To fit out and furnish an office. That may be an expense that was needed, but frequently the Redevelopment Authority helps out with other city agencies and the School District and gets some of this work done for nothing. So my point is, with the kind of collaboration that is being proposed, perhaps some savings could be achieved for non-routine items of that type, and we could have some more savings that could be put into benefits for residents. LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 156 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections
Okay. I mean, that very well may be a valid argument. I think we've had previous discussions, though. I mean, numerous agencies seem to either share dollars or have different fees and funding source going various places. I mean, we've got CDBG dollars that support, apparently, staff salaries over at RDA and PHA, the alphabet soup of agencies. I mean, one might wonder or question whether or not we should be paying salaries out of that particular pot of money, all of which is supposedly for the purpose of being spent on very low, low, and moderate-income people. Is that correct?
So maybe we should look at how all the money is spent.
That's right. There's no 20 question that the expenses are needed, but we've got to get into those issues.
All right. In your testimony, you talk about, on , that Council, to achieve broader geographic dispersion, Council could authorize CDBG funding for rental LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 157 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections housing production supported with Section 8 rental assistance, to be made available on a priority basis to specifically designate its census track that currently have no subsidized housing. It's a lot of stuff in that sentence. First, are you advocating now the need for additional rental housing creation, construction or production in the City of Philadelphia?
We need as much affordable rental housing as we can possibly produce, so anything that --
Come on, Mr. Kromer, don't split hairs on me. In previous testimony in this Council, you have clearly articulated the view that we don't have a rental housing problem; we have an affordability problem. Isn't that true?
We don't have a housing shortage; we have an affordability crisis, yes.
Many of them just LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 158 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections can't afford it. Now, why would we build more as opposed to making what exists more affordable?
There is funding available every year to produce rental housing tax credit funding through the state, which we leverage every year. And when we produce housing mostly in neighborhoods that are organized, that housing is produced on a vacant lot or in a vacated school building like the Brooks School. And it also replaces some of the housing stock that is falling into decay and is being abandoned.
But, for the record, since you -- I mean you always -- when we engage in this, you always like to remind me of various projects that I may have going on at the time. The Brooks School is a project for senior citizens as opposed to, I'm sure, most of the people that we're talking about, who are not senior citizens.
So your answer is not responsive to what I asked. Why build more LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 159 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections houses as opposed to trying to make affordable what already exists?
To replace housing that's deteriorating and becoming abandoned. And also to make a --
Or because that's what the money is for. And in, I guess, the craziest of various governmental schemes, we do what we do because that's what we get the money for.
Not really. It's really a terrific use for a vacant lot or an abandoned vacant property.
I understand that, but what are we doing with the housing stock that's out there, that apparently is unaffordable? What happens to that?
Some of it is being torn down and some of it is being repaired through other programs.
All right. And what are these specifically designated census tracks that you're talking about? Where are they? LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 160 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections
Well, it's an issue of priority. And if this were an approach that Council would be willing to consider, we would look at a map that showed all the census tracks that have some kind of subsidized housing and all of the census tracks that do not.
And with Council's approval, we would indicate in all of our requests for proposal that census tracks -- that ventures located in census tracks with no subsidized housing would be given preference over others.
You may not know this because, officially, you didn't attend the first or second hearing, but maybe read about it in the newspaper. Could you venture to offer, I guess, a perspective on what I observe to be the highest level of complaints about the Section 8 program seem to come from the areas of the City that have the fewest number of units. Why do you think that is?
I can't speculate on what others may have said, but I think the testimony LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 161 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections today, as well as the testimony in the prior hearings, just underscores the need for that collaboration. Of those 66 percent phone calls that were misdirected to the hot line we discussed at this December 10th meeting, PHA has got to have someone in each City agency that has to follow up on the complaint as a City problem. So that if there's a report of criminal activity that goes to the hot line, it has to go to the Police Department.
