Ballot questions ask you to approve proposals to permanently change the City’s circa 1951 Home Rule Charter, which is Philadelphia government’s operations manual, aka its constitution. Your answers determine whether and how the municipal government will expand, contract or shift direction.
Philadelphia City Council has already voted yes on these proposals. The mayor, however, has not. So, Council is going to you to decide whether to make their proposals law.
The vast majority of the time, ballots easily pass because voters tend to say “Yes.”
Whereas the U.S. Constitution has 27 amendments, the Home Rule Charter has dozens, from preventing city workers from working on political campaigns (makes sense), to outlawing laws that are already outlawed (like unconstitutional stop-and-frisk — redundant) to, in 2007, telling the federal government to bring troops home from Iraq (seems … posturing).
The three questions on the May 20, 2025 primary election ballot are Philly-centric. Here they are.
Proposed Charter Change #1
(emphasis below, ours)
Should The Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to create the Office of Homeless Services Ombudsperson to assist residents experiencing homelessness, help provide fair access to essential resources, improve quality of life in the shelter system, investigate client complaints, and provide oversight and recommendations to the City’s providers of homeless services?
Statement: The City’s Home Rule Charter sets up the framework of City government. A “yes” vote means you approve the creation of a new Office of Homeless Services Ombudsperson in City government. This Office will help people who don’t have homes get the services they need, and work to improve the City’s homeless services.
A little deeper:
Ombudsperson is not everyone’s everyday term, so, let’s start there. An ombudsperson is a government official who serves as an impartial advocate for residents having trouble with government-provided or government-related services. The term is purposely catchall, as different situations require different responses, ranging from making calls to leading investigations.
In recent years, the City’s Office of Homeless Services has been accused of misusing funds — going over budget by $15 million under Mayor Kenney; although the Inspector General found no criminal wrongdoing, it was a bad look — undercounting unsheltered people, and bungling Mayor Parker’s initial “sweep” of Kensington. City Council Majority Leader Kathleen Gilmore Richardson has been outspoken about investigating the office. She held hearings to air “horrifying” stories: Residents recounted hurdles to procuring emergency shelter, fears of retaliation, poor shelter conditions, and difficulty navigating the system.
In May 2024, Council voted to approve Gilmore Richardson’s legislation to create an Office of Homeless Services Ombudsperson — which would start as a one-person role reporting to the Inspector General — to bring issues to light and resolve them.
Much like the City’s Office of the Youth Ombudsperson (Tracie Johnson), who has rooted out illegal practices at youth residential placements, this new role would investigate, evaluate and report on complaints about housing services, monitor compliance, and advocate for individuals and families experiencing homelessness. The job description calls the job, “a liaison between clients and City government and facilitates coordination between City government and external stakeholders.” A representative for Gilmore Richardson says New York, Washington, D.C. and San Diego have similar roles in their cities’ governments.
The budget for the role: $500,000, to start.
Proposed Charter Change #2
(emphases below, ours)
Should the Home Rule Charter be amended to increase the minimum amount that must be appropriated for spending on Housing Trust Fund purposes in the City’s operating budget each year?
Statement: The City’s Home Rule Charter sets up the framework of City government. Currently, the Charter requires that a certain amount of City money must be available to spend on programs related to building and maintaining affordable housing. That amount is based on overall City spending.
If you vote “yes” on this ballot question, that means you approve of requiring inclusion of an additional amount for that same purpose. The additional amount would be equal to the amount of money developers pay the City each year for zoning benefits.
A little deeper:
In 2017, Councilmember Maria Quiñones Sánchez introduced an inclusionary zoning bill that sought to mandate that developers with properties of nine or more units set aside 10 percent of those units for affordable housing. The legislation was controversial and eventually tabled. What did make it through — and eventually passed — was a voluntary inclusionary zoning bill, the Mixed Income Housing Bonus.
The Mixed Income Housing Bonus allows residential developers to get more floor area, building height or dwellings for their development — essentially, bigger buildings — in exchange for making some of those housing units affordable.
Should a developer want to make expansions without adding affordable units, the Bonus bill requires them to give the City a “payment in lieu of providing affordable housing,” based on the size of their project. The idea: Incentivize developers to build affordable residences in neighborhoods that might be gentrifying, and fund more affordable housing in Philadelphia.
