And that is just the type of income-restricted property Norristown is trying to limit within its borders, said Council President William Caldwell, a Democrat.
"It probably would be a nice project, but I don't buy that it's a good thing for Norristown," he said. "I don't think it pushes our goals at all in deconcentrating poverty within our community."
Randolph, whose Cherry Hill-based Ingerman Group is behind the project, is used to this resistance from local leaders.
But more and more, he is hearing it from the communities that have historically accepted the affordable-housing developments in which his company specializes.
Municipalities such as Norristown, Upper Darby, and Coatesville have taken on a disproportionate share of the government-sponsored low-income housing stock over the last decade, and they are increasingly loath to welcome any more.
These growing pockets of poverty create a cycle that traps certain communities on the lower end of the development scale while allowing more affluent ones to flourish, Caldwell said.
"Morally, this country has a very large problem with economic segregation," he said. "You have rich communities, you have poor communities - and there's very little mixing in between."
Just two communities in Montgomery County - Norristown and Pottstown, where median incomes are about $34,000 below the countywide average - account for more than 60 percent of county residents who rely on federal housing vouchers.
The program, popularly known as Section 8, is designed to help low-income residents bridge the gap between what they can afford and market-rates prices.
Similar concentrations of low-income housing have sprung up in Upper Darby in Delaware County and Coatesville in Chester County.
How this economic segregation developed turns into a chicken-and-egg debate.