Run that by me again? If someone calls to complain about a property, which they inadvertently believe to be a Section 8 unit --
-- because at least under the current system, you don't put in 12-inch letters on the property, Section 8 property, right? If someone calls the hot line to complain about Property X, PHA determines that it is not one of their units, are you saying that they should now run around to try to get that LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 162 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections complaint or whatever the problem is and follow up on it through the rest of City government?
No. They have to have sufficient support at the senior levels of City government so that they can get that complaint dealt with through the City system since it is not their problem. They shouldn't be in a position where they're either dawdling around with no results or hanging up the phone. They have a senior-level person in the Police Department, for example.
What do you think accounts for this high error rate when people are calling PHA thinking that these properties out there are theirs?
I'm sure there's all kinds of reasons. But whatever the reasons, we've got to be responsive to the complaints; and if they're valid, address the complaints.
Do you have any perspective on what any of those reasons what might be?
I can't speculate on all the motives that inspire people to come to City LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 163 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections Council or to call a hot line. I'm sure some of them are well-intentioned and some of them are not well-intentioned.
So tell me about some of these specifically designated census tracks. I mean, it's in the report, it's in your testimony. I assume through these various meetings and discussions, you must have some idea of what -- I mean, I'm not asking you for census track numbers, but you must have some general idea of the areas of the City that you think are either underserved or you plan to have further dispersement. Where are we talking about?
Again, if we were granting priority to ventures in areas that had no 18 subsidized housing, then we would be giving priority to proposals from the far Northeast, Chestnut Hill, portions of Mt. Airy, portions of Roxborough, Manyunk, Wynnefield, Overbrook, and some other areas.
And, again, as I said, what you would see as a result of funding those LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 164 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections proposals would not be projects. You would see the product that is generated through the community development program. Some outstanding well-designed, well-constructed rental development planned carefully in advance in consultation with the neighbors, with any outstanding questions and issues resolved before development begins, in a well managed, well cared for property.
And your proposal is that those sites would be in some budget, either CDBG budget. Or in one of your memos, you actually proposed to the Mayor that the Section 8 programs should virtually go through the same City Council ordinance process as the CDBG budget goes through, although that recommendation didn't seem to make it in the plan. But your idea is that these developments would be in the CDBG budget, and Council members would have the opportunity to vote on them.
This would have to be a CDBG issue, yes. And I'm saying this is not something I'm proposing. I'd want to have some LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 165 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections discussion of it. But if geographic dispersion is such a high priority, this is one way that we can use our existing resource to address the priority. Of course, the funding used would be taken from neighborhoods that have subsidized housing already, that are using the rental production money as part of the neighborhood strategy. And that creates another problem. Again, it's an issue of priority, and those are the issues that we discuss when we put the plan together.
Lastly, in the realm of -- I guess you used the term "collaboration and cooperation" on a number of occasions. On of the plan, under G, proposed state legislative actions, the Mayor proposes that the state should change the selection process for Housing Authority Board members, that the Mayor should select all the Board members, that a seven-member board of which at least one member would be a public housing resident and indefinite, non-staggered terms for LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 166 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections Board members who would serve at the pleasure of the Mayor. It's a very interesting idea. In this spirit of cooperation, did anyone think that it might be a decent idea to have members of City Council on the Board or have any input as to who the Board members should be or whether the Board members should be confirmed by City Council? Or should we just kind of hang out and wait and see what you guys do and you'll as us to support whatever they come up with?
Again, this is the Mayor's proposal. And although no consideration is given in this proposal to City Council participation in the process, I think it's infinitely better than the staggered system and the hodgepodge of appointments that exist currently.
Well, you know, if the Mayor ever decides that our input or views on this matter are particularly serious or warranted, maybe if ever have a discussion on it, we might actually come up with a few other ideas that he and the brain trusts hadn't thought up on their own. LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 167 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections
Well, clearly, the discussion is over. And if you have a view on this issue of the Board appointments and Council ratification, I would certain be interested in knowing what that is.
