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I tend to agree with you moreso than the others on this issue. Philadelphia is number 1 on a lot of bad lists. And is on track to have the highest per capita murder rate of Americas largest cities. Chicago is steadily falling and I do not see Philadelphia reversing its trend anytime soon.
People like to downplay the murder rate, but it still provides a bit of correlation to where the city is at from an economically, financially and demographically. When poverty is high that equals more crime, its a fact.
Philadelphia had a good year in the frilly aspect of life (superbowl win, positive media attention, new hotels, restaurants, etc.), but from what makes a city stable, Philadelphia had a terrible year. The poverty rate is horrendously high, the drug epidemic is horrible, wages dropped, job growth was meh, the city missed out on Amazon, Google and probably Apple, crime is stagnant, murders are up. That to me is not a good year. Also, our own suburbs across the board lowered their poverty rates and incomes increased and the business centers of our major burbs (KoP) are booming.
Sure if we zoom in on Center City, then Philadelphia looks like its on top, but its far from it. And I do not see any of this changing in 2019.
We have council that is concerned about adding colors to the LGBT flag and parking on Broad Street, a DA who wants to make murder a misdemeanor, and a mayor who is cutting ribbons at Wawa stores.... when they should be figuring out a way to add police officers, cutting down on the live and let live crap, update the tax structure, continue to fix the zoning, and go after companies like Google in order to compete with New York, DC and Chicago. This whole lets sit and commiserate as to why we can't win is has not worked and will continue not to work.
Philadelphia can either take the path of New York, DC, and Boston, or take the path of Baltimore, and the city is really flirting with the Baltimore path. What separates Philadelphia from the likes of Baltimore, Detroit, etc. is the wonderful amount of culture and history found throughout the city, a more diversifies economy, a wealthier overall region, and an amazing downtown, but those features will only get the city so far, and I think the city has hit a road block.
You make some valid points, but you also miss the mark on some too. City Council and Kenny are an absolute joke. They are proof that machine politics breed corruption to an absurd magnitude. Kenyatta Johnson should be in jail, they just wasted $40M on what should have been police HQ, and Kenny is a pussyfooting jackass (and I say that as a diehard liberal). This city mismanages itself to an embarrassing level. Poverty is still a big problem in this city, but we forget that we haven't had the time to gentrify ourselves down a few percentage points. New York, DC, and Boston got to do this as they built their white collar jobs base earlier and quicker. 99% of those poor people didn't get lifted out of poverty, they simply got pushed out elsewhere. It's happening here in certain areas, just at a slower rate. Philadelphia doesn't have a gentrification "problem" yet like the others.
You are wrong on Krasner. "Tough on crime" makes everyone feel good, but it doesn't solve the root issues. The war on drugs is a textbook example of how that policy is just plain stupid. Hiring more cops won't solve the crime problem in this city. Do you really trust a department as corrupt as the Philadelphia PD to expand it's force and power? I sure as hell don't. They created a culture of hostility amongst the most crime-effected groups by treating them like animals, and they wonder why people hate them. A lot of the hatred people have toward them is self-inflicted from eras where Rizzo's style of policing was the order of the day. It just doesn't work. If it did, then the 70s and 80s would have been the safest decades in history.
I don't know about this correlation of murders and the health of a city. Don't you think one possible reason for the spike in killings is gangs losing territory due to rapid and sustained gentrification and expansion? Think about just the last 10 years. You had a booming drug trade in Northern Liberties/North of Girard (or whatever you want to call southern Kensington) Temple area, Francisville, South Philly near 5th and Christian, South Philly in the Dickinson Narrows sections, Point Breeze, parts of Grad Hospital, huge areas of what is now considered University City, and that's just to name a few well known neighborhoods. That is a network of thousands of people of multiple generations that have to continually move further out of the city core to continue their trade. That means additional clashes between groups. Other than our well-documented open air drug area at K&A, which isn't a haven for gang violence as it's basically a free for all, most of the areas anywhere near the city core have really cleaned up and quickly.
Now you do make a very valid point about lack of business increase, terrible city government, and general corruption. It could be much better, but unless you live very far from the core, I really don't think the city has been safer in a very long time.
You may really be on to something here.
I can tell you first hand, Francisville is not like it was 5 years ago. And when I moved to Spring Garden in the 90s there was open drug "commerce" a block away from where I live. That's been gone for at least decade.
Definitely agree though with much of what cpomp said though.
Philadelphia had a good year in the frilly aspect of life (superbowl win, positive media attention, new hotels, restaurants, etc.), but from what makes a city stable, Philadelphia had a terrible year. The poverty rate is horrendously high, the drug epidemic is horrible, wages dropped, job growth was meh, the city missed out on Amazon, Google and probably Apple, crime is stagnant, murders are up. That to me is not a good year. Also, our own suburbs across the board lowered their poverty rates and incomes increased and the business centers of our major burbs (KoP) are booming.
