Imagine a Philadelphia where a nurse can afford to live near the hospital where she works. Where a young family can put down roots in the neighborhood they chose, not the one they settled for. Where a longtime resident doesn’t have to choose between staying and getting by.
That city is possible. We’re not there yet. But we know what it takes to get there — and it starts with being honest about what we actually have.
Philadelphia has real momentum in life sciences. Eli Lilly opened Gateway Labs in Center City last year, bringing its global biotech incubator model here; Legend Biotech opened a cell therapy research center in the same building. This year, Lilly announced a $3.5 billion manufacturing facility in the Lehigh Valley — the largest life sciences investment in Commonwealth history, chosen from more than 300 competing sites.
Healthcare employs more than 140,000 Philadelphians and has grown 44 percent over fifteen years. Financial services have anchored this city since before it was a country. Manufacturing, logistics, and the port employ working Philadelphians across the income spectrum. The creative economy, the hospitality sector, the small business corridors running through every neighborhood. They are the city.
Arts and entertainment, hospitality, civic organizations, and personal services are our modern-day economic drivers and job creators. The people who build things, serve things, care for people, and keep neighborhoods alive have been resilient and growing through the years.
The question has never been which single industry will save Philadelphia — it’s whether we’re willing to build the conditions for all of them, and all of the people who work in them, to stay and grow here simultaneously.
A holistic vision for a city requires building at all price points, in all kinds of neighborhoods, for all Philadelphians. Not because growth is good for its own sake, but because when we stop building, demand doesn’t disappear. It compresses — and the people with the least flexibility pay the price.
It requires public investment where the market won’t go — layered financing, tax credits, rental assistance, long-term affordability commitments for residents in the deepest need. Supply alone doesn’t solve that. Intentional, sustained public investment does.
Bring the wage tax below 3 percent — a floor, not a ceiling. Move the office-to-residential abatement, as recommended. And direct a meaningful portion of the state’s proposed innovation fund to Philadelphia specifically — to retain the companies, the capital, and the talent we keep growing here and losing elsewhere.
It also requires the willingness to hold the whole picture at once. To design policy that accounts for the full ecosystem — not just the projects that pencil out easily, not just the people who are loudest in the room, but everyone whose ability to stay, contribute, and thrive depends on getting this right.
When workers can’t afford to live near their jobs, employers can’t hire. When residents get priced out, neighborhood businesses lose their customers. When the people who build and staff and serve this city can’t afford to live in it, we all pay the cost — just not on a line item anyone can point to.
The tools already exist. We just haven’t fired them together.
The City commissioned a Tax Reform Commission which showed that Philadelphia’s wage tax is the highest in the nation — a documented barrier to attracting and retaining workers across every sector. The commission recommended bringing it below 3 percent. That recommendation is sitting on a shelf.
The Tax Reform Commission also recommended a 20-year abatement for office-to-residential conversions. More than 2 million square feet of Center City office space is already being converted to housing. The abatement accelerates the transformation of vacant buildings into homes for the workforce this city already has and is actively trying to keep.
The Skills Initiative has been one of the highest-performing workforce intermediaries in the country since 2011 — because it starts from the simple truth: The workforce is already here. Ready, willing, and talented. It builds direct pipelines between Philadelphians seeking opportunity and employers seeking talent. The model works, it needs to be scaled to meet the moment.
None of this is new. None of it requires invention. It requires will.
The nurse, the construction worker, the small business owner — they are the engine. The healthcare system doesn’t run without the nurse who can afford to live here. The neighborhood doesn’t hold together without the small business owner who stayed. The office building doesn’t become housing without the construction worker who built it. Growth and equity aren’t opposing forces. They’re the same goal, approached with honesty about what each requires.
Bring the wage tax below 3 percent — a floor, not a ceiling. Move the office-to-residential abatement, as recommended. And direct a meaningful portion of the state’s proposed innovation fund to Philadelphia specifically — to retain the companies, the capital, and the talent we keep growing here and losing elsewhere.
The roadmap is written. The tools exist. We just need the will to use them all — at once, for everyone, to grow well together.
Natalie Shieh is founder of New Anthem Solutions, a leadership and strategy advisory practice serving civic and urban leaders, and Government Affairs Committee chair for Commercial Real Estate Development Association, NAIOP Philadelphia. Sarah Maginnis is Executive Director of NAIOP Philadelphia.
The Citizen welcomes guest commentary from community members who represent that it is their own work and their own opinion based on true facts that they know firsthand.
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