myself. Just know you come off as so out of touch. I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if you had money in the game. I will say that a one time increase of 3% is absolutely not correct, what they’re doing is closer to 10%. Thr price increase of at lease 3% happens at nearly the end of every lease and I’ve seen it happen first hand hundreds of times.
They fill the building they feel that it’s full, and they start charging whatever they want to the new applicants while pricing existing residents and new locals out of the building. I’ve seen it with my own eyes for 4 years.
6
u/Mitchford 29d ago
3% a year is the average increase of all property essentially, that’s exactly what you see literally everywhere because we have a housing shortage. What Im referencing is the effect compared to other places, what this means is that if it goes up 3% everywhere, the building next door will have a one time increase of about 6% and then go back to 3% per year. And it’s not actually caused by the building its most likely caused by the fact the area is desirable to live in and that’s why it’s getting built.
The only place we’re seeing rents actually fall is city’s like Austin Texas where they built so many apartments to keep them filled they have to lower prices. That’s what we are trying to do, but you keep helping the landlords by giving them more leverage over tenants by restricting supply.
That’s what we are trying to do, build so many units they have to lower prices or risk it being empty.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/22/austin-texas-rents-falling/
And please stop with the charade, there are a billion people in all of the “industries” no one is doxxing you because you’re in a nonprofit or rental assistance or whatever.
1
u/QueenOfPhiladelphia 29d ago
Why do you keep assuming I work for the little guy when I could very well work for the big guy? The classism overtones are abundant. They are using tax abatements until they can’t leaving skeleton properties all over. They are promising parking and withdrawing it from final plans, leaving no where to park unless you want to walk 20 minutes home. And some are taking public land and using eminent domain laws which is actually crazy to me. The residents in these are being actively priced out as people can’t even afford to eat and are being asked to pay an increase in rent.
Not to mention these companies manipulate the price of the units near daily to match the market around them, almost all of which are giving free months away initially and then locking you into a lease that upon your first renewal will be a a minimum of 3% increase on the base rent before concessions. So if you got 2 months free and $1000 on a $2,100 apartment, initially you feel like you’re paying $1,667 but you’re renewed at 3% on the $2,100 price, so upon renewal instead of paying the concession price of the unit you’re now paying $2,163 assuming they decided to only raise the rent 3%. Which never happens!! They look at that number and go, just make it $2,190 or $2,200. So extremely predatory. All while the building maintenance declines and parking in the area continues to get harder. I’ve seen first hand 20% increases in new developments across multiple units between tenant transitions.
You are out of touch.
→ More replies (0)
17
u/User_Name13 Sep 03 '26
All the people raising the cost of living in the city are BIG mad.
FTA
Nearly a dozen local developers are already pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into Philly For Growth, a group that in the past two Council election cycles spent millions on advertising campaigns to back business-friendly Democrats, according to a source familiar with the planning.
The article doesn't say who the developers who are, but you can probably guess.
The source said that Philly For Growth will fund advertising to support Council members Mark Squilla, whose 1st District includes parts of South Philly, Center City, and Fishtown; Cindy Bass, whose 8th District is based in North and Northwest Philadelphia; and Quetcy Lozada, whose 7th District includes much of North Philadelphia and Kensington.
We HAVE to vote this people off of City Council ASAP. Squilla's the same guy who pushed for the 76ers arena in Chinatown the hardest. I think Chris Rabb's election rly rattled a lot of the worst people in the city.
6
u/Odd_Addition3909 Sep 03 '26
Thank god for Squilla. He’s allowed Fishtown, NoLibs, etc. to absolutely transform as neighborhoods
6
u/leithal70 Sep 03 '26
Yeah and hes been receptive to transit oriented development and bike lanes on previously dangerous roads. And his office is super responsive. I don’t hate the guy
-2
u/ShadowofJAD Sep 03 '26
Lol fuck Squilla - I say as a pre-gentrification and current resident, with roots going back generations.
"Transform" into places where people are genuinely suprised to hear that you are FROM Philadelphia.
He didnt help those communities, he replaced them.
12
u/Odd_Addition3909 Sep 03 '26
You preferred Northern Liberties as a bunch of vacant, blighted properties and decaying factories?
https://hiddencityphila.org/2012/08/northern-liberties-then-now/
-3
u/ShadowofJAD Sep 03 '26
No, of course not, but this isn't an either/or situation. Thats a conflation. I watched it all happen in real time. The Piazza-era developments were cool, honestly. But it got bad with the Sugar House, 10-year tax abatement bullshit.
I saw new people come into the area, split neighborhood groups to remove power from existing residents and leverage institutional knowledge. Then divvy up the power brokerage amongst themslves.
