Philly Mag and writer Jason Fagone get big, big ups for running this absolute ball-buster of an investigative piece into Emanuel Freeman and his Germantown Settlement, which — with a a combination of millions of tax dollars, unfettered greed and avarice, a loathsome city bureaucracy and Council members and officials who were all too happy to keep directing your tax dollars Freeman's way, even after his incompetence and alleged corruption was laid bare — managed to put this Northwest community into a deep, deep hole.

He was, as one source put it, the “Mugabe of Germantown,” and the city couldn't have cared less.

It's long, but seriously worth your attention. If heads don't roll over this — here's looking at you, Councilwoman Miller — then this city truly isn't ready for primetime.

Until very recently, through the social agency, Freeman provided services directly to 15,000 of the city's most vulnerable residents, and he has always bragged in his grant requests that when you add in his real estate ventures, he touches the lives of 195,000 people—one in every seven residents of Philadelphia.

He's the largest developer in Germantown, and is also the community's largest employer, which partly explains why politicians, both white and black, have always liked him: everyone from Governor and ex-mayor Ed Rendell, who used to call him “Manny,” to Congressman Bob Brady, who scored him a $250,000 federal earmark in 2009, to Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, whose daughter, Shakira, was paid $55.14 an hour by a Freeman-run nonprofit to “consult” with her mother, using walking-around money controlled by legislators and administered by Rendell's Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED). (Brady didn't respond to an interview request, and Miller said her daughter worked hard, and that to single her out for scrutiny was “unfair to the children of elected officials.”)

When you start to add up the grants, tax breaks and low-interest loans, you find that Freeman has raised at least $100 million for his enterprise since the mid-'80s. To an oil company, $100 million is a rounding error, but for a nonprofit working in a single part of a single city, it's unheard of. Crazy, though: When you visit Germantown, you can't see where any of this money went. When I walked through Germantown this spring, with two black women who used to work for Settlement and have since become its critics — Anita Hamilton and Debra White-Roberts, of the Wister Neighborhood Council — what we saw was blight: a run-down, graffiti-tagged strip mall called Freedom Square, built with $400,000 from the city, $600,000 from the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), and $600,000 from the federal government; three abandoned, boarded-up stucco homes on East Penn Street; and a gaping foundation pit on Wakefield Street, full of trash bags. Settlement “developed” these properties. “This is all we got,” White-Roberts told me. “We're worse off than if the money hadn't come here in the first place, because we don't know where it went.”

…

Time and time again, Miller took Freeman at his word. She didn't challenge him. And almost no one was willing to challenge Miller. Not even in the summer of 2008, which is the pivot point in the Settlement saga — the moment when it stops being a troubling historical yarn about race and real estate and becomes something way more raw.

In the summer of 2008, Elders Place I and II were baking. The hallways were hot. Some of the air conditioners were broken. Low-income old people lived there. On August 1st, HUD inspectors found rodent infestations, leaky roofs, and either “warm” or “extremely hot” hallways at both Elders I and II, plus a broken fire alarm system at Elders II; two months later, they went back, and their report noted problems with mold, ancient pumps, illegal wiring, water leaks, a lack of hot water, a “very hot” hallway, and trash. HUD wrote Freeman, to alert him to these dangerous problems.

Meanwhile, the social-agency side of Settlement was falling apart, too. On August 25th, an inspector with the city's Department of Human Services began a spot check on Settlement's “Services to Children in their Own Homes” program, which was designed to keep children in their own homes and prevent foster-care placement where possible. The city paid Settlement more than $460,000 on its SCOH contract alone in 2008. Here's what the city inspector, who recommended that the city shut the program down, wrote in the report:

This agency seems to be able only to provide minimal social services to the families. They are deficient in most of the required standards, many of which are safety-driven. There were months and months of contacts notes missing. The agency blamed this problem on workers who were no longer employed with the agency. It appeared to this evaluator that many of the problems were systemic; meaning that the agency had no real or concrete understanding of what was required of them.

ONE CITY AGENCY actually followed procedure and cut off Freeman's funding, despite his repeated requests. On November 17, 2008, the director of housing, Deborah McColloch, rejected a request from Freeman for $40,000, pointing out in a letter to him that his audits were still delinquent, and that Settlement and its housing company owed outstanding payroll taxes to the city, state and federal governments totaling approximately $800,000. “I am sorry I cannot approve your request,” McColloch wrote.

On December 9th, Freeman wrote to Don Schwarz, head of the city's Department of Public Health. Schwarz is a distinguished pediatrician, and a senior Nutter administration official. Freeman e-mailed Schwarz asking for help in getting an emergency payment of $133,855 from the Department of Human Services.

At this point, Schwarz's agency, DPH, hadn't received an audit from Settlement since 2005, a clear signal to give Freeman nothing more. Instead, 14 minutes later, Schwarz replied to Freeman, copying Donna Reed Miller, apologizing for any delay in funds: “I am sorry for this.” Later that day, Schwarz sent a longer reply to Freeman, promising three separate payments for various needs, totaling $119,500 that would be rushed into Settlement's hands. “I hope this helps,” Schwarz wrote Freeman. “We will continue to push to get you paid.”

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by JB, SettleUrTax and SettleTaxNow, Philly News Now. Philly News Now said: MUST READ. How Germantown went to shit, thanks to one man's greed and the city's complicity.: Philly Mag and write... http://bit.ly/aCQRnk [...] 

Thank you!  This is a great start.  Please continue.  



Tax arrears estimates are very low.  Freeman is listed as delinquent in Montgomery Co alone for c. $500,000.  He was instrumental in destroying both Y's in Gtown, avoids sheriff's sales (wonder how that happens), and is entrenched with charter schools & Dwight Evans. 

 Perhaps you have begun pulling on a nasty snarl of string!

[...] MUST READ. How Germantown went to shit, thanks to one man's greed and the …Philadelphia Citypaper (blog)… and either ?warm? or ?extremely hot? hallways at both Elders I and II, plus a broken fire alarm system at Elders II; two months later, they went back, … [...] 

Gtown Settlement is one of those agencies everyone in the city has known for years does absolutely nothing, as a social worker I've never referred anyone there, never heard of anyone who was referred there getting any actual services, it's just totally open and known that it's one of the fiefdom-style neighborhood places whose entire existence is to suck money for a small circle of connected people.  That DHS farms out SCOH work to this place is mind blowing, as SCOH workers are the frontline of the child welfare apparatus who are supposed to be actually in the home monitoring at risk children.  You would think DHS would know this place's reputation, as it seems everyone else on the planet does, and totally steer clear.  This has been an ongoing issue for DHS going all the way back past Charlenni and Danieal Kelly, they have basically turned over their agency's core function to a vast network of contractors who, like Germantown Settlement, can demonstrate no competency in that (pretty vital) practice area.

If this article is of interest to you and you oppose the pillaging that has taken place in this great Philadelphia neighborhood, please check out a new Face Book page called Battle for Germantown and become a friend.