Only, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Money developers pay through the Mixed Income Housing Bonus don’t go directly to fund affordable housing. Instead, they go into the General Fund (where the rest of our city tax dollars go), which takes 98.5 percent for its own uses and sends just 1.5 percent to the Housing Trust Fund, which goes towards new affordable housing, the preservation and repair of homes and homelessness prevention.
District 3 Councilmember Jamie Gauthier introduced legislation to require The Housing Trust Fund receive 100 percent of all “in lieu of” payments. Gauthier believes this was the intention of the original bill, and that to not give those funds to affordable housing production is to be the opposite of transparent.
The Parker administration, which has its own housing plan, opposes the measure, WHYY reported. Parker’s representative has said a “yes” vote would deplete $5 million annually from the General Fund.
Proposed Charter Change #3
(emphases below, ours)
Shall The Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to provide for the creation of an independent Philadelphia Prison Community Oversight Board and Office of Prison Oversight and to further authorize City Council to determine the composition, powers and duties of the Board and Office?
Statement: The City’s Home Rule Charter sets up the framework of City government. Under the current Charter, an advisory board called the Board of Trustees of Philadelphia Prisons adopts standards and guidelines for the City’s prisons.
If you vote “yes” on this ballot question, that means you approve replacing the Board of Trustees of Philadelphia Prisons with a new City office headed by the Director of Prison Oversight and a board called the Philadelphia Prison Community Oversight Board.
The Office of Prison Oversight would be responsible for reviewing policies, investigating practices, and recommending changes at the Department of Prisons. It would also support the work of the Philadelphia Prison Community Oversight Board. The Board would hold regular public meetings and advise on how to make the City’s prisons operate better and more fairly.
A little deeper:
In 2014, the City established a Board of Trustees (now called the Prison Advisory Board) to preside over operations of the City’s notoriously overcrowded, understaffed prisons on State Road. The commissioner of the City’s Department of Prisons — currently Michael Resnick — appoints members of this board, who tend to be people who’ve operated in or around our prisons, but do not tend to be known to the public — and do not meet in public. (Also, they don’t exactly meet regularly. In 2020, an epically fraught year, the board met zero times.)
This new arrangement proposes to replace the current advisory board with a new prison oversight group, with a full-time director.
Today, while the city’s prison population has declined — it’s currently between 3,400 and 3,500 — the prisons themselves are 54 percent understaffed. In 2024, a federal judge found the City in contempt of not remedying “horrendous” conditions — and ordered $25 million set aside to make things better. Also, the only outside group allowed inside Philadelphia prisons to assess conditions is the Pennsylvania Prison Society, who have to give advance notice to enter.
In 2022, before she resigned to run for mayor, then-City Councilperson Helen Gym began working on legislation to create an independent prison oversight group with transparent methods and stronger investigative powers. Post-Gym, Councilmember Isaiah Thomas has taken up the effort.
Thomas has proposed a prisons oversight office with a director who reports to the City’s Department of Public Safety (currently helmed by Adam Geer) and governed by a nine-person board: four City Council appointees, four mayoral appointees and one City Controller appointee. One member would need to be previously incarcerated in a Philadelphia prison; others could include longtime criminal justice advocates or correctional officers (Local 159 of District Council 33, the corrections officers’ union, have said they’d like a seat at the table). The proposed board would meet monthly, in public (in accordance with the PA Sunshine Act).
In addition to entering Philadelphia’s jails at any time for unannounced spot checks, members of this office would listen to and investigate all manner of complaints — be they potential rights violations, concerns about conditions or healthcare, ideas for improvements — from incarcerated individuals and their families, with an eye to privacy for both corrections officers and complainants.
A representative for Thomas says they’re aware of and working to avoid problems that plague other oversight organizations — namely, the Citizens Police Oversight Commission, whose wrangling with the Fraternal Order of Police has prevented progress — and emphasized Council and Mayor Parker are committed to writing legislation that’s “as bulletproof as possible.” They are also looking to the Allegheny County Jail Oversight Board in Pittsburgh as an example of how to get it right.
As far as cost: The board would require at least 0.045 percent of the total Department of Prisons budget — which currently works out to $1.3 million a year.
Every Voice, Every Vote funds Philadelphia media and community organizations to expand access to civic news and information. The coalition is led by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Lead support for Every Voice, Every Vote in 2024 and 2025 is provided by the William Penn Foundation with additional funding from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Comcast NBC Universal, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, and Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.
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