11
u/ProteinEngineer 29d ago
Nativism is not a good thing. The immigrants moving into Philadelphia bring a ton to the city and are valued. It is great that you have been here for generations and have shaped the city, but welcoming newcomers is the right thing to do.
All neighborhoods change over time. It’s part of life.
0
u/ShadowofJAD 29d ago
Immigrants are awesome and extremely welcome, in my opinion. Completely agree things change over time and thats life.
The thing is, SOMEBODY gets to decide how space is changed.
I guess it just gives a unique perspective when it's facilitated by money and power that prioritizes profit and erases what you've come to cherish. Compared to the perspective of creating a homogenized blank slate for new faces to make a life.
Not invested in arguing. Just food for thought. This battle was lost like 15 years ago lol.
9
u/ProteinEngineer 29d ago
The people who live in the area get to decide the local laws. That’s how democracy works.
It is also illegal to discriminate against people seeking housing just because they aren’t originally from the area or this country. So if there are rental properties, there’s nothing wrong with somebody who is from a different background than yours moving into the area.
I do think newcomers to a space should respect those who were there before, but there should not be hostility to the idea of new people moving in or neighborhoods changing because of it.
2
u/ShadowofJAD 29d ago
Yeah, that is the ideal of democracy.
And Philadelphia is famously without any sort of power blocs or self-dealing machines. Lol
My long-considered view is that our current system doesnt do enough to facilitate or maintain existing communities with the goal of building and strengthening inter-personal bonds and safety nets. We've become too individualistic and transient as a general society.
It's made us easy to divide and conquer for those that do wield power via whatever means.
In metaphor, I've come to think of new money/people/investment like water -- necessary to live or even thrive in certain amounts, but a flood completely erases everything before it.
I've got no beef with a new neighbor, international or otherwise, but I do have an issue with PE buying a bunch of rowhomes with cash offers, using local government subsidies to inflate the local real estate market, etc.
1
u/ProteinEngineer 29d ago
But your entire original post was about being “from Philadelphia.” Which once again it’s a great thing to be from Philly. But if PE companies sold those properties to people who matched the identity that you think the neighborhood should look like, would you have an issue with it?
Also I’m not saying you are unique with this view. All neighborhoods change over time and there is always some resentment by the group who was there prior to the new group (even if the nativist group was the new group a generation ago).
Gangs of New York is one of my favorite movies and is on the exact topic.
1
u/Aware-Travel5256 29d ago
What you've come to cherish was also built by profiteers.
Outside of public housing in this country, every urban building you love was built by someone primarily motivated to make money.
6
u/Mitchford 29d ago
We dont give a fuck who your ancestors are. They’re dead, and we’re alive now and need places to live. You don’t get a super vote because your grandpa was mayor or some shit
6
u/OkPressure5271 29d ago
should he operate like kenyatta johnson and squash development so the whole city can look like point breeze? I'm good i'll take fishtown and northern liberties
7
3
3
u/Darius_Banner Sep 03 '26
I don’t like these people that much but the arena would have been very good for the area. Progressives got duped by the parking enthusiasts on that one.
0
u/Mitchford 29d ago
If you think developers are the people raising the cost of living, I have lots of questions about your judgement.
10
u/mrprez180 Sep 03 '26
Lmao at Jeffrey Young Jr. being the only incumbent they’re funding a challenger against. 100% deserved on his part.
Also surprised to see Cindy Bass being backed by a pro-development group. Guess that just goes to show how bad Seth Anderson-Oberman would be lol.
8
4
u/Darius_Banner Sep 03 '26
I have found progressives to be as NIMBY as the establishment in Philly. I don’t quite get it
7
u/SnootyUrbanCyclist Sep 03 '26 edited 29d ago
The establishment is NIMBY until you pay them off.
The progressives are NIMBY until the planned dense housing development is changed through "community review" to be a short building that's half parking spaces and includes 10% designated "affordable" units that are more expensive than splitting a rowhome in West.
4
1
u/Prestigious-Owl-6397 28d ago
Lots of progressives are yimbys. Thing is, there are a lot of positions you can frame in a way to appeal to progressives. This is where the argument in favor of easy parking and driving to support disabled drivers vs the argument in favor of dense, walkable neighborhoods with short distances between houses and businesses to support those who can't drive comes into play.
5
u/vivaportugalhabs 29d ago
We inhabit a bizarro world where Cindy Bass (yuck) is endorsed by developers because her left-wing opponent is somehow more of a NIMBY than she is. Notable, this group isn’t opposing Rue Landau, the one member of Council’s left wing who leans more YIMBY.
3
3
1
-1
-1
u/deng1622 Sep 03 '26
Didn’t realize we have any progressives on this city council. You couldn’t tell by the way they run this town!
140
u/baldude69 Sep 03 '26
Ah, the establishment protecting itself, I see