Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker sits down with Clarence Anthony

Clarence Anthony, NLC CEO & Executive Director, sat down for a conversation with Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker at Congressional City Conference. Together, they discuss affordability, housing, transportation, and more. 

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Transcript

Clarence Anthony, CEO & Executive Director, National League of Cities 0:00

Well, first of all, John, thank you so much. And uh I really uh Mayor, I didn't want John to uh go through my bio because you were gonna make me look so bad. He ain't done a damn thing yet. Nothing. Uh but uh first thing I want to say is thank you all for being here and um uh my members of the board of directors, especially Mayor Norton, who's the liaison uh to uh the uh strategic partners uh program, and you. And anyone that knows me uh knows, of course, the public policy, but the private sector uh uh experience I've had made me understood the importance of public-private partnerships and solutions that can be brought to the table by both industries. And Mayor Parker would tell you and any other elected official, um uh public sector leaders can create an idea, but they don't have a private sector investor. It ain't going nowhere. And the other side if is the private sector industry has this great idea for your local government, but there's no interest in the local. So good public policy, good progress between public and private occurs when we're working together. So thank you all for being here, our corporate partners, and appreciate what you're doing. All right, so they said this is a fireside chat, but this is gonna be a conversation, y'all, because um let's go back to when we met. And you never know where people end up in life, and that's why I truly believe that anybody I walk by, I say hello, I try to treat everybody uh nicely, but I don't always, but I try. So the Miriam Tasco was very is a very good friend of mine. And guess who was the chief of staff when I was president of the National League of Cities? Um and that was Mayor Parker. She was the council member. I would spend more time talking to you if you were called, because you know, everybody's just slapping hands and all that stuff, and I was just sitting there and we would just talk and talk policy, talk issues, how are we gonna get things done? And I gotta say, you're getting stuff done in in Philly. But let me ask you, um, how are you getting things done? What's what's your special um recipe for the progress that you want to see done in your community?

Mayor Cherelle Parker, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2:41

So uh first I have to go back to, and you've gotta like I have to acknowledge this. Um I'm a kindness person. Uh as a product of very uh humble beginnings, humble beginnings, kindness matters a great deal. And so, you know, I remember how you treated me when I was the staffer carrying my council members' bags, learning. So for all of the members who are here who they have their staff members who are traveling with them and learning, I'm thinking about, I think it was 99 when you were you were the president, 99. I'm thinking about Mary Gordon and uh the women in municipal government. We hosted MBC uh uh uh uh Leo. Um I work with predatory lending. We defined for the nation when they said the market will correct itself when subprime loans uh were being you know targeted into uh you know low-income communities, the NLC helped us carry our message defining predatory lending across the nation. And that was in part because of your leadership. And I want you to know I don't ever forget how people treat you without a title in front of your name. So I appreciate you uh uh for that. Let me let me just say um there's a uh an African scholar by the name of Chenua Chebe, and he wrote a book called Things Fall Apart. And uh, and there's so now here's the Philly coming out of me. Um I thought I was gonna be a rapper before I be, you know, grew up. There was a time. I was born in the 70s, I can't help it, I thought I was gonna be a rapper. And uh there's a are you all familiar with a group called The Roots? They were like on. So, so so Tariq there has a line, and he plays on Chinyuai Cheve's um Things Fall Apart. He says, I hate to say I told y'all, but I told y'all, things fall apart when the center's too weak to hold y'all. So cities, cities with limited revenue generating capacity, and you you open by affirming this limited revenue generating capacity, but big problems where people are seemingly intractable problems, where people are looking to us for solutions and our well runs dry. So, um, and we're pretty risk averse, right? Because we're trying to maximize the efficient use of the scarce resources. So you, the private sector and all of the strategic partners who are here, you all become our uh expert technicians. And so with your innovation and the technical capacity, the backroom capacity, the research, you all can help us move the needle forward when we are able to partner. I have that shameless plug. Share our strength is here. We're share, just raise your hand. We're share so we just partnered with them on, they work with child hunger, eliminating child hunger, and they just supported a summer meals program effort that we're working on because the city doesn't have it all, and I'm I'm definitely not from the know it all school. I'm the the the B. F. Skinner blank blank slate school, so we should be sponges, sopping up everything that we can learn. And you all are our teachers, so it's collaboration, intergovernmental cooperation. You just dropped it on me. Local, state, and federal working together along with the private sector and institutions of higher learning. We can't lose when we do it together.

Clarence Anthony, CEO & Executive Director, National League of Cities 6:24

I 100%. And we're just gonna talk because whatever you thought I was gonna ask you, I mean, when you talk, it's so many other things come. So you may as well just do it. To me, um, and I want I want to make sure we get to know you and in a way. And I want to know your why. Why did you choose to stay in this business so long? Because there's been uh what 15, 20 doors out, out. I could have left, but then you stayed. What keeps driving you? What's your why?

