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News we ♥️

We love this coverage of the rise of tenant organizing in Philadelphia. New Age tenants are organizing with the Citywide Tenant Union of Philly DSA, Odin tenants have been organizing for many years with Renters United, and tenants in buildings across the city are uniting with their neighbors. “Tenants are really pushed against the wall and realizing that the only choice they have is to come together,” said Vincent Montoya, an organizer with Philadelphia DSA.

When tenants see media about other tenants organizing – and see that it works! – they’re inspired to do the same. We heard this a lot from Philadelphians who read about the organized tenants who ultimately saved Brith Sholom House. Philly is a union town, at work and at home.

Critical context missing ‼️

3 years into Mayor Parker’s term, her administration has created and preserved more than 16,000 homes.

This WHYY headline frames new housing data from Cherelle Parker’s mayoral administration as unequivocally positive. Upon closer examination, though, the H.O.M.E. Dashboard raises questions that nobody seems to be asking.

Background on Mayor Parker’s Housing Goals and the H.O.M.E. Plan

The Parker administration’s stated goal is to produce or preserve 30,000 homes. Importantly, the original goal was 30,000 affordable homes, but that word was notably removed when Mayor Parker became Mayor. The H.O.M.E. Plan was supposed to make achieving this goal possible.

The H.O.M.E. Plan is a $800 million municipal bond program to fund a number of housing programs for current homeowners, prospective homeowners, and renters throughout Philadelphia. The first year’s budget is $277.2 million, running from April 2026 to June 2027. In the fall and winter of 2025, housing advocates fought to “Make H.O.M.E. for Us,” successfully shifting more spending in the H.O.M.E. Plan to support low-income homeowners and renters.

This massive public investment matters. It is a ton of money, and how it is spent will either maintain the status quo or make a real difference in the lives of low-income and working class Philadelphians. Since it is a bond, it is money the taxpayers of Philadelphia will have to pay back, with interest, so it is essential that we track the rollout of these funds and continue to ask: Are our tax dollars being used to move us closer to the city we deserve to live in?

The H.O.M.E. Dashboard announces that the administration is more than halfway to their 30k homes goal. They have preserved 11,724 units and produced 4,670 units. Preserve, we would imagine, would involve keeping housing affordable or keeping affordable housing in good shape. Produce, we expect, would mean building new housing.

But what does preservation and production actually mean to the Parker administration? And how many of the 16,394 units that the administration is celebrating can be attributed to the H.O.M.E. plan, if any?

What do “preservation” and “production” actually mean to the Parker Administration?

If you go to the H.O.M.E. plan dashboard, then “Click to explore,” and then finally “View Production and Preservation Definitions,” you learn that the definitions are quite broad.

Preservation programs are relatively straightforward. The programs include the Basic Systems Repair Program, the Rental Improvement Fund, and Restore, Repair, Renew, among other programs.

The definition of Production, however, is misleading. Take a look:

The list includes several programs that provide financial assistance to new homebuyers, such as Home Buy Now and Philly First Home. With the exception of Turn the Key, supported homebuyers are purchasing existing homes, not new construction. “Production” also includes the broad category of “Homelessness Prevention,” which “may consist of providing funds to improve existing properties or provide for the costs of the acquisition of properties” (emphasis added). It’s not that these aren’t worthwhile programs, but they simply don’t fit a common-sense definition of “production”...the creation of new housing units that did not previously exist.

Two programs hew more closely to that common-sense definition are Turn the Key (“Provides new energy-efficient affordable homes on publicly-owned land to first time homebuyers”) and “Affordable Housing Production.” Don’t think that these programs are fulfilling our social housing dreams, though.

The Dashboard’s definition of Affordable Housing Production is “[p]rovid[ing] “gap” financing for construction, reconstruction, acquisition of property and other expenditures for housing production projects.” The units are designed to be affordable for households earning between 50 and 80 percent Area Median Income, so between $61,350 and $98,150 for a family of 4.

