West Kensington’s community garden is a refuge. Advocates are trying to give all Philly neighborhoods similar spaces.
"The community should have a say in what happens to their land, to their neighborhoods," said Ryan Gittler Muñiz, a volunteer at the César Andreu Iglesias Garden.
The lot next door was a labor of love for James Temple.
He watched the tax-delinquent, abandoned building next to his North Philadelphia home dilapidate, and eventually get demolished. He cleared the debris from the lot, tilled the soil, and drilled a hole through the wall of his home to run a pipe for a faucet in the lot. Then he started growing tomatoes and potatoes, hosting barbecues and cookouts.
The empty lot next door became a lush green space in the middle of miles of concrete that Temple tended to for 15 years: a place to connect with nature and land, a step toward battling food apartheid and a space for community to gather.
But when he received a letter from the city six months ago stating that they were going to sell the lot at a Sheriff sale, Temple pulled the decade-long fruits of his labor out of the lot, leaving it empty once again.
Temple’s lot is one of 2,100 remaining across the city that have U.S. Bank liens on them, according to advocates who have canvassed the city. Owned by the private bank, rather than the city, these lots are at risk of being sold at Sheriff sales and turned over to developers — which community members say is detrimental to the quality of life of lower-income communities of color by depriving them of green space and accelerating gentrification.
Last week, members of West Kensington’s César Andreu Iglesias Garden sent a letter to Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sansom, the firm facilitating the Sheriff sales of lien-encumbered lots. The letter demanded the end of selling lots at Sheriff sales. The firm did not immediately respond to The Inquirer’s request for comment.
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“For people who have been privileged enough, it’s hard to imagine what a standard of life other people might be claiming or needing,” said César Viveros, a Mexican muralist who co-founded the Iglesias Garden. “You go to Fairmount Park, you go to Spring Garden, and you see these nice neighborhoods where people still have beautiful, green spaces. But in North Philly, you don’t have that.”
In a pocket of West Kensington, Viveros and other community members have created that space for themselves out of empty lots created after condemned or tax-delinquent rowhouses were demolished over a decade ago. There, they grow their own vegetables such as corn, slow-cook barbacoa underground, and throw festivals. It’s become a space for the neighborhood to find reprieve in nature, connect to their Latino traditions and heritage, and build relationships with one another.
“It’s so obvious that we need that,” Viveros said. “Let’s say [developers] take over every single lot, and they build, what do you have? You have cars speeding up, kids cannot play in the streets any longer. And there are no courtyards, and there are no gardens.”
But selling the land to developers, who in turn build modern homes that sell for well over $400,000, not only takes green spaces away from the community — it can take the neighborhood away from them.
The empty lots next to Michelle Gueco’s childhood home in West Kensington are filled with fond memories. She grew up with those lots — swinging on the swing set her mother got (the swings were broken at neighboring parks), digging through the dirt with her hands, tasting the fresh fruit and herbs her mom gardened. Her mom threw her birthday parties in the side yard growing up, and recently, Gueco threw a birthday party for her own son’s fifth birthday in that lot.
Now, Gueco has been trying to find a place to buy, or even rent, close to her mom’s home. A single mom herself, Gueco wants to be close to her mother for the family support. But as newer developments have started creeping into the neighborhood, Gueco hasn’t found anything she’s been able to afford.
“Everything that’s being built is not realistically affordable for longtime residents of the neighborhood like me,” she said.
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Instead of selling lots to developers, community advocates are urging the city to buy back the remaining U.S. Bank liened-lots and funnel them to the Philadelphia Land Bank, so that community members can afford to buy the land they’ve been taking care of for years.
Kevin Lessard, city spokesperson, said the Mayor’s administration is working with City Council and U.S. Bank to resolve issues regarding the liens.
“At the same time, the City has limited resources and dedicating many millions of dollars to this would impact our ability to fund other priority projects, and it would need to be considered within the context of other City Council and Administration priorities,” he wrote in an email.
Advocates estimate the remaining lots would cost the city a total of $10 million, while Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sansom currently collects around $8 million from the city annually for tax collection contracts.
“[A developer] is someone who doesn’t have the community’s interest at heart,” said Ryan Gittler Muñiz, a volunteer at the Iglesias Garden. “The community should have a say in what happens to their land, to their neighborhoods.”
Acknowledgment
The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of more than 20 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the city’s push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at brokeinphilly.org.