Writer: Sara Suarez
2 min read August 2022 — While many neighborhoods in Philadelphia have been ignored by developers and capital in recent decades, efforts are underway to spark investment within these overlooked communities.
“Philadelphia has a ton of great neighborhoods with great assets, but they have seen very little investment over the last few decades. We wanted to take the approach of creating strong neighborhood ties and putting those communities in a position to have some control over what we were doing and to benefit directly from it,” said Nancy Gephart, partner at SHIFT Capital, with Invest:.
As a neighborhood-focused development firm, SHIFT Capital focuses on creating healthy places to live, play and shop. This targeted investment helps create inclusive, equitable communities that build prosperity and wealth for the existing community while strategically preserving affordability.
SHIFT Capital has developed almost two million square feet of high-quality real estate projects in neighborhoods such as Kensington, Harrowgate, Hunting Park/Tioga and Sharswood. They have brought online hundreds of housing units, spaces for artists, makers, and small business storefronts that help stabilize commercial corridors, as well as high-quality office spaces for nonprofit tenants – all at rates that are affordable and accessible to those living in those communities. Essentially, SHIFT is helping to provide the benefits of gentrification without the displacement of existing residents.
According to a study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Philadelphia was among the Top 20 most gentrified cities before the pandemic. However, studies from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia have found that gentrification is not necessarily harmful for the original residents.
Some benefits of redevelopment and investment in low-income communities include reduced exposure to poverty and rising home values among residents that stay. Children also receive better exposure to higher-opportunity neighborhoods, and some have higher chances of attending college.
For those who move out of the communities, the report states that “movers are not made observably worse off.” Another study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that “vulnerable residents, those with low credit scores and without mortgages, are generally no more likely to move from gentrifying neighborhoods compared with their counterparts in nongentrifying neighborhoods.”
Proponents of gentrification often cite the alternative of disinvestment. A study by The Urban Institute outlined patterns of capital investment in the city and how they decreased in neighborhoods with more than 50% Black residents. The study found that between 2004 and 2016, “predominantly white neighborhoods received more than three times the investments that majority-Black neighborhoods received during this 13-year period.”
For a diverse and dense city like Philadelphia, disinvestment could be devastating. “We have a portfolio of properties in Philly neighborhoods that we are developing and need to continue executing on those deals to ensure they have the neighborhood impact that we’ve been planning for. We are excited to continue growing that platform so that we can further expand the impact that we’re making,” said Gephart.
SHIFT Capital’s projects and contributions include launching several innovative real estate programs, such as the Kensington Corridor Trust, Jumpstart Kensington and the North Broad Real Estate Commission.
For Gephart, the market dynamics in the city are second to none to deploy their strategy. “Philadelphia is still affordable compared to neighboring cities of similar size,” she emphasized. “Even though there has been an increased interest from investors in recent years, there are still redevelopment properties for a low price.”