When you look more closely at the 4,670 units produced (in the Dashboard, looking at the data for Production and then filter by Program), you learn that…797 units have been built under “Affordable Housing Production.” But the 797 units haven’t all been completed yet — 458 units, more than half, are “in progress”—and the bulk that have been produced were completed prior to the start of Year 1 of the H.O.M.E. funding.

Most notably, 3,300 (the overwhelming majority of the 4,670 units produced) units were “produced” under Philly First Home, which again, “Offers homebuyer assistance grants to assist first-time homebuyers; reduces the principal and covers down payment and loan closing costs.​” Again, that is cool! Not opposed! There is just no world in which it makes sense for the Administration to claim that down payment assistance has “produced” 3.3k new units of affordable housing. This also seems to bear no relationship to the release of the H.O.M.E. funds.

How many of the 16,394 units that the administration is celebrating can be attributed to the H.O.M.E. plan?

Based on the dashboard itself, only $16.6 million of H.O.M.E. funds have been spent— 6% of the $277.2 million dollar first year budget. We are halfway through Year 1 (which began April 2026), but less than one tenth of the way through the budget.

The WHYY article cites a different number, though: “To date, the administration has spent around a third of the initiative’s first-year budget.” Where is this discrepancy coming from? Could it have something to do with the reimbursement model?

Angela Brooks, Philadelphia’s chief housing and urban development officer, admits that there is still work to be done. She notes, “Stuff is moving, but sometimes we’re reimbursing versus paying on the front end.” There are no follow-up questions in the article about what she means by this. What does “sometimes” mean? Why is H.O.M.E. reimbursement-based? What are the ramifications of program administrators like PHDC and other agencies fronting the costs and waiting for reimbursement? Is bond money reimbursing normal program costs, and if so, why?

There are serious consequences to the slow drip of funding when nearly half of Philadelphians are rent-burdened, over 5,000 people are experiencing homelessness, and Philadelphia is imminently at risk of losing more affordable housing, like Neighborhood Restorations’ 925 affordable units. Housing insecurity is life-threatening. We don’t have time to waste.

Our ultimate question is this: Why is the media taking Parker Administration officials’ talking points at their face value, rather than probing deeper into the data?

Campaign Spotlight – Rental Ripoffs 💰

The Citywide Tenant Union of Philly DSA launched the Rental Ripoffs Campaign on October 1, 2026. The Campaign has six demands: ban late fees, junk fees, RUBS (Ratio Utility Billing Systems), AI Property Management, one-sided attorney fees, and penalize elevator outages.

The Citywide Tenant Union (CTU) of Philly DSA organizes tenants to wield collective power. In 2026, CTU went public with three tenant unions. CTU members are organizing for better conditions in their own buildings and taking their fight citywide.

Want to get involved? They meet the first Monday of every month at Workers United at 22 S. 22nd Street from 6-8 pm. Want to organize your building? Email citywidetenants.phl@gmail.com.

Upcoming events 🗓️

• 10/1-10/31: The Architecture of Us exhibit on Philly Rowhomes @ The Village of Industry and Art

• 10/9: DesignPhiladelphia: The Next Now Design Symposium: Innovation in Housing @ 320 S Broad St.

• 10/11: Citywide Tenant Union Jazz Benefit with Late Night Clubhouse @ Nikki Lopez

• 10/15: Renters United Philadelphia Monthly Meeting @ Virtual

• 10/17: Philadelphia Tenant Union Eviction Defense Training @ Wooden Shoe

• 10/24: DSA Housing Justice Commission Training @ Virtual

• 11/2: Citywide Tenant Union of Philly DSA Monthly Meeting @ Workers United

Happening Elsewhere 🌍

Tens of thousands of tenants in Spain are still protesting exorbitant housing costs and the violence of eviction after the forcible eviction of 87-year-old María del Carmen Abascal sparked outrage in Madrid. Their powerful uprising has led to proposals from the Spanish Parliament to limit the role of “vulture capital” (aka venture capital!) in housing, halt evictions for vulnerable residents until 2030, and to freeze the rent. Rest in peace, Maricarmen.

