Before it was a $2 billion plan, Mayor Cherelle Parker’s housing strategy was a clever diversion.

In the leadup to the 2023 mayoral primary, during a Fox29 candidates’ forum, Parker was asked about her stance on the Sixers’ controversial downtown arena proposal. Her response was a virtual non-answer — she vowed to evaluate all the data and speak with all the impacted parties before coming to a conclusion — and it did not create headlines. Instead, it was the content of what Parker said before that, while back-pedaling into her answer, which got people’s attention.

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“I believe that the building trades endorsed Cherelle Parker because they know I have a plan to grow Philadelphia’s economy. It includes the building of 30,000 affordable units of housing that includes single-family dwellings and mixed use,” Parker said during the televised debate.

Some housing advocates immediately praised Parker for not only the ambition of her vision, but the simplicity of its measuring stick. She continued to elevate a big, round number — 30,000 affordable units — while stumping throughout the rest of the year, en route to winning the mayoral election.

And then, sometime in 2024, Parker’s rhetoric began to shift in two major ways. First, the newly sworn-in mayor started speaking about “Mission 30,000” (later renamed Home Opportunities Made Easy or H.O.M.E.) as a program that would create housing for all income levels, beyond the threshold of affordable housing — which, in Philly, are units for families making less than $53,750 in household income (assuming a family of three). Second, rather than exclusively building apartments and homes, Parker began to promote rehabilitation and preservation programs as core pillars of reaching the overall goal.

By the time Parker finally presented details to City Council, earlier this year, the housing plan seemed very much like a watered down version of what was originally promised.

Largely, that’s because the Parker administration dramatically shrunk its targets for how much new housing it would build. No longer discussing tens of thousands of new units, Parker now seeks to build — and got Council’s approval for — just 5,700 units of affordable housing citywide, plus another 7,500 dwellings for middle-income earners (families making up to $129,000 in household income). The initiative will instead repair far more existing homes than building anew.

“To build and preserve 30,000 units of housing” is the mayor’s new, more ethereal, rallying cry.

Despite this, the mayor insists that she’s not watering down anything; rather, her administration says, the plan evolved to reflect a more studied approach to the housing crisis. At the center of those changes is a growing belief within the administration that focusing strictly on solutions for low-income earners would not do enough to deescalate the housing crisis in Philly.

“We relied on a data-driven process that considered existing conditions and market trends,” says Jamila Davis, public relations supervisor for the City’s Department of Planning and Development, in a written statement. “The H.O.M.E plan is here to help every resident at their stage of housing need.”

In other words, the administration suggests that the critics have it backwards: H.O.M.E. is actually tracking to be more impactful, not less, now that it is actual policy not campaign promise. But the shift also begs important questions: What problems is H.O.M.E. really trying to solve? And will it solve them?

A grab bag of policies

At this point, the mayor’s housing plan is, for better or worse, a grab bag of policies and programs. Parker has outlined investments into 55 different housing strategies — some brand new programs, some existing ones put “on steroids” — using the $800 million that the City is borrowing to finance the program. (Often referred to as a $2 billion investment, H.O.M.E. is counting on the City to contribute $1 billion worth of public land and federal dollars to account for the rest.)

The initiative will fund everything from facade improvements to low-interest mortgages to legal counsel for renters. At the same time, the breadth of the plan is a far cry from its original, straightforward goal.

“It would be easier if the mayor’s plan was either awesome or sucked, because my answer would be short,” says Kevin Gillen, an economist with Drexel University. “You know the phrase Three Cheers for something? I would say two cheers for the mayor’s program.”

One of the things that Gillen applauds, in fact, is the diversity of instruments that Parker is utilizing. “It’s an intelligent mix of homeownership, home repair, and home rentership programs,” Gillen says. “For too many years, the debate over affordability has been dominated by new housing.”

Even as a candidate, Parker left the door open to strategies beyond new construction. In fact, during the Fox29 event when Parker originally pledged the idea for a transformative housing strategy, she suggested as much.

No longer discussing tens of thousands of new units, Parker now seeks to build — and got Council’s approval for — just 5,700 units of affordable housing citywide, plus another 7,500 dwellings for middle-income earners.

“We talk about building new,” she said. “We don’t talk [enough] about the need to repair existing [homes]. We need to repair our affordable homes, because the most affordable one is the home you live in.”

In that sense, the plan reflects an understanding of some of the unique conditions in Philly. In many parts of the city, the housing supply is not hampered by a lack of available units, but rather the quality of those units. Sometimes, rental units are unaffordable not due to rent but because of the high utility bills from a lack of weatherization. Sometimes, homeowners can’t sell because of, say, a broken roof that they simultaneously can’t afford to fix. Properties get stuck in limbo: owners unwilling to sell for pennies on the dollar; buyers without enough spending power to renovate, on top of the sticker price.

These conditions are a big reason why the average home price in Philly has grown at a sluggish pace in the past few years — even while home prices skyrocketed nationwide. Zillow is forecasting the average house price in the region to barely budge, if not go down, in the next year.

“We don’t have an unaffordability crisis in the traditional sense,” says Gillen. “We have a poverty problem. And it’s an important distinction, because the policies that are designed to address poverty are very different from the ones designed to address housing unaffordability.”

Housing as an economic engine

Mayor Parker made it clear from the jump that she viewed her housing initiative as more than a path to keeping people housed. Her very first comments invoked economic growth in the same breath as the citywide need for housing.

