Philadelphia has a ‘diverse’ population — and I’ve come to despise the word ‘diverse’ — as a whole, but, as The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, is one of our most internally segregated large cities.
- The eight-county region’s Black-white residential segregation is the fourth highest among the 20 biggest metropolitan areas, as defined by the Census Bureau. The region is the sixth-most segregated between Hispanic and white residents.
- Among the 30 biggest cities, Philadelphia is second only to Chicago in its level of residential segregation between Black and white residents, according to data from Brown University. Between Hispanic and white residents, it’s the sixth-most segregated.
- Considering every U.S. county that has at least 10,000 people and a Black population of at least 5%, Philadelphia is more segregated than 94% of them.
- While residential segregation between Black and white residents has declined nationwide over the last several decades, it’s happened much slower in Philadelphia. The city’s position near the top of rankings of segregated places has stayed almost the same since 1980
The newspaper’s Editorial Board were aghast that the internal segregation of the City of Brotherly Love has meant that black and Hispanic residents feel far less safe than white residents. However, sometimes economic stories address the issue in ways that the opinion writers don’t notice:
Nearly half of Philly’s new homes were in and around Center City last year
Center City has been Philly’s fastest growing residential area for 20 years. Center City District’s annual housing report shows that most homes built in 2022 were constructed in and around downtown.
by Michaelle Bond | Monday, February 27, 2023
More than 5,800 new housing units were completed last year in Philadelphia. Nearly half were built in greater Center City.
That’s according to an annual housing report released Monday by the Center City District, a business improvement organization. The district defines greater Center City as Girard Avenue to Tasker Street and between the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers.
In and around Center City has been the fastest growing residential region in Philadelphia for two decades. More than 200,000 people lived in greater Center City in 2020. The area initially took a hit early in the pandemic, but the population is up a bit.
And, two paragraphs down comes the money line:
Center City can be unaffordable for households at the lower end of the income scale, which needs to be addressed, but “the growth of market-rate housing in the downtown is a sign of health and vitality, and it’s a job driver for the city as a whole,” (Paul Levy, president and chief executive officer of the Center City District) said.
“(C)an be unaffordable,” huh? Writer Michaelle Bond noted that 48% of new housing units were in greater Center City, which comprises only 6% of the land area in Philly, and expanding it a bit with “with adjacent zip codes in North and South Philly, this section is 16% of the city but had 75% of its new housing units in 2022.” Yup! When the new housing units are in high-rise apartment and condominium units, you can get a lot of units on a relatively small patch of land.
Sales photo from Arthaus Condominiums website. Click to enlarge.
In the core of Center City, developers completed 728 housing units in nine properties, led by the Riverwalk North apartments, the One Cathedral Square apartments, and the Arthaus condos.
I screen captured a sales photo from Arthaus Condominiums, but the other two listed sites have similar luxury status and amenities.
The median price of a home sold in the core of Center City dropped in 2020 and 2021. Prices rose last year, but the median price of $825,000 was still 13% below where it was in 2019.
The median condominium sales price in the core of Center City last year was $371,500, 2% above the 2019 level. The condo market in greater Center City trailed the regional market in late 2021 and into 2022, but the gap narrowed in the second half of 2022.
The article author drew no conclusions in her piece, but I will: with whites being generally more wealthy than blacks or Hispanics, she’s telling us that population shifts in Philly are being skewed more toward potential white residents, while the city’s population, as a whole, has been estimated by the Census Bureau to have decreased, from the 2020 census figure of 1,603,797 to 1,576,251 in July of 2021. That 2021 number may have been artificially skewed by the COVID-19 panicdemic — not a typo; I spelled it that way because so many people panicked! — while there’s far less housing opportunity in the more working-class neighborhoods.
Let’s face it: the internal segregation in Philly is only going to increase.
Housing “segregation” only proves what I’ve been saying, people like to be around their own kind. It’s human nature. And no person with brains will build a half million + condo in a ghetto or barrio just to watch its value disintegrate.
Another thing I gleaned from this trend is that, more likely than not, the people who purchase and inhabit these “homes” are affluent, professional couples with no children. I can only rely on one anecdotal piece of support for this, but I have a friend who is 1) a lawyer, who 2) is married to a former lawyer who 3) was herself from a wealthy family and who 4) retired from the practice of law to pursue a clothing business she started on the side, which 5) enabled said couple to travel the world and deduct the expense, as well as to 6) purchase a second home in a very upscale ski town, where they 7) spend half the year (when not traveling). They don’t own a vehicle of any sort, not needing one to transport their non-existent offspring around, or shop for family groceries, etc. I submit this is a profile that would generally describe all the inhabitants of those $800,000.00 “homes” and $400,000.00 condos in Center City. Of course, the only negros or latinos they encounter are the ones who carry their luggage, chauffeur them around, clean their condo, etc. So, although they may live in Center City, their contact with the dusky denizens of the area is rather minimal. And they like it that way, for obvious reasons.
Following the links the Inquirer reporter gave us, I found advertised studios and one-and-two bedroom apartments and condominiums. While there certainly are families with children who make do with two-bedroom residences, people in those price ranges who have children are less likely to be satisfied with fewer than three bedrooms.
How many of these editorial board members live in an area populated by black majorities?
I think we all know the answer and the reasons. Bottom drawling hipocrites.