Are you sure?
Quote:
Philadelphia saw the highest wage growth out of some of the largest cities in the United States in the last year, according to Glassdoor’s annual Local Pay Reports.
Since July 2017, the U.S. had 2.2 percent pay growth, the fastest Glassdoor has seen in more than a year. Philadelphia had the highest wage growth of 10 cities at 2.8 percent over the last year.
The city ended the fiscal year with nearly $800mn extra in the bank compared to what was expected.
Quote:
Philadelphia finished its most recent fiscal year with $769 million in leftover cash in its general fund, the highest amount in at least a decade, according to a report from the city controller.
The majority of Philadelphia-based tax revenue comes from the wage tax, and the good news is that job growth is strong. In June, payrolls were up 2.9 percent over the year. In comparison, the suburbs and the state rose 1.7 percent while the nation increased only 1.6 percent. As a result, wage-tax revenue jumped nearly 6 percent.
The improving wage-tax income is not coming strictly from the expanding employment base. Rising pay is also chipping in. Much of that gain came from improved hiring in higher-paid occupations.
Growing wages and jobs implies that businesses are doing better, and the 8.3 percent jump in the city's Business Income and Receipts Tax leaves little doubt that the business sector is healthy.
As for the city's real estate market, it is booming. We see it in the new buildings going up, be they residential, commercial, or industrial. The issue of gentrification, which hits the news weekly, is another indicator of the health of the real estate market.
Not surprisingly, property-related tax revenues skyrocketed. The Realty Transfer Tax was up an amazing 37.2 percent. The real estate tax increased by more than 11 percent. Values are rising, as well as demand, and that is translating into more money flowing into the city's coffers. If that doesn't say that the city has become a desirable place to locate, nothing will.
With more people moving into the city and businesses expanding, one would expect that retailers would be doing a lot better — and they are. The city sales tax revenues increased more than 10 percent. Since inflation was only about 2 percent, a lot more goods were sold.
And finally, the city's hospitality sector is benefiting from the improved national economy and the willingness of families to travel. The amusement tax take was up more than 9 percent.
If tax revenues are a window into an area's economy, then what we have is a city that is expanding quite nicely.
The city has gained 20k jobs in a variety of industries over the course of the last year. The workforce grew while at the same time the unemployment rate dropped a percentage point.
Philadelphia is doing far better than almost anyone thought was possible. I don't really understand the constant need to fawn over the culture-less parking lots of KOP. 9/10 people living in poverty in the Delaware Valley live in the city. It's one of the largest disparities in the country. It is what it is. Don't be surprised in 6th months when Philadelphia is indeed still the poorest 'Major US City' (who knew the only major cities in the us were the 10 largest by population). Also overall poverty levels have increased in a lot of 'booming' places like Dallas and Atlanta.
Demographics is another very important thing to understand. The average age of city employees is 45 years of age. Which means there are more people making more money leaving the workforce than younger people joining. There was an article published yesterday about this issue and how the city has made changes to reflect it: How Philly is using city jobs to tackle poverty
Following a path plowed by other cities such as Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit, PAGE is a collaborative effort to get Philadelphia's dominant economic sector — eds and meds — to help change the city's disturbing narrative as the poorest large U.S. city by flexing its substantial purchasing muscle closer to home.
The inspiration is a 2014 finding by the city Controller's Office that $5.3 billion is spent annually on goods and services by the city's 34 universities and hospitals, with just $2.7 billion of it from businesses located in Philadelphia.
This is a tangible thing that will have real repercussions in the near future. No one responded, because most aren't looking for a real discussion on what can or is being done to improve the lives of those living in despair. They just want to complain about headlines of homicide and such.
The city is on it's way to having one of the highest homicide totals in a decade, but the violent crime rate as of week 50 is still down 6% from a year that was the lowest since the 1970s'. There have been less of every crime except homicide: https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...QNhi_M8PJEOmQP
The area could balance out the poverty by administering policies like source of income protections. The whole point of section 8 housing voucher program was to de-concentrate poverty. Well landlords will explicitly not rent to voucher holders in most of the good school districts in the area trapping all the poor people together in the city where there are laws in place to prevent that. NYC and DC both have counties surrounding them that have implemented source of income protections.
I think anyone that knows Philadelphia well realizes that taxes have been the driving factor of decline for the last 60-70 years.
I'm not sure how city finances came in ..... but Philly suffers severe pension debt and other debt not related to running the city services and paying them bills.
Owed liabilities per Person is probably still near $30.000 per taxpayer. It was $27.500 in 2016 here.
Links list of to 20 cities and these 3 are the worst. No boast for Chicago on this one .....
