Philadelphia Landlord-Tenant Court processes approximately 20,000 filings each year. Many of those cases are not contested by the tenant and the landlord is given legal authority to take possession of their unit back. However, nearly half of the remaining cases settle with a Judgment by Agreement (JBA) – a process designed to facilitate a resolution of the dispute between the landlord and tenant.
Reinvestment Fund’s research has identified a number of positive and negative attributes to the process and resulting agreements. In this Brief, Reinvestment Fund reviews the learnings from an analysis of JBAs as well as interviews with tenants and landlords (and their respective attorneys) and court observation.
When Philadelphia Landlord-Tenant court reopens after the COVID-19 closure, there will undoubtedly be a backlog of cases that landlords will have been waiting to file. In this moment, when stable housing is more than ever a critical part of public health strategy and landlords need stabilized incomes to provide that housing, it is the time to make significant decisions around court processes and resources to ensure that the eviction process operates in a way that is both fair and efficient.
Beginning in 2014, with support from The William Penn Foundation, Reinvestment Fund conducted an initial analysis of the supply of and demand for child care in Philadelphia to identify areas of the city where targeted investments could help address shortages of high-quality child care.
Having developed the analysis over multiple years, Reinvestment Fund’s childcare analytics provide an annual market snapshot that helps track change over time in the supply of, demand for, and shortages in child care.
Across the country, 17.3 million rural U.S. residents lack equitable access to supermarkets. Reinvestment Fund’s new Rural Food Access Investment Area (RFAIA) analysis, uses 2012-2106 Census data to determine 11.3 million underserved rural residents live in areas that could support new or expanded food retail options. Despite the need for improved access to fresh and healthy foods in rural areas, many analyses of food access—and many investments to improve food access—have focused on urban areas.
The RFAIA analysis identified 1,472 Investment Areas containing 11.3 million rural U.S. residents living in households underserved by supermarkets and that likely have market support for investments in new and existing place-based food retail.
The full results, including the location and other information about individual Investment Areas, are available to the public at no cost on PolicyMap, www.PolicyMap.com.
In 2014, with support from The William Penn Foundation, Reinvestment Fund conducted an initial analysis of the supply of and demand for child care in Philadelphia to identify areas of the city where targeted investments could help address shortages of high-quality child care. Now in its sixth update, Reinvestment Fund’s 2019 childcare analysis provides updated estimates to track the change over time in the supply of, demand for, and shortages in child care.
Each year, the federal government releases a comprehensive database on mortgage lending activities across the US based on activity reported by lending institutions under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). This year, there were a number of changes to the database; some changes from 2015 revisions expanded what we can know about mortgage applications (e.g., the age of borrowers) and other 2017-era changes limited that knowledge (e.g., suppressing applicant credit information). Read the report to see what the data reveals about mortgage lending activity in Philadelphia.
A newly released study by Reinvestment Fund details the volume and geographic distribution of eviction filings in the city of Philadelphia. The study updates our 2017 Evictions in Philadelphia research brief.
With support from the Vanguard Strong Start for Kids Program™, Reinvestment Fund conducted a first-of-its-kind study to estimate the supply of and demand for care specifically for the infant and toddler sector in Philadelphia. Combining a citywide provider survey and focus groups with providers from center- and home-based settings, this study sought to estimate the shortage of infant and toddler care across the city and to learn more about the providers offering infant and toddler care as well as the barriers that prevent other providers from entering the infant and toddler care market.
On April 9 – 10, Reinvestment Fund and the City of Kansas City, Missouri hosted the second Market Value Analysis Community of Practice (COP) convening. The COP brought together representatives from cities and organizations from around the country who use Reinvestment Fund’s Market Value Analysis (MVA) to inform community and economic development activities in their communities. This brief presents a summary of the panels, discussions, and key learnings from the event.
A working paper exploring the Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH) phenomenon. The paper derives learnings from interviews conducted with practitioners, funders, developers and policymakers. Those learnings are also rooted in data on the NOAH stock and the types of markets wherein NOAH seems to be most effectively created. The paper concludes with a thought experiment about how the power of the market could be harnessed to support the production and preservation of NOAH for modest-income households in a way that is both responsive to the realities of the housing market in general as well as to local market conditions.
Throughout its history, the Pennsylvania’s HEMAP has received great acclaim for its design and impact. HEMAP is a program that was designed to provide temporary assistance to families who, through not fault of their own, were seriously delinquent with their home mortgage. Reinvestment Fund released a Research Brief titled “What if Pennsylvania Had Not Had HEMAP?” in 2012. At the time, Pennsylvania, like much of the United States, was climbing out of the throes of one of the most significant recessions in our nation’s history.
This Research Brief follows the impact of the program since that time. This Brief builds on annual counts of applications and loans, and attaches a financial impact to the saving of thousands of mortgage foreclosures that HEMAP prevents in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. With the decline in foreclosures and general improvement in the financial condition of the Commonwealth’s residents and housing and mortgage markets since 2012, HEMAP application and origination volume has dropped off. But with an annual operating cost of under $3 million per year for staff, counseling and program administration, HEMAP continues to have an impact across the Commonwealth that exceeds many times its cost.