Mayor Cherelle Parker, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 7:06

You know, Clarence, now you got me in therapy now. These are the tough questions. You I'm ready for the scripted stuff. This is the stuff that's just on the inside. Um Clarence, when I when you remember the the race, so it's it's the most expensive uh mayoral primary election in the history of the city of Philadelphia. I'm polling last. I have the least amount of money. And um it was a switch must have come on, where I realized that my life experience connected me to the people who were closest to the pain in my city. And then you gotta remember we have these boxes clearance now, like when when I'm traveling with Tasco and watching you and my Brian O'Neill, you know, Brian O'Neill's a Republican council member in the city of Philadelphia. And when he and Marion Tasco, proud lifelong Democrat like me, got together in the National League of Cities, they were Philly and Pennsylvania tied to be able to get things done. And so I think that my real life lived experience and my share and my testimony, like I, you know, when I was running, they said, well, you know, you don't, I would talk a lot about growing up and receiving public assistance. Really, I mean this on the trail. I won't name the names, but I remember I would tell people, you know, I grew up and my grandparents received food stamps for me. Um my mother was a single teenage mother, biological father wasn't consistently in my life. And I would share that in any audience, and I refused to wear a mask. I didn't care if I was an old Irish, Italian South Philly, or if I was in the heart of North Philly, or it doesn't matter where, you know, I was visiting, I would share my story. And Clarence, the pick, I had some folks, the experts, I just called them the experts. You know, I don't, I don't think, you don't have to say that anymore. You were a legislator for 10 years in Harrisburg, and then you came back and served in council. And, you know, you you you you're above all of that now. And I remember like, I want to win the race, you know. I ran track and I was a cheerleader. Yeah. I was terrible at both of them, but I did it. Uh right? But I want to win. But what they were what they were asking me to do was to suppress my authentic self. And what I learned is that the more I shared my experience of going to the supermarket with colored money in books, purple 20s, green tens, and brown dollars, afterwards, no matter the race or you know, who the constituent, people will come up and say, you know, when I grew up, my mom or dad fell on hard times or they divorced. And my mom, she she had to go and get public assistance. I had food stamps. They helped us, so I know about that surplus food. And so I then so my why I learned that all of the pain that I experienced when I realized as a child, you know, that I wanted Ward and June. I wanted to be like Wally and the Beef. Yeah. I wanted to be like Vanessa and Theo and Rudy. But I was more like Michael, Thelma, and JJ, except I didn't live in the high rise, right? I lived in a row house, a good row house on the tree line block. And so when I when I look at that, my academic, you know, the exposure, the opportunities, all of it was supposed to happen so that I would know the fight for the next generation, Clarence. The Sherelle Parkers of the world. What are you doing now to use government as a tool? This is what I was trained, Marion Tasco. Politics is simply a tool that is used to decide how scarce resources get allocated. If you are poor in your politics, your people will suffer and they won't get access to those resources. So if I'm gonna master my craft, how do I change government, the bureaucracy? How do I establish systems and processes that will outlast me as in this little definitive term I may get as mayor of the city of Philadelphia? So that's the challenge. And the why is because I can never forget those humble uh uh beginnings. I think about them often. I'm I live three minutes, four minutes from the neighborhood you know I grew up in. I'm supposed to stay grounded because I'm supposed to show people that it doesn't matter where you start, doesn't matter where you start, doesn't matter where you enter the race. There's room for you if you're willing to work for it. That's my why.

Clarence Anthony, CEO & Executive Director, National League of Cities 11:57

Wow, thank you. I I I gotta tell you, if I was uh, it's Monday, right? I've been in this hotel so many days, it's Monday. If it was Sunday, I'd probably get up and just do a little shop. But I'm gonna sit down and be the CEO for y'all. Um one of the in your story, one of the biggest things that had to be a challenge was housing. And it is the biggest issue facing. We got a four million uh gap of shortage of housing in America at all levels. I mean, wealthy down to the uh affordable. Quality is important to me too, because I I I can tell you, but anyway, this is this is your show. Um what how are you dealing with that? And what's your approach? Because as you said, each time you deal with an issue, you don't forget about how it impacted you. And that's why you ran for office, because you're like, I want to help another Sherelle, right? So how are you leading and trying to fill that gap?

Mayor Cherelle Parker, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 13:14