So, what kind of economic prosperity are we talking about here? After all, rehabbing a roof might prevent a low-income homeowner from falling into poverty or even homelessness. But how much will it truly change their long-term financial picture? Remember: H.O.M.E. will create not even 5,000 new homes, and that’s assuming the mayor’s projections actually pan out. In a city with 20 percent poverty, initiatives that help residents build generational wealth have to be a priority, and home ownership in America, many argue, is still the best way to do that.

On the other side of the equation, H.O.M.E. could provide a boost to developers and landlords, who have seen profits dwindle, especially on affordable housing projects. In the two years since Parker issued her campaign pledge, federal policies have wreaked havoc on the construction sector — particularly tariffs, which have made it vastly more expensive to build new homes and cut into the profits of developers. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, Drexel’s Gillen reported that the cost of building materials has gone up 24 percent — after those same costs rose at twice the rate of inflation over the previous four years.

Not only is Parker funneling millions of dollars into programs that will be utilized by builders and landlords, the mayor is throwing some serious political capital behind zoning reform. The end result should be more revenue in the short-term, along with more projects in the future. But again, you have to ask, is that a path to citywide economic growth?

“We don’t have an unaffordability crisis in the traditional sense. We have a poverty problem. The policies that are designed to address poverty are very different from the ones designed to address housing unaffordability.”  — Kevin Gillen

On the other hand, the pivot to preservation and rehabilitation offers the upside of reaching a potentially greater quantity of properties. While a $2 billion budget looks like a blank check to the average person, it’s nowhere near enough to accomplish the original housing goal — averaging out to a mere $66,666 per unit. “It doesn’t even stretch credibility,” says Gillen. “If all the 30,000 units were new construction, it’s just not credible.”

Preservation and rehabilitation are important for another reason beyond cost-effectiveness: they help fight inertia, especially in the rental market. “Thousands of affordable housing units are regularly demolished because they’re obsolete and the capital cost involved in maintaining them is too high,” says Kelvin Jeremiah, CEO of the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA). When that happens, he adds, “they never come back.”

In roughly the decade before Jeremiah’s arrival at PHA, the public housing stock in Philly shrunk by about one-third, or 7,000 units. Many of those properties lost their affordability after being sold and converted into market-rate apartments. And while some of the losses were due to the welcome change of phasing out high-rise apartments, a significant amount was the result of deterioration from the lack of investment in the properties.

Now, Jeremiah says, much of what remains in the PHA portfolio will become endangered in the coming years — unless something is done.

“If we only subscribe to ‘build new’ and we don’t preserve what we have, there will not be a substantial net increase,” says Jeremiah. “If we don’t preserve the expiring units, they will become market rate in most cases, undermining long-term housing affordability in the city.”

Creative accounting to reach Parker’s goals?

What qualifies as the preservation of an affordable home? Or any home for that matter?

In the context of H.O.M.E., we have no way to tell what counts — at least not yet. While the mayor has launched a webpage to track the progress of her housing goals, the data only goes so far. For example, of the 1,701 housing units currently “under construction,” according to the City, 1,207 are listed as “preservation.” What’s not clear from the data is the scale of each project. There’s a lack of delineation between, say, a plumbing overhaul of a vacant apartment building, and upgrading a boiler in a single-family home. While the latter might “preserve” the affordability and livability of the property for the existing tenants, it’s not creating new housing.

They represent a very different sort of investment for the purposes of public accountability.

When it comes to transparency, there’s also the fact that so many H.O.M.E. dollars are being funneled into existing programs — such as the Rental Improvement Fund, which provides grants to small landlords for repairs and is maintained by the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation. If a small landlord receives a $10,000 grant from the Rental Improvement Fund next year, will we know how much of that grant is attributable to the mayor’s program versus what’s already in place? Will it even be possible to ascertain that from the data?

“Thousands of affordable housing units are regularly demolished because they’re obsolete and the capital cost involved in maintaining them is too high.” When that happens, “they never come back.” — PHA’s Kelvin Jeremiah

The blurriness of the data inevitably calls into question whether H.O.M.E. is benefitting from a bit of creative accounting. You might recall that Parker first introduced her housing proposal in February 2025 and got approval from City Council in June. And yet it hasn’t stopped the mayor from counting hundreds of units that were built or rehabbed before the legislation formerly existed. Now, there’s even talk of new dorms at local universities counting towards the housing production for H.O.M.E., which, if true, would be an inventive stretch of political spin.

Some of the units getting tallied for H.O.M.E. were underway prior to the mayor’s inauguration. According to the administration, roughly 1,500 units (some 5 percent of the overall benchmark) were built or rehabbed during “Phase I” of H.O.M.E. — which began in December 2023, when Parker was the mayor-elect. What’s more is that all of the “Phase I” projects belong to the portfolio of the Philadelphia Housing Authority. While Jeremiah says that the City made financial and strategic investments into these projects, tying them to H.O.M.E., specifically, could be labeled as a stretch.

Who receives the proper credit in the end is less important than who benefits, says Jeremiah. After all, the point of H.O.M.E. is ultimately not to simply build or preserve housing, but to stabilize neighborhoods, provide wealth-building opportunities for homeowners, and end a cycle of poverty for families.

“This is part of an overarching strategy to really build generational wealth, by having some level of investment in properties that are owned by low-income individuals who otherwise without the city’s help, without PHA’s help, would not be able to maintain the homes in communities where they live,” says Jeremiah.

MORE COVERAGE OF THE HOUSING PLAN FROM THE CITIZEN