At their General Membership Meeting on June 27, the Green Party of Philadelphia decided by consensus to join the Philadelphia Rent Control Coalition. The coalition consists of a dozen community organizations which plan to demand rent control legislation from Philadelphia City Council.

Green Party of Philadelphia
www.gpop.org/

FOR RELEASE
Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Media Contact, Chris Robinson
[email protected]

The goal of the Rent Control Coalition is “to keep affordable housing affordable and to prevent forced displacement caused by unreasonable rent increases.” The Green Party’s platform includes the “right to enact local rent control laws, including vacancy control/recontrol . . . . Provide for publicly elected rent control/stabilization boards for communities with local rent control laws,” and “preserve and increase affordable housing supply.”

"The idea of rent control is gaining more popularity, even before the COVID-19 pandemic made worse this country's affordable housing crisis," said long-time Green Party and Philadelphia Tenant's Union member, Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture (Cedar Park). "We are seeing more powerful, creative ways of addressing the housing crisis. Rent control is one and, additionally, there are more tenants unions being started. Access to public land to form community gardens is demanded to address food scarcity and public demands for repairs to long-abandoned buildings, etc., all serve to raise the collective voices of tenants.  Lastly, we must also face the fact of violent and/or illegal evictions in too many incidents across this country. If we say, 'housing is a human right,' then all such landlords must be held accountable for their criminal actions."  

The Green Party membership also appointed by consensus Alex Casper (Francisville) to be their liaison to the Rent Control Coalition, Casper said: “The City of Philadelphia currently has a 20-year waitlist for public housing access. We are one of the fastest inflating housing markets. I have been homeless in this city twice, and know from experience how hard it is to afford and access a home. We have 250,000 residents identifying as having a disability on the census who are not sure where they will be able to afford to live in the next year because the housing-choice voucher waitlist is closed. We have 300 people a year dying while homeless in Philadelphia, the second most of any community in the U.S. We know housing first and rent control initiatives will lead to participation in programs leading to recovery from addiction, vocational rehabilitation to continue working with a disability, and reduce violence and suicide. We must address this deadly crisis as a party, and I am proud to represent the Green Party of Philadelphia in their support for affordable and accessible housing.”

Casper continued, “I will stand for initiatives that increase the public housing supply, create a fund that continuously builds new public housing units, increase landlord participation in the housing choice voucher program, set a ceiling on rent increasing, and get folks who are homeless into permanent homes with the social support systems they need to rehabilitate and seek job training. We need to make a city which those who grew up here can afford to live in. We can't let America's second most densely populated big city become as expensive as New York and San Francisco. We can't let our neighbors keep dying unsheltered on the street without a place they feel safe to go. We can't make homelessness a consequence of escaping domestic violence. Housing shouldn't have a paywall, and we should have a right to shelter in Philadelphia.”

The Green Party of Philadelphia (GPOP, www.gpop.org) is an independent political party which stands in opposition to the two corporate parties. GPOP candidates promote public policy based on the Green Party’s Four Pillars: grassroots democracy, nonviolence, ecological wisdom, and social justice/equal opportunity. For further information about GPOP, please follow GPOP on social media:  Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

For more information:

Philadelphia Rent Control Coalition, https://rentcontrolphilly.org/

Philadelphia Tenants Union, https://phillytenantsunion.org/   

“Rent Control,” Green Party Platform, II. Social Justice; J. Housing & Homelessness;
https://www.gp.org/social_justice/#sjHousing