Amazon.com Inc. has signed a lease for one of its new grocery stores in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia, according to sources familiar with the deal tell the Philadelphia Business Journal. The online retailer has taken 40,000 square feet of 60,000 square feet that is proposed for a new apartment complex at 5th and Spring Garden streets, the sources… Philadelphia Sep 10, 2020
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Richard Allen residents have been pushing for the change for years.
Members of the Richard Allen, Penn Town and Harrison housing communities held a Put the Guns Down peace walk through their neighborhood in October 2020 Kimberly Paynter / WHYY Feb. 15, 2021, 6:30 a.m. Love Philly? Sign up for the free Billy Penn email newsletter to get everything you need to know about Philadelphia, every day.
After neighbors advocated for 24-hour police presence at an especially violent intersection in North Philly’s Poplar neighborhood, officials appear to have heeded the call.
The Philadelphia Police Department and Philadelphia Housing Authority officers have started coordinating to more thoroughly cover the area around 10th and Brown, police and PHA confirmed to Billy Penn.
A version of this article was first published in Next City.
Last summer, the House of Representatives passed the Moving Forward Act, a $1.5 trillion plan to upgrade the national infrastructure and combat climate change by reducing demand for fossil fuels. The bill incorporated a handful of amendments related to housing and homelessness offered by a group of Congressional Democrats.
One of those amendments, introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), would have repealed the Faircloth Amendment, a 1990s-era rule that prevents the expansion of public housing in the United States. Repealing the amendment would remove a legal obstacle to a series of ambitioushousingplans that progressives have rallied behind in the last few years, which include calls to repair and expand existing public housing and build new social housing in American cities.
The Senate never took up the Moving Forward Act. But housing advocates continue to focus on repealing the Faircloth Amendment. The New York Times recently ran an op-ed labeling a repeal of the rule as the “first step to addressing the country’s housing affordability problem.” On the other side, Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution, recently argued that “focusing debate on the Faircloth Amendment is a red herring a political distraction from more tangible obstacles to low-cost housing.”
Here’s a look at the basics.
What is the Faircloth Amendment?
The Faircloth Amendment was a provision of the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998. It amended the Housing Act of 1937, which authorized federal financial assistance to help states and housing authorities provide housing for low-income people. The amendment says, “a public housing agency may not use any of the amounts allocated for the agency from