Mayor Cherelle Parker unveils $2 billion housing plan

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker on Monday delivered a special address to City Council to unveil her long-awaited $2 billion housing plan.

The plan still needs to be approved by City Council.

The mayor faces two major obstacles in accomplishing her vision. The first — President Donald Trump’s threats to cut aid to cities and dismantle the federal housing agency — is a consequence of national politics. The other — Council members’ vise-grip on land use policy within their districts — is a reality of hyper-local politics in Philadelphia.

And while Parker’s plan is undeniably ambitious given the political and economic obstacles that have plagued efforts to grow the housing stock in Philadelphia and across the country, it is notably less ambitious than it once was when she was pitching it on the campaign trail. The mayor started watering down her promise shortly after she took office by saying she planned to count all housing, not just affordable units, when measuring the city’s progress of reaching the 30,000 goal, and by counting efforts to preserve homes, not just building new ones.

On Monday, she announced that her plan would include 13,500 newly constructed homes and 16,500 preserved units.

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