Yeah, Mr. Kromer, there's nothing I look forward to than entering a discussion once it's over. Thank you.
My name is Ed Schwartz. I'm tempted to identify myself as "the ghost of Christmas past." But I will simply say that I am the Head of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values, and was the Director of the Office of Housing and Community Development between 1987 and 1992. Let me preface my remarks by answering LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 168 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections for myself a question that Councilman Nutter asked of John Kromer. What was my involvement in that period with Section 8 and PHA? It's interesting 'cause I had clearly no authority, legal -- political, legal or any way when I was appointed to OACD Director to PHA. That was made clear by the appointment by Mayor Goode. However, there was OACD money invested, block grant money in PHA, so we had an institutional reason there. Greg Kern, the Acting Director, then quickly the Director of PHA, called me shortly after my own appointment, with an offer to collaborate.
Yes, Mr. Schwartz, you're bringing back fond memories of the mid-eighties and PHA, I have to say.
Well, I just have to say a word about this that's germane to what I'm going to say now. The third matter really related to HUD because when I went to the regional administrator for HUD, my office at that point was basically paralyzed. He devoted 3 minutes of his 45 with me LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 169 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections to that, and the rest of it to PHA. And it was clear to me that as I did not know while I sat here on City Council and that we didn't know is that because of the mismanagement of PHA, the City had lost millions and millions of dollars over the course of the 1980's in MROP and CF grants and the rest of it that were available to PHA, that we didn't know anything about. And that we paid a heavy price for it. And I wouldn't say that homelessness would not have existed in Philadelphia in the eighties had PHA been run properly and that there were thousands of vacant units would have been rehabbed. But it was clear to me that an opportunity in PHA existed that had been lost. And that the City as a whole had paid a very heavy price for that loss. So that over the three-year period there, Greg Kern and I worked rather closely together on his plans to rebuild PHA, which involved some block grant money. We secured approval from HUD with my involvement in the negotiations for things like Southward. In homeless policy, I am the one, not LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 170 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections under Section 8 preference, but I am the one that's responsible for the homeless preference in PHA. And the way it came about was that at a time when the City was spending $32 million to keep people in shelters that should never had had reason to exist, given that this was not a legal government responsibility, it was really a federal responsibility. Greg Kern announced that he had openings in PHA. Greg Kern and Jane Malone didn't know each other. Jane Malone was running the homeless program. So I brought them together. And that led to the priority for homeless shelter residents to move into PHA; over the strenuous objections, I would add, of the tenant leadership, who had their own networks that they wanted to bring into PHA. It is amusing to me six years later or eight years later, to see how firmly embedded homelessness and the institutionalization of it has become in the life of the City. Because the way we looked at it, there should have been no 24 homeless shelters run by the City; that wasn't something that the City was supposed to do. LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 171 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections What there was, was a failure of federal policy, so why should there be openings in a federally subsidized housing development and have the City paying for thousands of people in homeless shelters. I have to say that whatever good I tried to do with Greg Kern, and there was a lot. Came to a screeching halt when Jonathon Sidell became Chairman of the Board of PHA. Greg Kern was fired, John Paione came in, for reasons that had really nothing to do with the improvement of public housing. And this was not quiet, I'm not revealing some secret here. It was widely publicized, the fight I had over that. During the transition between the Goode and Rendell administrations, I went to every meeting of their task forces on housing I could to point out to them that a mainly catastrophe was in the making of PHA, and I proved to be correct. Now, in the post-Paione period, there has been some rebuilding but we lost a lot during those five years. And what we specifically lost was the matrix of collaboration, which is now being proposed as if it were invented for the LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 172 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections first time. It was not.
