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Philadelphia

As one of the largest cities in colonial America, Philadelphia's homelessness issues date back to the 1700s. The “Lower Sort”: Philadelphia's Laboring People, 1750–1800, a study of the time done by Billy Smith, notes: “Laboring people often lived a handto-mouth existence, struggling to maximize their family income and to cut the cost of basic necessities” (quoted in Kusmer 2002, 15). Historian Kenneth Kusmer adds, “Those unable to make ends meet might find themselves sleeping in back alleys and begging on the street” (Kusmer 2002, 15).

In the 1800s, “soup societies” were important providers of food for people in poverty. For example, the Western Soup Society of Philadelphia, founded in 1837, served 15,000 quarts of soup to more than a thousand residents as well as transients in its first winter of operation. The society began a school lunch program for fifty African-American students in 1849 and spent the then-considerable sum of $5,300 in 1860 to build a “soup house.” (Indeed, by 1862, there were so many “soup societies” in Philadelphia that they needed to hold a meeting to draw up geographic boundaries for their services.) By 1870, the Western Soup Society had expanded to provide fuel, clothing, and free night classes.

Philadelphia's skid row developed in the 1880s in the wards north of Market Street between Twelfth Street and the Delaware River, adjacent to the city's red light district and near the city's furnished-room section. It remained as skid row until its demolition in the 1970s.

Origins and Nature of Contemporary Homelessness in Philadelphia

In Our Way Home: A Blueprint to End Homelessness in Philadelphia, the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition (GPUAC) notes:

Philadelphia was once a city of neighborhood-based manufacturing jobs with good wages that supported families in modest homes in stable neighborhoods. Over the course of the past four decades, the city lost between 175,000 and 250,000 jobs. This economic “disinvestment” is at the roots of massive urban decay…. It is no surprise that poverty is most concentrated in those neighborhoods that have suffered from the most dramatic disinvestments, or that the vast majority of Philadelphia's homeless came from particularly blighted and unstable neighborhoods. (1998, 33)

As with other major urban areas, Philadelphia was hard hit by the loss of affordable housing between the 1970s and 1990s. The GPUAC notes that 52 percent of the city's 230,000 renters are unable to afford a two bedroom apartment, and 43 percent cannot pay the rent on a one-bedroom apartment. Indeed, according to the GPUAC, minimum-wage workers need to work 103 hours a week to afford an unsubsidized, two-bedroom unit. Long lists for subsidized housing mean that some families wait up to three years for such apartments.

Again echoing the problems faced by other metropolitan areas, deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people in 1960s and 1970s—in tandem with the decline of the single-room occupancy (SRO) hotel—added to the homeless population. A rising epidemic of drug abuse further increased the number of homeless people. (Approximately 35 to 40 percent of Philadelphia's homeless adults have drug problems.)

Service Providers

Through the years, agencies in Philadelphia have moved from providing emergency food and shelter to a continuum of care (CoC) model that offers a variety of support services and transitional housing with the ultimate goal of employment and permanent housing. For example, in addition to operating shelters and feed programs, the nonprofit People's Emergency Center has converted vacant houses into affordable homes that can be purchased by homeless families. Its Families First facility, opened in 2002, offers employment services, child care, and health care. Project H.O.M.E., one of Philadelphia's oldest and largest service providers (and directed by one of the city's foremost advocates for the homeless, Sister Mary Scullion), also bases its services on a CoC model. Project H.O.M.E.'s continuum starts with outreach to people living on the streets, moving them into entry-level and transitional supportive housing with access to health care, case management, and mental health and addiction recovery services. The agency's permanent supportive housing in the form of single-room occupancy residences enables people to move into more independent living arrangements.

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