Will land bank save nuns’ garden?

The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — When Gary Robbins arrived at the New Jerusalem Now recovery center in 1999, struggling with drug addiction, he had to quickly learn a new skill: cutting collard greens.

“They said, if you want to eat dinner tonight — that always sticks with me — you have to go and pick the greens in the garden, because that’s what our dinner is tonight,” Mr. Robbins said as he stood outside that very garden, which he oversees as director of the North Philadelphia site.

Hundreds of recovering users such as Mr. Robbins have gone through New Jerusalem’s program since then, and all have tended to the garden as part of a required two hours of daily community service. It is spread out over a dozen vacant lots near 20th and Norris streets.

The garden lots, however, are mostly owned by city agencies and tax delinquents. With gentrification quickly moving west of Temple University, New Jerusalem — six blocks west of campus — is at risk of losing its sprawling urban oasis. To protect it, the nuns who run the center want to acquire seven parcels owned by five different city agencies. But obtaining ownership means getting assistance from an agency they have found impenetrable: the city’s land bank.

Set up as a one-stop shop in 2014 to bundle and sell delinquent and vacant properties, the agency is still on training wheels, with a backlog of more than 4,000 available properties and what its executive director says is not enough staff. The upshot is that some would-be buyers have been waiting for more than a year without a response.

Sister Margaret McKenna, a Medical Mission sister who founded New Jerusalem in 1989, sought the Public Interest Law Center’s help in 2016 to try to gain ownership of all the garden lots. So far they have successfully obtained deeds to two privately owned delinquent lots. The city lots have been more difficult.

Five of the seven properties are not for sale “at this time,” a land bank spokeswoman said. The two others are part of the backlog the city has not been able sell.