PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Mayor Cherelle Parker has taken another step toward her promise to create 30,000 units of new or renovated housing in the next three years. But she still has no specific plans for reaching her goal.
Parker on Wednesday signed an executive order creating an advisory panel to recommend ways to streamline the building and preservation of high-quality housing. She also announced the appointment of Chicago housing official Angela Brooks to the new position of chief housing and urban development officer.
Parker says she’s actually been working on her housing initiative since before her term started.
“We convened industry experts through our housing transition team, which developed a policy paper to guide the early actions of the administration,” she said.
🏠 MORE: Parker says she's close to announcing plans for 30,000 new units of housing in Philadelphia
Those actions included securing funding and cutting the ribbon on new units through existing city housing programs. This next phase Parker has dubbed Housing Opportunities Made Easy—or HOME. It involves cutting red tape to add units more quickly.
But after more than an hour of speeches, the details were still unclear, as the mayor acknowledged. Parker is giving the advisory panel 30 days to report back.
“We won’t present the formal plan of how the implementation will take place until we have officially gone through that convening,” she said.
“We are bringing the best and the brightest and the experts—the project users, the implementers, the builders. Everyone who is doing the work, they’re going to be at the table.”
Before that, on March 13, she will present her budget to City Council, which will include cost estimates. She says she is relying on city, state and federal money—despite signs that federal housing funds may vanish.
She said she’s not worried.
“I won’t allow an election or any kind of politics to get in the way of us doing our work. We’re going to rely on all of our elected leaders to help us navigate those structures and systems.”
Parker says she was in Washington, D.C., earlier this week to meet with the state’s senators and to recruit from laid-off workers at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.