Spend the Housing Money

Philadelphia has spent $38 million of the $278 million budgeted for the first phase of the H.O.M.E. Initiative, according to a report the City Controller released on October 27. That is about fourteen cents of every dollar, in a program Mayor Parker built to create and preserve 30,000 homes. The money that did go out paid for free home repairs, accessibility modifications, and help resolving landlord and tenant disputes.

The hard part is the pipeline underneath it, the applications, the inspections, the contractors, the closing documents. Philadelphia did not fail to fund its housing plan. It is failing to run it at the speed the crisis requires. This money should be deployed through the various nonprofit organizations in Philadelphia rather than through one single nonprofit entity. Many of these nonprofits have expertise in specific parts of the city, and that gives them insight into where the need is greatest in those neighborhoods.

Council approved the first-year H.O.M.E. budget last December, and it was a real fight. The Mayor proposed $194.6 million. Council raised it to $277 million and aimed most of the money at households earning sixty percent of area median income or less.

Some of this is the honest friction of standing up a large program. Bond money has rules, new programs need guidelines, and repairs require contractors who have to be found, vetted, and paid. Nobody serious expects $278 million out the door in the first quarter. But fourteen cents on the dollar, ten months in, is not a ramp. These programs exist because Philadelphia's housing stock is old and its owners are often house-rich and cash-poor. Delay is not neutral for them. Delay is the problem compounding.

The fix is to treat delivery capacity as a budget line in its own right. The city should publish spending by program every month so a resident can see whether the Basic Systems Repair Program or Turn the Key is moving. Council already bargained for quarterly updates on district-level spending when it approved the bonds, and that commitment should be honored.

There is a version of this story where the H.O.M.E. Initiative becomes the proof that Philadelphia can still do big things. The need is documented, the money is appropriated, and the programs on paper are the right ones. What stands between that version and this one is not vision and it is not funding. It is the unglamorous work of moving money through a system at the pace of the emergency it was meant for.

Investing in our infrastructure is the right idea, but it has to be paired with creating opportunities for new jobs. Improving infrastructure is a pillar of the broader vision of lifting up Philadelphia, a city where so many residents are poor.

There is also an effect to watch: improving infrastructure can raise property values, which raises property taxes and shifts the demographic that can afford these houses.

The concept behind the infrastructure investment, making homes affordable, is there. But we need to think beyond the taglines and press releases that look good on paper, because there can be unintended consequences when money pours into infrastructure with no money behind job creation in Philadelphia.