Title
Authorizing the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development, and the Homeless to conduct hearings to identify barriers and solutions to permanently preserving community gardens and open spaces in the City of Philadelphia.
Body
WHEREAS, The City of Philadelphia is rapidly losing community gardens and green spaces, and these neighborhood beacons will be lost forever without urgent action to ensure their preservation; and
WHEREAS, In 1997, the City of Philadelphia bundled together 30,000 tax liens to raise revenue to address a school funding crisis, resulting in their sale to U.S. Bank, a private corporation. The City lost money in this effort when investors were unable to collect on many of the securitized liens, and the consequences of the fallout from the 1997 securitization are still evident throughout Philadelphia today; and
WHEREAS, In 2017, there were more than 5,000 properties encumbered by U.S. Bank liens in Philadelphia, but by February 2020, there were fewer than 3,000 properties remaining on this list. Hundreds more have been sold during the pandemic, many of them through online sheriff sales; and
WHEREAS, Most of the remaining properties are in predominantly low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods, and 90% of the properties sold since July 1, 2019 were located in neighborhoods near or below the poverty line. Importantly, about one in four of the remaining U.S. Bank lien vacant properties were located in zip codes 19140 and 19133-the same neighborhoods that experience some of the highest incidences of gun violence and food insecurity in our City; and
WHEREAS, Many community gardens and open spaces are located on U.S. Bank tax lien properties, and, even with Council support, currently little can be done to save the properties, as growers and lot stewards are often unable to pay the lien and the exorbitant fees that accompany it. This usually leads to a developer purchasing the property and replacing the garden with luxury housing units o...
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