The “debate” over the reorganization of the city’s three agencies that deal with housing is showing Philadelphia politics at its worst. A struggle over housing agencies is taking place right now. Yet we know very little about the details of the plan the Mayor will propose. And thus there has been no serious discussion of the benefits and costs of that plan or alternatives to it. Councilwoman Blackwell has been fighting the plan but not by offering her own perspective on how our housing agencies should be organized. Instead she has been using the budget to hold the Housing Trust Fund and other housing dollars hostage.
(A report was released by the city and The Reinvestment Fund in the fall that discussed in general terms the need for reorganization and some ideas about how it would take place. It is impressive and well worth reading. But no one outside the Mayor’s Office has seen the details of his proposal. We do know that he is going to propose transferring many of the functions and employees of the RDA (Redevelopment Authority) and PHDC (the Philadelphia Housing Development Authority) and OHCD (the Office of Housing and Community Development) to a new agency under to be run initially by Kevin Hanna, the current Secretary of Housing and Neighborhood Preservation..
Consolidation is Overdue
As one report after another has suggested, greater efficiency in the housing agencies is a good thing for many reasons. It is necessary given reductions in federal housing dollars. And it might finally lead the city to be more friendly to developers who constantly complain about not only the slow process of getting the various agencies to approve projects but, also the great difficulty in finding out who owns developable plots of land, particularly when that land is owned by the city.
But How Should Consolidation Be Carried Out?
Daily News columnist Mark Alan Hughes has been involved in these issues for years and agrees that some consolidation of these agencies is long overdue. But, Hughes also points out that it might make more sense to consolidate the housing agencies not under OHCD but under the Redevelopment Authority because the RDA has “the federal and state powers that matter most.” Others have said that, given the propensity of the Republicans in Harrisburg to take over city authorities, this might not be a good idea.
Until we air these issues out more, how is anyone supposed to evaluate this debate? How can the Mayor’s ideas, or that of anyone else, be tested if they are not subject to open debate?
Labor Issues
There are also labor questions involved in the fight over housing reorganization. Housing . Consolidation is going to cost a number of jobs at the RDA. Until we actually see the Mayor’s plans, we won’t know how many nor will we know what provisions will be made to move RDA employees into other positions. But we don’t know where those other positions will be, how many layoffs there will be and whether employees will be asked to take significant cuts in pay. RDA employees come under a different union contract than those in the OHCD. So charges of “union busting” are being made against the Mayor’s plan.
I am sympathetic to the concerns of city workers. But, again, without the details of the Mayor’s plan, how can anyone know whether the city is being fair to them or not?
What Has Consolidation Taken So Long?
The need for the reorganization of housing agencies is so serious that one might wonder why it took the Mayor so long to address it. In fact, a friend of mine began working on such a plan in the first year of the Street Administration. Moving more quickly, before the reductions in federal dollars would have made certainly made it easier to reduce the number of employees in a kinder and gentler way.
Is An Open Debate Too Much To Expect?
So what is the best way to accomplish housing reorganization? I really have no idea. And, given how much of this struggle has taken place behind closed doors and how many factional disputes are involved in it, I don’t see how anyone could come to a decent judgment about this matter.
Is it really too much to expect that our government have open and informative debates about critical issue like how to do housing development and neighborhood improvement? Is it too much to ask for the Mayor present his plans for examination both inside and outside of Council? Is it too much to ask for Council to insist on such a debate before the Mayor acts, rather just trying to block plans no one has ever seen?