I had actually gotten to the point with HUD where we were talking about trading vacant housing units in the City's possession for scattered sites in public housing possession so that we could do more rational development. I got HUD to agree for the first time to use public housing money to rehabilitate scattered sites, which they had never been able to do. It is directly relevant to issue now about so-called project-based certificates and single-family units. I'm delighted to hear John Kromer say that there have been no complaints about the major rental units that were done by OACD, many of them began, including the Brentwood, under my leadership, so it's nice to hear they worked out sort of well over the years. But what's going on here is not something new. What I want to do is suggest a procedure for you to operate on, because there are an awful lot of issues here. And I think there's a procedure to consider what's going on that allows you to move quickly on the things that LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 173 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections prompted all of this, these hearings and this issue, and then be able to move to the things that are more difficult to implement. What started this? What started it is that in the Northeast, and perhaps some other places, a certain number of people living in individual Section 8 housing units raised hell, and people in the neighborhood tried to do something about it, and they found it almost impossible to get them out of there. And this happened in enough places that gradually, the battle got waged at Section 8. But, as you've also pointed out, economic and racially stereotyping basically turned everybody into living in a single-family -- you know, you didn't use those words, but that's what you were driving at. I do have to say that the hatred of PHA and Section 8 is interracial in part. I experienced a tremendous battle in a completely interracial neighborhood over Section 8 and PHA units. So it's not simply a white/black thing. Section 8's a bad name everywhere in town. But what started this is something that LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 174 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections is a problem. And the solution is worth pursuing. If you have somebody in a rental property that's raising hell, you've got to get them out of there, period. And, in fact, I used to invoke --
Yeah. You know, but the difference -- where I say that there is -- I used to feel, as director, this way: There's an old ad of a rye bread, Levy's Rye Bread, that defended its bread on grounds that we had to answer to a higher authority. And I felt those of us who were investing tax payers', citizens' money in houses, had to have a higher standard citizenship, not a lower one for the people who lived there, because it's your money that's paying for it. In some other place, it's somebody else's money. So any house that OACD did that caused problems, if I heard about it, we tried to get them out of there.
If I could interrupt you for one second. I generally agree LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 175 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections with that, but I think, on balance, if it's 2 o'clock in the morning and someone's music is blaring at a hundred decibels, I don't think you really care ultimately whether they're Section 8, Section 3, Section 10.
Or they're a multimillionaire. The music is driving you crazy.
And one of the real issues that people don't want to seem to face is that Section 8 tenants apparently engage in behavior that is similar to or comparable to the same behaviors that other people in the City engage in, and we have seemingly very little to do with or against them and. So what is the distinction? Is the distinction that it's a Section 8 person who's playing that music at 2 o'clock in the morning or that it's somebody playing their music at 2 o'clock in the morning? And, yes, I guess we should be able to take action against a Section 8 person who's engaged in that behavior. All I want to know is, LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 176 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections what do we do about everybody else? There are 11,000 Section 8 units in a city that has 550,000 units of housing. The Section 8 program represents somewhere in the to percent range of all the housing in the City. It is impossible, impossible for just the tenants of Section 8 housing to totally destroy the City because everybody else is doing something else, and we're not doing anything about them.
Councilman, I absolutely agree with you, your comments before about the most complaints coming from the areas of the fewest Section 8 properties property are well taken. There were 8,000 Section 8 units when I was there; there are more now. You didn't have 8,000 complaints. So I mean, it does elevate it to a level beyond, I think, what the real problem is. On the other hand, this is the government's money.
