The Philadelphia Housing Authority has been in the news for purchasing recently constructed market-rate housing projects, but the local agency is still very much in the construction game. The latest example is a 63 unit senior housing project at 2006 Cecil B. Moore Ave. that’s going in front of the Civic Design Review committee next month. PHA will use a mixture of project-based voucher dollars, tax credits, and funding from the Philadelphia Housing Trust Fund to keep most of the one bedrooms affordable at 60% of AMI for 30 years. Additionally, 10% of the units will be set aside for extremely low income seniors.

The south side of this block was once home to three churches, with only the Columbia Avenue Presbyterian Church remaining. Along with homes, apartments, and a home for the aged, old zoning records show this block also once housed a pool hall. Fun for the whole family! Many of the buildings on the south side of this block were vacant and blighted by the time the 1990s rolled around and most were demoed about 25 years ago as part of the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.

In 2021 City Council changed the zoning for this property and some others nearby to industrial commercial mixed-use (ICMX) to facilitate PHA’s plans for an office / warehouse immediately to the south. While this cleared the decks for the warehouse, it complicates the approval process for the proposed apartment building, which now requires several variances. The project needs variances for residential use, not providing parking, and not including loading zones, all of which would have been OK under the old zoning. Because the project needs a variance, it was presented at a recent Brewerytown Sharswood Community Civic Association zoning meeting.

We suspect that PHA opted for a three-story approach for this project with an eye toward winning RCO support, even though another story would not have triggered an additional refusal in this zoning district. This is a shame, as an additional floor would have allowed for another twenty or so affordable units and would not have had a material impact on neighbors, given that the property immediately to the south has been tabbed as a parking lot for the warehouse across the street. Speaking of things that don’t trigger more refusals, the project calls for a 1,400 sqft retail space on the western side of the building, which would have been forbidden under the old zoning but is allowed under the new designation.

As we can see in the plans from Blackney Hayes all of the 63 units will all be one bedrooms, with two of the units on the ground floor offering full ADA accessibility. Nevertheless, the elevators will provide improved accessibility, allowing dozens of folks access to housing without needing to climb up or down steps. The combination of brick veneer, fiber cement siding, and metal paneling will match many of the contemporary buildings going up in Philadelphia these days. Looking at the renderings, the building will likely pass as a market rate project.

At the recent community meeting, the lack of parking seemingly inspired many participants to oppose the project, with 75% of votes in opposition. The community also brought up the lack of overnight on-site security as a major issue, though we’re not sure how neighbors wouldn’t see a few dozen septuagenarians providing eyes on the street as anything other than a public safety issue upgrade. This sort of opposition would be a deal breaker for many market-rate projects seeking variances from the ZBA, but the obvious benefits of replacing a long vacant lot with housing for low income and working class senior Philadelphians should hopefully allow this case to be an exception.

With an important tax credit award hopefully coming through this fall, requiring PHA to go back to the neighbors to find a compromise could end up wrecking the finances of this carefully crafted social housing project. It would seem almost inconceivable that the City of Philadelphia would allow a handful of NIMBYs to block new affordable housing for seniors on publicly owned land, except it already happened once this year in the same City Council District. Let’s just hope that lightning doesn’t strike twice in 2025 for affordable housing in the 5th Council District.