A novel Pa. program brings new housing to urban areas Large-scale developments in depressed neighborhoods attract a variety of home buyers by setting no income limits.

Pennsylvania's answer to the riddle of urban homeownership is gaining national acclaim, as diverse, suburban-style neighborhoods sprout up in cities across the state.

Housing advocates, local officials and national experts say that a four-year-old Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency program has set a standard for adding single-family homes and raising property values in areas no developer would touch.

The novel approach demands large-scale developments in depressed neighborhoods, but manages to attract a variety of home buyers by setting no income limits. It helped kindle a housing market in blown-out quadrants of North Philadelphia, brought the first single-family housing development in recent memory to Chester City, and lured young professionals to Coatesville.

"To me, this has changed the development landscape in Pennsylvania," said Mark Schwartz, a lawyer for Glenside-based Regional Housing Legal Services. In 1999, Schwartz helped conceive this new strategy, called the Homeownership Choice Program, as a member of the housing finance agency's board of directors.

The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency is a nonprofit organization that provides affordable housing mortgages and also works in concert with state housing programs.

Homeownership Choice is not a sweeping initiative. Since 2000, it provided less than $27 million statewide, but that money has inspired more than $184 million in additional investment, to build 1,033 homes. That includes more than $60 million in actual or planned construction of more than 350 homes in the Philadelphia area - in four developments in the city and three in the suburbs.

Critics say its emphasis on new housing ignores many old buildings in need of rehabilitation, but Brian Hudson, executive director of the finance agency, said the program will expand to fund more rehab projects.

By encouraging partnerships between builders and urban community development corporations, it also brings an uncommon quality and design to affordable city housing.

"New construction says investment and a new way of urban life," said Bob Bobincheck, the finance agency's director of strategic planning and policy.

Judith Memberg, executive director of Norristown-based Genesis Housing Corp., said new housing "can change the economics of the neighborhood." Genesis has received $1.4 million from the program to change a Pottstown neighborhood with 30 new twin homes.