ROUNDTABLE LOOKS AT AFFORDABLE HOUSING, TRANSIT IN CHESTER COUNTY
PHOENIXVILLE » Chester County is one of only two in all of Pennsylvania where population is growing.
And while that’s good news on the economy side, it can also make it hard to find affordable housing to take advantage of that economy.
That’s why U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-6th Dist., held a roundtable on affordable housing and transportation on Thursday, Jan. 23, prior to her town hall meeting at the Colonial Theater.
Not all the jobs available in Chester County are top-level jobs, but many of the mid-level and lower-paying jobs are in places where the housing is too expensive for those workers to live, said Houlahan.
“Someone making minimum wage has to work 86 hours a week to afford a modest one-bedroom home in Chester County,” she said. “The strain is very real here.”
Houlahan listed a number of bipartisan bills in Washington she has supported in an effort to ease that strain, including the “aptly named ‘Build More Housing Near Transit Act,’” she said.
These bills indicate the need to “think about these issues holistically, not in a vacuum.”
Phoenixville has done that, said Borough Manager E. Jean Krack.
As the borough has revitalized, it has recognized the necessity of having a mix of housing prices to ensure residents to not get forced out by higher housing prices and rents.
He pointed to a project made possible by the donation of land in the center of town where the old public works building was located for 50 units of affordable housing for senior citizens.
“A lot of our seniors can get priced out of their own homes as the costs accumulate,” he said. The project, which will have rents between $300 and 700 a month, “keeps them in Phoenixville and keeps them in the downtown, which is good because those are the folks who support those businesses in the middle of the day.”
“Phoenixville’s approach has been exemplary and a number
“Someone making minimum wage has to work 86 hours a week to afford a modest one-bedroom home in Chester County, the strain is very real here.” — Chrissy Houlahan, U.S. Rep, 6th Dist.
of other towns in the county are starting to take notice,” said Pat Bokovitz, director of the Chester County Department of Community Development.
Those not lucky enough to land such accommodations stay in town and can become a burden on social services here, said Susan Elks, community planning director for the Chester County Planning Commission.
Others, said Kathryn Evans, co-chairwoman of the Phoenixville Council on Affordable Hous
ing, “are constantly at risk of becoming homeless.”
Phoenixville has homeless people living in tents under some of the bridges in town, said Janice Biros, a Realtor with Fox & Roach and also a co-chairperson of Phoenixville’s affordable housing council.
The need for affordable housing in the county is evidenced by the fact that when the county opened up application for housing vouchers for low-income families, it received 3,000 applications in just
24 hours, said Dale Gravett, executive director of the Housing Authority of the County of Chester.
“And we had to put most of them on a waiting list because we gave priority to the applicants who are homeless,” he said.
At Episcopal House Senior Housing on Center Street, the waiting list for the 46 units there is several years long, said Evans, who is also the executive director of Church Housing Corps which built and operates the facility.
Residents there pay rent that is never more than 30 percent of their income, with most ranging from $150 to $600 per month,
Evans said during a tour of the facility prior to the roundtable
The tour included a stopover at the 540-square-foot apartment of Janice Muller, a retired mechanical contractor who lost her house in the housing crisis of the previous decade.
The facility includes a social worker to help connect residents with the services they need.
“We’re not just sticks and bricks. Our buildings allow seniors to age in place, to age gracefully,” said Evans.
Affordable housing can also be an issue in rural areas, and one way to help may be to change zoning to make it easier to
have an accessory dwelling unit, sometimes called a “mother-daughter,” said Elks.
Helping people stay in their homes before they become homeless should also be a priority, said Bokovitz. One suggestion he offered was ‘tax relief for mobile home parks,” saying such an initiative seemed to be helping in Honey Brook.
“When you can reduce a tax bill by $400 to $1,000,” that’s a big deal,” he said.
“Shared housing” is another option in high-cost areas, said Gravett. “Three individuals in a three-bedroom home, each subsidized separately, can afford
housing even in a competitive market.”
Helping to repair and upgrade infrastructure can also help with affordable housing and preserving open space, said Krack.
“When you can make it easier to have people hook up to water and sewer, they can stay in town and don’t have to build out in a farm field,” he said.,
Another aspect of affordability is transportation.
“We have people working in restaurants here in Phoenixville who cannot afford to live near their work,” said Biros.
“This is a walkable town,” said Evans, “but if you can’t afford to live here, you can’t walk to work here.”
And those who look for less expensive housing nearby discover a transportation gap. “There is a real gap in public transit among the small towns here,” said Evans.
“You can’t get to Phoenixville
from Royersford or Spring City on public transit without going to West Chester
first,” she said. “The disconnect between these little towns is huge.”
The best-known connections between those towns is Route 422, which “carries 100,000 vehicles a day, not terribly successfully in my opinion,” said Houlahan.
And that car-dependent “sprawl growth is continuing on up into Berks County” said Rob Henry, executive director of the Greater Valley Forge Transportation Management Association.
In addition to traffic jams, dependence on automobiles is also reducing air quality.
“Transportation is now the number one source of emissions,” Henry said. “People are commuting well over an hour and it impacts their quality-of-life, their work performance.”
Returning passenger rail to the route 422 corridor is still a work in progress, and
Mayor Peter Urscheler updated Houlahan on the progress being made in his efforts to use deferred tax payments to finance a return of passenger rail service to Phoenixville.
It’s good policy, said Henry, given that the next generation seems less taken with automobiles than their parents. “Less than 50 percent of millenials have a driver’s license and we should take those preferences into account when we make transportation improvements.”
“You can’t get to Phoenixville from Royersford or Spring City on public transit without going to West Chester first.” — Kathryn Evans, co-chair, Phoenixville Affordable Housing Council
“Three individuals in a three-bedroom home, each subsidized separately, can afford housing even in a competitive market.” — Dale Gravett, Housing Authority of the County of Chester