http://www.aachamber.org/NeighborhoodPresTownMtgAUGUST__2_.pdf
African American Chamber of Commerce
Neighborhood Preservation Town Meeting
Cornerstone Baptist Church
Remarks
A. Bruce Crawley
August 3, 2004
In an April 13, 2004 letter to Mayor John F. Street, the African American Chamber of
Commerce (AACC) recommended, among other things, that the Mayor “Establish a city
government-related committee to review the impact of gentrification on African American
homeowners and neighborhoods.” While the Mayor agreed to establish such a
committee in an April 20 response letter, the City still has not taken steps to do so.
To further drive home the urgent need for a municipal anti-gentrification policy, the
AACC has, in recent weeks, launched a series of Town Hall meetings focusing on how
residents of historically black communities can defend their neighborhoods against the
ravages of gentrification. In each session, the AACC presentation has featured a panel of
black real estate-related experts, including city housing officials, real estate agents, the
sheriff’s office, ACORN, mortgage insurance specialists and attorneys. Each session, is
followed by an extensive question and answer period. Opening remarks by AACC
Chairman A. Bruce Crawley have been as follows:
I want to begin by thanking all of you who have decided to invest your valuable time
with us this evening.
We understand that there are a great number of things you could have been doing other
than this. At the same time, there are probably very few issues that have more
importance to the African-American community than the phenomenon of gentrification.
Gentrification. We hear the word quite a bit but, in fact, it’s not a part of common,
everyday language. It’s not a word that’s had a long history in the United States.
The word wasn’t even included in the 1980 edition of Funk and Wagnall’s New
Comprehensive International Dictionary of the English Language. I was able to finally
find the definition in the 1998 edition of the Random House Webster’s Unabridged
Dictionary: “The buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban
neighborhoods by upper or middle income families or individuals, thus improving
property values, but often displacing low-income families and small businesses.”
That’s what we’re here to discuss, in all of its manifestations.
Gentrification may seem a brand-new concept, but it actually visited Philadelphia in a
significant way about 50 years ago under then-Mayor Richardson Dilworth.
There once was a Philadelphia neighborhood first made famous by W.E.B. DuBois, who
researched and wrote in 1899 a book called The Philadelphia Negro. That neighborhood
was South Central Philadelphia, the first predominantly black community in the City of
Philadelphia. This was the community that was closest to Penn’s Landing, the place from
which most slaves disembarked upon their arrival in Philadelphia. This was the
neighborhood where Richard Allen and Absolom Jones built the first AME church–
Mother Bethel.
Up through the mid-1950’s, this was still a very proud and densely populated black
community. Then, well-to-do whites, led by Dilworth himself, changed the name of the
neighborhood to Society Hill and started to buy the homes and apartments in the
community, substantially raising property values, while at the same time driving black
inhabitants out.
Today, it’s rare to encounter black residents in Society Hill. In fact, when black or white
tourists are brought to 6th and Lombard Streets, to Mother Bethel Church, one of their
first questions is why this wonderful, black historic structure, the first African Methodist
Episcopal Church in the nation, was built in the middle of a community that is virtually
all-white.
Society Hill was, arguably, gentrification’s first real foray into Philadelphia, but now the
concept is part of a national phenomenon that is sweeping places such as Washington,
D.C., Harlem/ New York City, and our own City of Brotherly Love. As an example,
there was a story in the Sunday New York Times, recently, that noted that two
brownstones in Harlem just sold for $2.3 million and $ 2.9 million, respectively. Who
can afford those prices? If this pattern continues, given the income and economic
disparity between blacks and whites in New York and across the U.S., it’s obvious that
the long-term prospect for Harlem is a continuing loss of its historic black population.
We also know that the root causes of gentrification include the phenomenon of “white
flight,” which grew out of government-sanctioned, discriminatory, mortgage
underwriting standards initiated by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).