Thanks for making it this far. Write to us at hello@peopleshousinglab.org if there’s something you’d like to see included in our next newsletter, to comment, or to pitch a piece.

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Too often, the conversation about housing in Philadelphia seems to be missing something. We’ve noticed it. Maybe you have too.

Some of us first noticed this at a press conference held by senior tenants whose landlord left them without heat in the dead of winter. No press showed up.

Others of us noticed it after a long, testy day at City Hall where tenants packed the room for a hearing on landmark renters rights legislation. This time the press did show up. But the coverage failed to mention that the advocate for “small landlords” quoted as a sensible voice is a notorious member of the landlord bar, whose law firm shapes the city’s eviction ecosystem and whose eviction mill business model would be materially threatened by the proposed tenant protections.

And still others of us noticed it in the discourse around the Mayor’s new housing plan, where — as in so many housing debates before it — the conversation was framed, from the beginning, narrowly around supply and production , as if that were the whole of the crisis. Fishing for headlines, the Mayor promised “30,000 new units of affordable housing” on the campaign trail in May 2024. By inauguration, that promise morphed into “a plan to build or repair 30,000 homes of any kind.” To date, fewer than 1,000 of the promised units have been completed despite an $800 million bond measure and promises of another $1.2 billion in public land handouts.

More troubling than the missed target is the premise beneath it: the Mayor has embraced a politically convenient diagnosis of the housing crisis that keeps attention fixed on producing units rather than housing people affordably. In doing so, the administration reproduces a market-centered consensus that serves powerful interests remarkably well, while pushing the harder questions of affordability, stability, displacement, ownership, and public investment to the margins.

These blind spots are connected by a “housing crisis” discourse that is about “buildings rather than people” – that is, about “abstractions, in numbers, in interchangeable ‘units,’ and not about people, or about power,” as LA Tenants Union founder Tracy Rosenthal has put it. When we don’t hear from tenants, we’re less likely to ask who owns the housing, who profits from it, who makes the decisions, and who stands to lose when tenants win.

Our city deserves a better, more complete narrative. We deserve a discourse capable of seeing Philadelphia as it actually is: a place where human beings live, and where power is constantly being contested. It’s a city founded on Quaker ideals of equality, whose original grid of tiny, narrow rowhomes made working-class homeownership possible on a scale unmatched by any other American city. It’s also the city where W.E.B. Du Bois conducted The Philadelphia Negro, the first major sociological study to document how Black residents were systematically confined to the city’s worst housing — a pattern that would later harden into redlining. That is Philadelphia: a place where housing has always been both a vector of subjugation and a source of opportunity, a site of both exclusion and democracy, often on the very same block.

To this day, Philadelphia’s housing crisis remains complex. Sure, it’s about insufficient supply and affordability: the city is short 65,000 rental units affordable to its lowest-income residents, and we’re on the verge of losing thousands of subsidized units citywide. But it’s also so much more than a numbers problem. The housing stock is increasingly controlled by out-of-state investors and local slumlords who fight to extract as much profit as possible from working renters while neglecting repairs and basic maintenance work. The result is an ongoing habitability crisis that disproportionately traps Black tenants in substandard housing.

Thankfully, across the city, tenants, organizers, advocates, lawyers, policy workers, and public officials are experimenting with ways to make housing more affordable, keep people in their homes, and hold landlords accountable for uninhabitable conditions and retaliation. From the UC Townhomes to Brith Sholom, from Camp Chloe to the Occupy PHA movement, from the Safe Healthy Homes campaign to ambitious plans from the Mayor’s Office and the Philadelphia Housing Authority, people are testing models for tenant organizing, collective bargaining, public ownership, housing preservation, and landlord accountability.