18.Philadelphia: $27,500
19.Chicago: $44,000
20.New York City: $61,000
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/ne...ebt-for-every-
From link:
- Unlike reporting done by city government officials, TIA’s data includes all promised liabilities such as retiree health care and pensions. According to TIA’s analysis, Philadelphia has committed to $9.4 billion in pension payments and $2.2 billion for retiree health care, but the city has not adequately funded these obligations.
- Philadelphia’s reported pension liability increased from $454.5 million in 2014 to $9 billion in 2015 and TIA calculations say that amount is still inaccurate.
- Philadelphia’s total debt amounts to $14.3 billion after available assets are deducted.
Not just Philly.... many cities. Like Chicago balances its fiscal budget yearly .... ok. yes .... running the city services and guess paying the interest on all its debts and borrowed monies. Similar from Houston to mighty NYC the richest with the most debt liabilities too.
But with the surplus running the city.... the city can buy a fleet of regular street-sweepers again. Even Detroit did... and clean house more again.
My neighborhood rarely has a 'patrol' car, and when we do, (which I've witnessed many times while making my own rounds in the wee hours), instead of patrolling and being a presence, they hide at the edge of the neighborhood playing on their phones.
Once or twice a year a captain will attend a community meeting pretending to care about our concerns, but nothing ever changes. It's disgusting.
You make some valid points, but you also miss the mark on some too. City Council and Kenny are an absolute joke. They are proof that machine politics breed corruption to an absurd magnitude. Kenyatta Johnson should be in jail, they just wasted $40M on what should have been police HQ, and Kenny is a pussyfooting jackass (and I say that as a diehard liberal). This city mismanages itself to an embarrassing level. Poverty is still a big problem in this city, but we forget that we haven't had the time to gentrify ourselves down a few percentage points. New York, DC, and Boston got to do this as they built their white collar jobs base earlier and quicker. 99% of those poor people didn't get lifted out of poverty, they simply got pushed out elsewhere. It's happening here in certain areas, just at a slower rate. Philadelphia doesn't have a gentrification "problem" yet like the others.
You are wrong on Krasner. "Tough on crime" makes everyone feel good, but it doesn't solve the root issues. The war on drugs is a textbook example of how that policy is just plain stupid. Hiring more cops won't solve the crime problem in this city. Do you really trust a department as corrupt as the Philadelphia PD to expand it's force and power? I sure as hell don't. They created a culture of hostility amongst the most crime-effected groups by treating them like animals, and they wonder why people hate them. A lot of the hatred people have toward them is self-inflicted from eras where Rizzo's style of policing was the order of the day. It just doesn't work. If it did, then the 70s and 80s would have been the safest decades in history.
It's not fair to label the department 'as corrupt' when it's only a few bad apples. You wouldn't label an entire race or religion like that (and you'd freak out if somebody else did), don't do it against a police department.
It's not fair to label the department 'as corrupt' when it's only a few bad apples. You wouldn't label an entire race or religion like that (and you'd freak out if somebody else did), don't do it against a police department.
It’s far more then a few bad apples when every year multiple officers are fired or arrested for criminal offenses. They also have a culture of silence that protects the rampant corruption, which makes the entire department rotten from the ground up. It’s a problem with almost every major police agency in the country, not just Philly.
My neighborhood rarely has a 'patrol' car, and when we do, (which I've witnessed many times while making my own rounds in the wee hours), instead of patrolling and being a presence, they hide at the edge of the neighborhood playing on their phones.
Once or twice a year a captain will attend a community meeting pretending to care about our concerns, but nothing ever changes. It's disgusting.
Yes, we've talked many times about the lack of deployment or proper deployment wrt the PPD. Plus it really pisses me off regarding how fat(sorry, not sorry!) some of them are. I'm pushing 70 and I bet I can out run tons of them.
I've seen the lack of response first hand. I was in a restaurant in S. Philly last Sat. evening. A disgruntled ex-employee arrived. It turned into an ugly situation pretty quickly and could have turned into something worse with people getting hurt. Of course management called 911. It took the PPD nearly 10 minutes to show up. By then the "perp" had left.
Given that cops do not have to live in the city now, how much would one of them living in Buck Co or DelCo or MontCo care about the city? By not living in the city they have no stake in it. It's a pay check, often with over time. The commish should be fired.
How did the Philly crime thread take an almost 4 month hiatus when our homicide count is 330 and counting?..13 days left in 2018, wonder whet the final tally will be. Bad news here whatever it ends up being.
Short answer. The guy who used to post to it regularly left the board.
Well, Kenny has turned cops into social workers; maybe the spike has to do with less time being spent on these types of homicides as cops move onto investigating incidents of kids and adults calling each other names.
It's not him. It's the useless PPD commish who came from homicide(????). Charles R spoiled us.
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yes .... running the city services and guess paying the interest on all its debts and borrowed monies. Similar from Houston to mighty NYC the richest with the most debt liabilities too.