These are the people's houses, so we have to hold them accountable. LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 177 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections Now, you have various proposal as part of this whole package that relate directly to that set of issues, and you don't have to wait to move on those. There are issues of screening, There are issues of what kind of support people need in moving into an apartment. And then there are issues of eviction that are, in fact, raised within what's recommended to you. And my first recommendation to you --
Yes. I'm just going through a procedure here. I think the immediate response to the problem that people are raising is something that doesn't have to wait two years, five years for some complicated report. I think if you all came together, you know, for all the debate here, it's calmer than it was, so there is a moving together on some level. If everyone can agree that a person needs to be properly screened, that an apartment resident needs to be prepared to live in an LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 178 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections apartment, and, yeah, they all do, but you've got the responsibility for this group, and that if somebody's causing trouble, they should be evicted. I think come to grips with that. Come out with some kind of, you know, mechanism for collaboration and coordination of all these kinds of things that you've started to do and are even getting it, and give some comfort and reassurance to the people who brought all of this stuff in in the first place. Now, I want to add one thing that I have tried to do over the last eight years that is central to this problem, that is in no one's proposal. The only one that kind of addressed it was the civic from Mayfair or wherever, who came here in the original hearings, and that is the relationship between the people living in Section 20 8, and I would add rental and PHA housing and the rest of the block. Now, since leaving the government, I have spent most of my time on that set of problems. There have been two functions that the block club social contract and the other contracts LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 179 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections that I've negotiated have sought to serve. One is to better develop a holistic plan for the whole neighborhood. But the other clearly has been to find the basis where people in home ownership, rental housing and public housing come together. And in the preamble to that document, it states that very directly because I wanted that it there, and the people who negotiated that document did so. Now, I have proposed at various times -- we are under a rather small contract from OACD to do leadership training to the max. But early on, I had sought much more elaborate support to do that kind of neighborhood training and neighborhood building sections we are now doing with the empowerment zone in the American Street corridor, with an explicit objective of bringing people in rental and public housing together with the homeowners around clean, safe kids and opportunity. My project has been modestly funded but nothing like what's needed, although it's a lot cheaper than some of the others other things that LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 180 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections are on the table. There is no other project even being proposed, and that's at the center of this, how we help units come together with the rest of the neighborhood. So I want to put that to your attention as something that I think needs to be done as well in some way. Now, as far as the homeless preference is concerned, the second issue, Councilman Ortiz, I think your questions are on target in terms of what you need to examine. Let me go through the history here. We had X-number of people in the homeless shelters paid for by the tax payers, as you're pointing out. They weren't supposed to be in homeless shelters, there weren't supposed to be homeless shelters. In fact, Wilson Goode was attacked roundly as the City escalated its fiscal crisis for doing things that were not essential City services.
Now we've come to the point where the homeless shelters are the given LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 181 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections and, everything else is the variable. Well, the one thing that has developed since, very positively, is this now new infusion of transitional housing that started towards the end of my term. We didn't do very well in the first round of funding. The Rendell Administration has done an excellent job. And even more to their credit, the individuals developers and managers of these units have done an excellent job. So I don't know at this point how many units of transitional housing are out there or might be developed if you're going to eliminate a homeless preference for PHA or Section 8 that it might be absorb. But you're asking the right question. The homeless don't disappear simply because somebody says they can't live in PHA; they're going to be somewhere. And wherever they are, somebody's going to complain. So you better get a clear idea of what the hell will happen once this preference is eliminated.
And somebody's going LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 182 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections to have to pay for the services that they're going to need.
Right. All of that needs to be done. And I think that's right. I think you need those numbers. I certainly would want them as a citizen, and I would want them under any of the various roles that I've played. So that, I think, is the second thing. The third issue I want to address is the so-called clustering issue. At one level, I have to laugh. I mean, he's trying to get it changed. Because I want to concur with John Kromer. Project-based Section 8 certificates are not new. They began sort of in the period of time when I was there and were being used by developers. And a lot of them do a very good job, so that's not new.