According to Larry Adelman’s video presentation, “Race– The Power of an Illusion,” the
FHA, which was established in 1934, helped generate much of the wealth that so many
white families enjoy today. The agency made it possible for millions of average white
Americans– but not others– to own a home for the first time. The government set up a
national neighborhood appraisal system, explicitly tying mortgage eligibility to race.
Integrated communities were, consequently, deemed a financial risk and made ineligible
for home loans, a policy known today as “redlining.” According to Adelman, between
1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion of home loans, and more
than 98% of those loans went to whites. Of the 350,000 new homes built with federal
support in northern California between 1946 and 1960, as an example, fewer than 100
went to African Americans. Is it any wonder, therefore, that in 2001 the average net
worth of white households, at $468,200, was more than six times greater than the $75,700
net worth of the average black household?
Adelman’s presentation went on to explain that these government programs made
possible the new segregated white suburbs that sprang up here in the Philadelphia area
and around the country after World War II, and that government subsidies for municipal
services helped develop and enhance these suburbs further, in turn fueling commercial
investments. As recently as 1993, 86% of suburban whites still lived in neighborhoods
with black populations of less than 1%.
Following the lead of the federal agencies, commercial banks simply adopted the
underwriting standards of the FHA, redlining communities, causing properties to
deteriorate, and creating the stereotype that when blacks move into a neighborhood,
property values necessarily go down, and when whites move into a neighborhood,
property values necessarily go up. The fact is that without access to mortgage financing
there can be no viable housing market, in either black or white communities. As a result
of the institutionalized redlining of African American communities, no money flowed in,
few property improvements could be made and the quality if the housing stock became
blighted and deteriorated. Systematically unemployed and underemployed, and deprived
of housing loans, blacks were in no condition to improve their real estate values, or their
household wealth. And, what happened? American society blamed the existence of
these new “slums” on black people, themselves.
With African Americans comprising 43% of the City of Philadelphia’s population, these
economic imbalances and stereotypes have to be destroyed if we are ever to have a fair
real estate market process, or an ability to preserve historically black communities.
I read recently that while white home ownership across the country has jumped from 65%
to 75% since 1970, black home ownership has only grown from 42% to 48%. At that
rate, the report said, it will take 1664 years to close the home ownership gap between
blacks and whites.
So here we are in Philadelphia, in what has long been a racially biased national real estate
environment, in the midst of a highly publicized, local urban development program.
Here we are at a time when many of the white families who fled the cities to take
advantage of affordable mortgages, have now benefited by the equity improvement in
their suburban properties but also now recognize the fundamental value, convenience and
attractiveness of centrally located real estate. So now, not just here in Philadelphia, but
across the country, well-heeled suburbanites are moving back in to discover and claim
dramatically undervalued real estate where black people already live. How do we
achieve all of the good things that should result from an ambitious, city-wide
neighborhood improvement program without disenfranchising blacks who have lived for
so long and so patiently in these older, central communities?
How do we protect the black and minority homeowner from those who post the “we buy
houses for cash” signs on utility poles in our neighborhoods?
How do we equip black homeowners to understand the upside potential of their real
estate before they are tempted to sell out to the speculator?
How do we ensure that when we finish all of the residential development here in
Philadelphia we don’t wind up having created the North American version of
Johannesburg, that shining, prosperous, beautiful, segregated city in South Africa,
surrounded by black shacks?
How do we ensure the kind of enhanced economic and workplace inclusion that will
allow blacks who choose to, to earn enough money to afford the newly improved
neighborhoods?
That is the issue and those are the reasons that the African American Chamber of
Commerce has decided to hold a series of town meetings in predominantly black
communities focusing on gentrification.
We have assembled a panel of the best and brightest real estate-related minds in our
community to provide information to neighborhood residents.
We invite all who have a genuine interest to attend.
We believe these informational meetings are a critical first step in the creation of
Philadelphia’s anti-gentrification plan.
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