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Property damage

Patrick Kerkstra's terrific two-part series focuses on Philadelphia's failure to collect almost half a billion in property taxes.

If you haven't read former Inquirer reporter Patrick Kerkstra's terrific two-part series on Philadelphia's delinquency to collect delinquent taxes, please do so.

The city has failed to collect almost half a billion in back property taxes. As I wrote in Sunday's column,  "When owners don't pay their taxes, the rest of us pay - through weakened neighborhoods, deprived schools, fewer services, and depressed property values - while we endure increased sales and property taxes.

"Those are lousy incentives for attracting the residents and businesses essential to Philadelphia's prosperity."

Readers have been phoning and calling their own horror stories.

This email from reader Mary Galbally was particularly insightful:

"From @ 1986 until 1990 I worked for a non-profit development company in Philadelphia. We focused our development efforts on the Francisville neighborhood -  west of Broad, just north of Spring Garden - a neighborhood full of vacant, abandoned housing.  Our goal was threefold:  to assemble as many vacant properties as possible and do a "scattered-site" housing development,  stabilize blocks, and provide housing with support services to homeless families.

The 1986 tax reform law had just created the low-income housing tax credit - a way for socially minded corporations to make money by doing good - and a way for non-profits housing developers to raise much need equity for construction.  PNB stepped up and was the first bank to do a direct equity investment in a Phila. project. Believe it or not, assembling the financing for the project was the easy part - relatively speaking.

We identified properties for acquisition.  Probably half of the properties were tax delinquent and had to go through the city's sheriff sale process.

Back then the process was just about impossible.  At times I thought it couldn't be any harder in Russia or some corrupt dictatorship.  Here we were working to improve a neighborhood - you would have thought they would be handing us deeds to properties.  At one point I had to go on unemployment because the process took so long (3+years) and we were out of money for salaries. After that project I decided I could no longer develop affordable housing in Phila.

Fast forward - for the past 13+ years I have been developing supportive housing in NYC (but reside in Glenside). It's like day and night. Unlike Phila., NYC land banked thousands of tax delinquent (in rem) properties beginning on the late 1970s.  Non-profit developers could get properties from the city inventory virtually for free - sure the process took about a year, but we raised money for construction during that time.

NYC is just about out of free properties. Non-profits now have to compete with the market to buy sites for development.  The Bronx stopped burning and the transformation in most neighborhoods is amazing.  We cannot afford to buy vacant land/buildings anywhere in Harlem, Brooklyn - forget about Manhattan.  The cost of developing "affordable housing" has increased significantly now that we have to raise funds for acquisition.

What an accomplishment for NYC.  Mayor Bloomberg is now in year six of a 10 year plan to develop/rehab 10,000 units of affordable housing.

All it takes is vision and political will, both in short supply in Phila.

Thanks for your articles.  Where's the outrage?"

--Karen Heller