A week before the May primaries, Council President Clarke and 10th District Councilor Brian O'Neill introduced a little-noticed resolution creating a new Council-controlled Zoning Code Review Commission that will be tasked with making big changes to the reformed zoning code passed fewer than 10 years ago in 2011. The Commission would be staffed entirely by Clarke and O'Neill, two of Council's most retrograde housing thinkers, rather than going through the official process that voters adopted in a 2007 Charter change for these kinds of commissions—the Zoning Code Commission. 

(St. Laurentius | Photo: Jon Geeting)

Last summer we wrote about the ongoing saga of St. Laurentius church, the historic and fast-deteriorating Fishtown church that's locked in an intractable legal battle that only Councilmanic Prerogative can save it from. 

(Stop! | Image: JKRP Architects)

The Kenney administration's Department of Planning and Development has found itself in the absurd position of having to appeal a bad decision by the Kenney administration's Zoning Board of Adjustment —a board that nominally lives within that very Department—to allow a large self-storage facility just steps from the subway on Broad and Spring Garden Street, and across the street from where Eric Blumenthal just announced he's now planning a new high-rise.

(Most of Fishtown's Frankford Ave will be eligible for inclusionary zoning, but not the interior neighborhood | Photo: Jon Geeting)

The year-long affordable housing funding debate in City Council finally wrapped yesterday, at least for the time being, with Council passing a package of bills that together would fund the Housing Trust Fund to the tune of $71-100 million a year, depending on who you ask. 

(Awesometown, an affordable housing project by Post Green Homes and NKCDC)

The Kenney administration and City Council have been working toward finalizing details of a compromise plan to fund affordable housing, as an alternative to the 1% construction tax that passed Council back in June, which the administration opposed. The compromise plan has two main parts—about $50 million from expiring tax abatements, and about $20 million from the newly-revamped zoning bonuses that allow greater density in housing projects that either include some below-market-rate units or make an in-lieu payment into the Housing Trust Fund. 

The saga of the old Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co. building at 4601 Market continues, as Jacob Adelman reports the city has found a tenant who's proposing a new public health campus on the property.

(Surface parking coverage in central Philadelphia | Image: Research Institute for Housing America )

A big new study from data scientist Eric Scharnhorst for the Research Institute for Housing America measures the parking supply in five large U.S. cities and finds that Philadelphia is actually flush with parking, with a parking density about 3.7 times greater than the density of homes.

The Controller's office's report on the 10-year tax abatement has a lot of good insights into the economics of housing in Philadelphia in 2018, and raises some important questions about the different scenarios under discussion for reforming it.

(Image: Kevin Gillen, Lindy Institute at Drexel University)

Philly developers have been building a lot of apartments over the last few years, and the steady pace of construction has some people feeling anxious (or excited in some cases) about when the boom times will end. 

(Photo: Jon Geeting)

Five years ago, Philly created the Registered Community Organization (RCO) system as the official channel for citizens to be involved in the zoning and land development process.