The future of housing often feels solely in the hands of large private developers and politicians. But the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations (PACDC) has spent the last three decades working to tip the scales in favor of everyday people.
Since its founding in 1992, PACDC has served as the connective tissue between more than 60 community development corporations (CDCs) across Philadelphia. It began with a handful of CDC leaders who realized they were all struggling with the same problems: funding shortfalls, unpredictable policies and the growing displacement of community members.
PACDC was formed to change that and, over time, it’s become an inspirational force for other CDCs in the city. Their ability to turn grassroots needs into concrete citywide strategies has been central to their impact as activists. Now, they hope the city itself will scale up the successful practices they’ve modeled by creating a Community Capacity Building Fund, currently under consideration by the City Council’s finance committee. The bill, shaped with PACDC’s input, would provide multi-year funding to CDCs with the goal of creating long-term financial stability.
“It not only enables groups to think longer term, [but] they’ll also have flexible dollars,” said PACDC’s executive director Rick Sauer. “If there’s a new emerging need in the community that needs to be addressed, they’ll have the flexibility to pivot.”
The fund was created via the Equitable Development Policy Platform, built through interviews with more than 100 stakeholders. PACDC organized a day of action at Philadelphia’s City Hall, where dozens of members met with council members to advocate for the passage of three bills based on the platform.
PACDC also helps further the reach of other CDCs’ programming by training housing counselors, creating peer-to-peer networks and running workshops that range from trauma-informed supervision best practices to navigating tax credit programs. They’ve supported more than 40 businesses—primarily Black, Brown, immigrant and women-owned—through partnerships with Black Squirrel and Temple University’s Small Business Development Center.
At the state level, PACDC played a pivotal role in passing legislation that made land banks possible across Pennsylvania while continuing to work with the Housing Alliance of PA to increase state trust fund dollars. This work, based on the needs of their members, increased what was possible on the local level.
PACDC’s ultimate goal is to build the strength of local CDCs by making sure the systems those groups have to navigate—city agencies, grant programs and policy debates—are more functional, more just and more responsive to the people who live in Philadelphia. They’ve been successful at taking the problems their member organizations are dealing with and creating realistic strategies to solve them while reshaping the local political terrain.
“The work that we do flows up from the needs of our members,” said Sauer. ”We’re trying to be really responsive to their needs while looking at the broader environment they’re operating in and the challenges they’re facing [in order to] push forward what needs to be done.”
Akin Olla is a Contributing Writer
Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Association of CDCs of their staff.
