UC Townhomes residents still face displacement

With landlords in Philadelphia having a history of being resistant to taking on Section 8 tenants, many residents of the University City Townhomes are fearful that they won’t have anywhere to go as the site faces demolition.

“The universities and the city have been pushing us out of our neighborhoods for decades,” longtime resident Darlene Foreman said recently.

Foreman and resident Krystal Young said that vouchers given to them to cover alternative affordable housing have not been useful.

Built in 1983, the University City Townhomes were constructed with the goal of providing affordable housing in a section of West Philadelphia reshaped by racist urban renewal practices. Known as the Black Bottom, the city demolished hundreds of neighborhood homes there in the late 1960s and early 1970s to make way for more campus space and a science and technology hub — what today is known as the University City Science Center.

Now the site may be demolished after an affordable housing contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was not renewed, displacing mostly Black residents. This comes as Philadelphia continues to contend with an affordable housing crisis that’s left low-income residents who rely on subsidized housing particularly vulnerable.

The townhomes have offered residents an affordable, safe place to live, an increasingly rare combination in a city desperate to slow a surge in homicides and shootings.

The townhomes are also walking distance from Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and other doctors’ offices. The 40th Street stop along the Market-Frankford El is also nearby.

Townhome residents have until Sept. 7 to move. Their leases were originally set to expire July 8, but the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development agreed to extend IBID’s contract for two months, largely because many residents had not received housing vouchers needed to secure a new place.