Question 2

Question 2: 

Should the Home Rule Charter be amended to increase the minimum amount that must be appropriated for spending on Housing Trust Fund purposes in the City’s operating budget each year?

Statement from Philadelphia City Commissioners: The City’s Home Rule Charter sets up the framework of City government, including the rules for how the City can spend money.

Currently, the Charter requires that a certain amount of City money must be available to spend on programs related to building and maintaining affordable housing. That amount is based on overall City spending.

If you vote “yes” on this ballot question, that means you approve of requiring inclusion of an additional amount for that same purpose. The additional amount would be equal to the amount of money developers pay the City each year for zoning benefits.

Seventy Says:

Since 2018, Philadelphia’s Zoning Code has allowed developers to build denser market-rate residential units if they make a “payment in lieu of providing affordable housing” to the City’s Mixed-Income Housing Bonus Program. A portion of that money is earmarked for the Housing Trust Fund, a funding source for building and upgrading affordable housing, and another portion goes into the General Fund. If this ballot question passes, all those payments would go to the Housing Trust Fund. Councilmember Jamie Gauthier (Democrat-Third District), who proposed this ballot question, says that the diversion into the general fund  “means that we’re being cheated out of nearly $36 million in affordable housing benefits – enough for more than 1,800 homes.” The ballot question isn’t tied to Mayor Cherelle Parker’s plan to build or upgrade 30,000 units, but her administration opposes it because “it would tie the mayor’s hands,” Finance Director Rob Dubow told WHYY last year. [Seventy neither endorses nor opposes the measure.]