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Real Estate
Anuj Gupta, the executive director of Mt. Airy USA, tells Naked City that the community development corporation has won a $250,000 grant from the city to fix up two abandoned properties on Germantown Avenue.
The properties are located on the 6500 and 6600 blocks of Germantown Avenue, in Mt. Airy. This part of the street is an interesting position: It's between Chestnut Hill, an extremely rich community, and Germantown, which has wrestled with blight and poverty for years. In fact, this area is only a couple of blocks from what is widely accepted as the border of Germantown.
"If we can anchor this stretch," says Gupta, "it will help trigger the next wave of investment into Germantown Avenue."
Gupta says the two properties, located specifically at 6614 and 6513 Germantown Avenue, will become mixed-use developments. He hopes that one will end up selling food, thus "bringing quality-of-life amenities to all parts of the community."
The grant comes from the city's Office of Housing and Community Development.
CP contributor Daniel Schwartz was on the scene this past Thursday at an anti-foreclosure protest held at Sixth and Market. The protest was organized by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, a national group combating "economic human rights violations."
Intrepid CP contributor Daniel Schwartz went to some protest today that we didn't even know about, and wrote about it. So here's his report.
Today, at 11 a.m., the Poor Peopleâs Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) led a protest against the wave of foreclosures sweeping across Philadelphia and the rest of the country. National Organizer for the PPEHRC, Cheri Honkala, directed the protest at Sixth and Arch, assembling more than 60 individuals and representatives from local groups like the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Casino Free Philadelphia, and Pennâs anti-poverty activist group, Penn Haven.
With the housing crisis hitting poor homeowners especially hard, hundreds of thousands across the country have either had their houses foreclosed or are vulnerable to going "underwater.â Explaining the protest, Honkala pulls out a barrage of statistics. "Every 13 seconds, a house goes into foreclosure here in Philadelphia.â Depending on whose statistics you look at, anywhere from 10,000 to 16,000 Philadelphia homeowners have been evicted due to foreclosure since the markets crashed last year. In a recent New York Times article Philadelphiaâs primary civil court received accolades for providing the nationâs most successful foreclosure reconciliation program. But Honkala disputes the notion. "Itâs not that Philadelphia has been the best at preventing foreclosure, itâs that weâve been the best at delaying it.â Honkala exhales with exasperation and asks, "Is it really so great that we know how to drag out the inevitable?â
Tim, a worker for the Kensington Welfare Rights Union describes the situation as madness. "You have a stressed-out banking system that somehow makes it cheaper to foreclose on a homeowner rather than modify their loan payments. You can use all the economic theory you want to justify that fact, but at the end of the day, itâs insane.â Other protesters, like Jimmy Tobias from Penn Haven, chanted about the city having more vacant properties than homeless people. "How does our government justify a commitment to spend billions bailing out the banks and on the Afghan War but canât find the money to house its own citizens?â
The protesters marched and rolled in wheelchairs from the Federal building to Sixth and Market where they clogged the busy crossroads. Police threatened to arrest the activists as they blocked all four sides of the intersection before the crowd finally consolidated and traffic resumed.
"If the situation doesnât change,â Honkala called through her megaphone, "weâll be back here in late January with at least 1,000 people. Thatâs a promise.â
Good on ya! Give those greedy rich guys hell.
Thank you for publicizing this, Daniel.
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