Yeah, it isn't. Furthermore, what would be new is saying basically that every single Section 8 certificate -- you were giving the possibility that every single LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 183 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections Section 8 certificate goes through that vehicle. Now, why do we have the individual Section 8 certificates? Why are they out there? What's the theory behind that? Well, particularly under Jack Kemp, and now under Cisneros and Cuomo, there was this idea that some low-income people just are low income, they don't cause any problems. And so they deserve to be in the housing market the way everybody else, kind of looking for houses where that they want. And some landlords would become, you know, reproved to deal with them. But then they could kind of go where they want. And maybe some of those units would be in Germantown or in West Oak Lane, or, you know, Frankford, wherever. Now you basically are saying, If you do it all through project-based certificates, that those people will no longer have an option. Basically, they will go to the developments that the City has development sanctioned as PHA, as Section 8 developments. I think that's got to be examined very carefully because that's who loses under the LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 184 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections proposal, somebody who's just a good citizen, doesn't have a lot of money. Wants a house somewhere. Now, on the other side of it, I want to say that, you know, this is not a polar an issue as it was. Because the fact is that many of these project-based developments are very attractive. When Penrose Properties opened a building in lower Germantown, he had a thousand applicants for, you know 200 places. So they can be as good as it gets. But it does wipe out if the effect of what the Mayor is thinking is to put complete, you know, a complete -- they're not saying that that's what they're going to do, but if that were to happen, the loser in that is the decent tenant trying to get a house somewhere, who discovers they can only go to the places that the City has basically set aside. The other irony for me, of course, is neighborhoods themselves.
Well, yes. And the LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 185 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections other irony, of course, in light of the other debates that have gone on in the last years 4 over housing is that here we've had this great 5 movement to dismantle high-rises for what? 6 Individual houses. 7 When Maisha Jackson came into my office 8 in 1991 and then State Senator Chakka Fattah was 9 proposing his knock-em-down and spread-em-out 10 proposal, she wanted to know all the hundreds of 11 housing units around the North Philadelphia area 12 where you could place as individuals people who had been displaced from PHA. Councilwoman Verna and I have arrows in our backs through the scars from them, for the renovation of multiple units of rental housing on Christian Street. It went on for two years, and all of that got developed there. What they wanted was not one block with, you know, three rental projects; they wanted people scattered around and more home ownership. Will the people in the census tracks that the City has designated be more enthusiastic about some huge project, well managed by a good developer than they are about individual housing LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 186 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections units spread around their units? I used to joke as director that if I want to do empty the population of some neighbors of the City, for whatever reason, all I'd have to announce is that we were planning to put in some big low-income housing project there. And you know what those neighbors are. So in a way, I think that the people who came in here complaining about Section 8 may have gotten a proposal back that's almost the opposite the what they received.
But I do believe that project-based housing can be very effective. But I think there needs to be a mix. And to move from one to the other is not there. And I think, again, that all of these things suggest that the missing element, which is a neighborhood strategy that brings the diverse elements of the community together around a common vision is part of no one's proposal; and it is, in fact, what addresses the center piece of this problem. And no one really has an answer for it on the table on any side of this, even though such LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 187 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections ventures have been proposed. I want to make two final comments about issues that are not on the table but ought to be, as long as you guys are now going to get into this. The first is the question in general of PHA, Section 8 and affordable housing in the city. The reason I raise is that what looks great now may create real serious problems about four or five years from now. We have downsized a lot of big public housing projects. In my day, we had a principle called "the one to one replacement." If you cut a unit out, it had to be replaced. That's what the battles over this were. That's be eliminated, so we've downsized units that were available to the very poor without a guarantee that very poor people would get anywhere else. You have to look very carefully. I started to ask this question and I'm not satisfied I have the answer. But you guys have the authority to get the answer quickly. How many units of public housing and LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 188 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections Section 8 housing are currently available to the very poor? And how many will there be five years from now when all of this downsizing occurs? Keep in mind that Christian Gilbert did a study when I started that said that there were 100,000 people in Philadelphia that could not have afford more than $125 a month rent, and there were only 5,000 housing units in the City at that rate.
