The federal government spends less to fund the Department of Housing and Urban Development than it did 30 years ago, adjusting for inflation. Moreover, people who live in public housing may be able to pay their rent each month, but many still don’t have a safe and healthy home. For families like this, it’s stay packed in or lose your subsidy. Even if a family is willing to move into separate units, PHA doesn’t provide for that. Subsidies are impossible to come by, and it’s not uncommon to hear of people waiting for over a decade for Section 8 vouchers. Others who turn to Philadelphia Housing Authority have been locked out from a spot on its waiting list since 2013. The Philadelphians who perished in last week’s Fairmount fire lived in an apartment owned and managed by the city’s housing authority. From the lack of affordable housing to our inadequate social safety net, people too often have no choice but to live in overcrowded and unsafe households to avoid homelessness. Our society is structurally designed for tragedies like these to occur. Sadly, my story is not a unique situation.Īs Philadelphia and New York City both reel from some of the deadliest residential fires in both cities’ history and some of the nation’s deadliest in decades, we don’t have to ask why these tragedies occurred. All I want to do is get back on my feet, but starting over is nearly impossible without a safe, stable, and affordable roof over my head.
I had no choice but to stay in a shelter until I could afford a place of my own, and my current room was the best that I could find. After spending three months behind bars, I lost everything, including my home and personal belongings. I had my own apartment for two years until I was arrested for disorderly conduct last May. This is a catastrophe waiting to happen, one that it seems our elected officials have no plans to prevent.īut I didn’t always live like this. An adult could easily fit through the hole in our bathroom ceiling, and the list goes on. We lose power every time someone uses too much electricity in their room, and our tap water smells like the sewer. We have no fire alarms in our building, no fire extinguishers, and just two exits. I live in a rooming house with 10 other adults and seven children. Yet as I watched the news unfold, it only took a few minutes for me to realize the same tragedy could’ve easily happened at my home in Nicetown. The news of the rowhouse fire that killed 12 people last week came as a devastating shock to our city.
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