At a hearing to help get Mayor Cherelle Parker's Housing Opportunities Made Easy initiative over the finish line, City Council members questioned if the program is doing enough to prioritize Philly's poorest residents.
The H.O.M.E. plan is a four-year, $2 billion investment to support affordable housing by building new units and repairing old ones. On Wednesday, officials testified in the Committee of the Whole about the $195 million spending plan to fund 27 initiatives in the program's first year.
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Much of the dissent hung on the use of the area median income to determine eligibility. In the Philadelphia region, the AMI is $119,400 annually for a family of four. Parker's administration has proposed allowing residents with up to 100% of the AMI to be allowed to apply to the program, but council members expressed concerns that having it open to that many people could be a detriment to those who have the greatest need.
Expanding the AMI would help residents with incomes above the poverty line who still struggle to make ends meet. Parker's Chief of Staff Tiffany Thurman said some people decline raises or promotions to remain eligible for the city's affordability programs, and those households are responsible for some of the "blight" in neighborhoods, meaning homes in need of repair.
Jessie Lawrence, the city's director of planning and development, said the city has denied over 1,000 applicants since 2022 because they were just above the threshold to qualify.
Angela Brooks, the city's chief housing and urban development officer, said 41% of the projects are expected to go to households with a 0-31% AMI, but the administration doesn't support officially adding that obligation to the language and codifying the legislation. Brooks added that building priorities into the application approval process would require a tiered approach, which the city's current infrastructure doesn't support, and it would take time to implement that into the system.
Councilmember Jamie Gauthier (D-3rd) called for clearing out the queue of existing applications in affordable housing programs, which she believed would also allow for time to build that infrastructure.
"I don't see, in my opinion, it being fiscally responsible to open up programs to the middle class without any prioritization of people who — but for the city's dollars — are going to be on the streets," Gauthier said. "… I don't believe it's enough to say we're organically going to help the people who need our help the most. If that is the intention, then we should codify that in the legislation."
Parker officials argued that AMI is just one factor in determining eligibility and doesn't tell the full story. Thurman added that the administration "refuses to be pulled into a trap" of debating deeply affordable versus affordable.
"At the end of the day, we want to have some level of flexibility as the need shifts and changes, and it's really that simple," Brooks said. "It's not some nefarious thing that seems to be implied in this room."
Council President Kenyatta Johnson said City Council overall supports the H.O.M.E. initiative, but members were seeking more input on some of the spending.
Ahead of Wednesday's meeting, a group of eight council members penned a letter to the mayor's administration on the H.O.M.E. budget, saying that affordable housing programs are "chronically underfunded." The letter called for prioritizing existing applicants, especially those with the lowest income.
"With several years and nearly $800 million in anticipated bond funding on the table, let’s go for the 'low-hanging fruit' first," the letter said. "Demand for housing programs like repairing and upgrading affordable homes and providing subsidies to those who are rent-burdened has long exceeded available funding."
In response, the Parker administration sent a letter Tuesday which took issue with council members' position that the program supports those "with means."
"The intent of the H.O.M.E. Plan is indeed to work for every Philadelphian, which is why the programs have been carefully designed to serve what you have heard me describe as both the 'have-nots' and those who 'have just a little bit' without pitting the two constituencies — neither of which are 'those with means' — against each other," the mayor wrote.
City Council needs to approve the budget plan before officials can access the funding, which is paid for by the sale of $800 million in city bonds. If the budget legislation is approved by next week, the city will be able to access the funding as early as December. If not, officials said it will stretch into January.