So where do the people who have been pushed out of Southwork and Raymond Rosen and Richard Allen and all of these other mixed-income properties go? And I don't object to trying to diversify those projects; that's a good thing. But without one-to-one replacement, you're going to be looking at a homelessness being encouraged by the very policies that have created diversity in someplace else. And, of course, the final thing we all need to look at a separate hearing and I'm spending most of my time is what will happen when all of the people that are currently in these LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 189 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections houses, many of them welfare recipients, don't get jobs? Mayor Rendell told a United Way conference, and it's in your plan, that he anticipates, despite everything the City is going to do, there will be 40,000 people in the year 2,001 who will not have any income at all. And you know, when that happens, we are going to be glad there's Section 8, because right now, the federal policy would be to pay their entire rent. The people who will be in really serious trouble are the ones who became home owners as welfare recipients; they will have no 15 protection and they will lose their homes fast, as will the neighborhood. It's relevant also to the question of services. You know, whenever people would say and still say, Supportive services, what do you mean? And case management. What are we talking about here? If somebody's on drugs, they don't need to be in a house; they need to be in a drug treatment center. Somebody who needs to know how to pay their rent, that's a counseling class. If LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 190 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections we're talking about job training and the rest of it, that's being offered to them under a number of other auspices. So whether Section 8 or these low-income housing units survive will depend over the next four or five years far more on what happens to the people in fact on welfare, as they try to get jobs, than it will to anything that we're talking about. And so this is for another hearing and another focus, but I merely bring it up here to say that while you're at this one aspect of problems affecting the poor, this other volcano is brewing which is going to wipe out this discussion many times over because you of how serious it will be.
And I will be sharing a lot of data that I have; you will be hearing a lot from me this year on this subject. Let me just say that I do believe that trying to get a handle on the screening, on the behavior of people in houses, and on the eviction LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 191 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections procedure coupled with some plan to bring rental housing in general, not just Section 8, but rental and public housing into the neighborhood as part of the community, which is what I am prepared to help the Council and the Mayor do, if they're of a mind, that can be done now and should be. And that's where this problem really started. And then we can wrestle with these more expansive issues of City development over the years, which is that what they'll take under the best of circumstances. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here.
And I think those are the areas that the Mayor and I agree on. And the other areas quite different, but I think eviction, screening, all of those areas are areas that we have emphasized and that we have to begin taking care of.
Right. And there are various where if you went -- I mean, places why shouldn't rental people be involved in block cleanups, in Town Watch? The sessions I ran in 1992, '93, LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 192 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections between Queen Village and Southwork didn't focus so much on the physical aspects of Southwork; they focussed on community crime prevention, they focussed on the schools, they focussed on adult literacy, they focussed on summer opportunities for kids. And all of those things happened. And so Southwork is now a part of that neighborhood, not just a big project in the middle of it, and that's made it more possible to negotiate something about that building. We have been trying to do that throughout the city. And for a bit more resources, we could, and it wouldn't cost anything like some of the things that are on the table now.
Thank you. Councilwoman Blackwell, I don't know if she had a question for me or not.
It's not only LAW AND GOVERNMENT/LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS 193 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections because we agree on most things.
Councilwoman Blackwell, do you have anything to ask him? No?
Okay, this hearing of the Committee on Licenses & Inspection and Law & Government will stand in recess until Thursday, February, 12, 1998, at 2 p.m., to hold hearings on Resolution 970558. Thank you very much, thank you, Mr. Kromer. And to the Mayor, next time, let us have this discussion early, not late. When we ask for hearings and we ask for communications, all we want to have is a discussion.
Good. Thank you, everybody, for your indulgence. (Adjourned at 5:09 p.m.) - - - C E R T I F I C A T E 194 Law and Government/Licenses and Inspections I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of Thursday, January 29, 1997 were reported and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of same. RE: COMMITTEES ON LAW AND GOVERNMENT AND LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS SECTION 8 HOUSING INVESTIGATION __________________________________, JOSEPHINE CARDILLO, RPR