There are stories that need to be told about these projects. Stories of ambitious, courageous, creative, and imperfect projects. If we don’t tell them, this movement will continue to be hamstrung as terrain is ceded to landlord talking points dressed up as common sense, and developer interests dressed up as economic necessity.

That’s why we’re launching the People’s Housing Lab. It’s a Philadelphia- and tenant-centered publication, built by volunteer researchers, writers, organizers, lawyers, policy workers, academics, and activists who call this city home. We want to dig into how power actually shapes the housing market, push back on the myths that prop up dominant housing policy, and put tenants at the center of the story, instead of the investors profiting off them.

We’ll write about supply, yes, but also profit, distribution, access, and control. We’ll cover zoning and finance alongside tenant organizing, eviction defense, social housing, and the limits of market-rate development. Our goal is to be a place tenants, policymakers, and organizers can turn to for deep analysis that is rigorous about data and deeply skeptical of policy diagnoses and solutions that conveniently cater to the interests of the powerful.

Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.

P.S. If you’re wondering who Phyllis is…they’re the little guy next to the “B” of “LAB” above.

P.P.S. Tell a friend. And e-mail us at hello@peopleshousinglab.org if there’s something you’d like to write about ;)

Philadelphia is our focus and our home. This is a platform and publication for Philadelphians, by Philadelphians. We will share stories about Philadelphia tenants, the Philadelphia rental market, and Philadelphia housing policy debates. We will consider how federal housing policy will impact Philadelphia specifically and comparatively study housing-related policies, practices, and experimentation elsewhere, analyzing how such programs might play out here.

2. Housing Is a Human Right

Housing is a fundamental human right. We should evaluate public policy based on whether it expands access to safe, stable, dignified housing for all residents, especially those most at risk of displacement and homelessness. Policy choices should prioritize human stability.

We believe that shelter is a social good before it is an investment vehicle. We support policies that prioritize housing as a place to live first, not primarily as an asset to trade.

3. Evidence Matters and So Do Its Sources

We are committed to evidence-based housing policy. We also believe evidence must be interrogated: Who funded the research? What assumptions underpin the model? What data is missing? What outcomes are being measured, and for whom?

Even data-driven policy is not neutral. Good housing analysis requires methodological rigor, transparency, and an honest accounting of power.

4. Policy Means More Than Law

We believe that “policy” stretches beyond the passage of legislation. Policy includes the allocation of resources, the implementation and enforcement of legislation, and institutional culture. When we talk about policy, we are talking about the long arc from idea to lasting impact.

5. Increasing Supply Alone Will Not Fix the Housing Market

Expanding housing supply is essential to long-term affordability. We agree that zoning reform and growing the pool of available housing are important aspects of addressing rising rents in our city.

However, supply interventions alone cannot completely solve housing instability. Without tenant protections, anti-displacement tools, public investment, and attention to ownership structures and price-gouging, expanding supply can coexist with deepening inequality. A serious housing agenda must address production, affordability, preservation, and power simultaneously.

6. Public Capacity Is a Policy Choice

A budget is a reflection of our shared values, and we can choose to prioritize our spending differently. We endeavor to grapple with real resource constraints (land, labor, materials, administrative capacity, the impacts of federal austerity) while rejecting artificial scarcity narratives that prevent public investment in deeply affordable housing.

7. Residents Must Be the Protagonists

Housing justice is achieved through collective action, including tenant organizing, cooperative ownership, community land trusts, and democratic governance. We believe durable solutions emerge when residents have voice, agency, and shared ownership in shaping our city.

Are you in? Subscribe, send to your friends, and send us a pitch that aligns with these principles.

Pitch submissions at any time via e-mail to hello@peopleshousinglab.org. Submission emails must include:

• Name of author(s) (or person pitching)

• Topic of submission, including at minimum a short summary of the article, and potential sources (data, primary documents, interview subjects, etc.)

• Any requests for editorial support or collaboration, if applicable.