So so one, so I when I was in Harrisburg Clearance, when people would say, Sherelle, you get one sentence because you you take so you take an hour to say something you should say in two seconds. Um they would say, well, so what are you supposed to do? And I would say, um, I'm supposed to close the gap between the haves and the have nots. That's what I'm supposed to do, to close the gap. And how do you do it? Remembering from whence you come, mommy uh migrates from Manning, South Carolina. Daddy migrates to Philadelphia from Akamack County, Virginia. Daddy's a Navy veteran. They meet and marry in North Philadelphia and lived in the first public housing that was developed by the Philadelphia Housing Authority for returning veterans. It was called Richard Allen Homes. But then my mother gets pregnant as a teenager with me, and then the saying goes, um, Miss Parker, Mr. Lefty moved on uptown like the Jeffersons, the Northwest Philadelphia. So it wasn't a big house. It's really interesting. It was a 70% of the housing in the city of Philadelphia is row homes. 70% of our housing. So in Northwest Philadelphia, it's uptown. Listen, it's three bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen clearance, and a basement, but we get a porch, you know, garage, driveway. Like it was big stuff for my grandmother. And they were homeowners. They weren't renters. So my grandmother became the she established and grandfather, the first generation of homeowners in my family. So to me, like that's the that's the goal. So I have a problem when I see the amount of home ownership in the city of Philadelphia decrease where we're now basically almost even. We're 5149. That's not to me something to be proud of. So I say we're going to address it. How are we going to do it? I work with, this is why the external partners become important, the reinvestment fund. Ira Goldstein has been, he worked with us on predatory lending uh uh clearance. We had to figure out what was missing. Philadelphia short, 30,000. I make a commitment that give me the opportunity and the privilege of leading you, Philadelphia, and I'm gonna create a plan so that we can create and preserve 30,000 units of housing in the city of Philadelphia. If someone would just say we could come build our way out of it, we couldn't. It's a $2 billion plan, it's to build and preserve. And then we're working in partnership with PHA, Kelvin Jeremiah, um, to create and preserve 20,000 units of deeply affordable housing. That's on the public side. So that's 50,000 units of housing. Listen, without pitting the have not against those who have just a little bit. Now, this is where I got really have a damn problem. It's hard for local elected officials sometime, because it sounds good in the 30-second clip on Instagram or Facebook to say we're focused on housings and we're just gonna focus on those who are homeless or the least of the those people who need deeply affordable housing. You want me to tell you who gets left out in the mix? The people who are in the middle, who make just a nickel over the income eligibility guidelines. They worked all their life, they got their good local, state, or federal government job, they own their homes, but now in this season, they're retired. They um, you know, they only they don't collect their salary, so they just get a pension, so it's a portion of it. But when you add this Social Security, and with that pension, it just right over the cliff. Yeah. Well, wait, it doesn't tell you how much they're paying for medicine. They're helping the grandchild. I'm a product of kinship care, so I'm ultra sensitive to grandparents, aunts, and uncles who are who are raising somebody who's not their biological child. So that's that's our focus. So we have a menu of options. Home repair, a one-filling mortgage program, so that municipal workers will be able to, with less than perfect credit. I don't know how many of y'all remember them credit card companies in the student union building when you were in college freshman year. You remember them? Did you ever say to yourself, why are they here and we just got here on campus and we're freshmen? We're coming in as students and we don't even have jobs yet. That's I would say that's a predatory action in and of itself. I got hooked up in it, right?

Clarence Anthony, CEO & Executive Director, National League of Cities 17:47

I was clean every week. I have every week. Didn't have a penny though.

Mayor Cherelle Parker, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 17:57

So that's the goal. And the menu is home preservation, it's the mortgage program, it's to support renters, um, is extremely important. And and I want to go back to I want to end on this because you said this. It's about affordability, that's extremely uh important. Uh, but it's also to me about dignity. And let me tell you this: it's like when you talk about working class people, I have to be careful in Philadelphia because that blue-collar working-class neighborhood that I grew up in, um, where they worked hard to get those bricks, and I'm gonna describe my house like this. In the summertime clearance, and I don't know how many of you experienced this, but I hated this. I'm like, why does she do this? This doesn't make sense. My grandmother, I didn't know it was home preservation, but in the summertime clearance, my grandmother had custom plastic on our living room furniture. Oh, yeah.

Clarence Anthony, CEO & Executive Director, National League of Cities 18:52

Oh yeah.

Mayor Cherelle Parker, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 18:53

How many people in here have seen custom plastic? Okay.

Clarence Anthony, CEO & Executive Director, National League of Cities 18:58

I just I know especially when it was white. I was wondering why my mom and them would buy white furniture and yeah, and put the plastic.

Mayor Cherelle Parker, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19:10

You didn't know, you didn't know that that was home preservation. Yes. What you didn't know is just because you were working class, that didn't mean that you didn't like aesthetically appealing things. Like you didn't have a right to want something nice because you are low income or a low to mod uh income person and you're from humble beginnings. That's where layaway came from, you know, right? And so so I said, I want quality. Just because to one, don't bring me a concentration of poverty. Don't come and tell me this is this box and you want to build all this housing for if it's senior housing, that's age, that's something different. But don't tell me that you're gonna concentrate, you know, poor people together, because I know what happens there. Whenever you do that, every public amenity, anything. The supermarkets are poor, the education is poor, the public, the recreation centers, the park, everything around them. So I want multi-income uh uh uh communities, and then that's when we learn to really work together. So that's the my plan. I catch a lot of hell for it, because I support middle neighborhoods, and you know some she doesn't care about the least of these. She lacks compassion or empathy, but you know, I I'm gonna stand on my real life lift experience. These damn questions are tough. I wasn't expecting that.

Clarence Anthony, CEO & Executive Director, National League of Cities 20:32

I know, I know. I I yes. I what I what I hear uh in that response as well, you gotta have a vision and a commitment. Because uh, you know, a plan, a goal. Because, and that's in anything. I mean, you know, your RI, you gotta have a goal of what you want, you know, the disbursement of investments, you gotta have a goal. And I I'm I'm gonna watch because I think I want I do want to see how you achieve that goal. And I know you will, because I've known you for a long time. Um, one of the things that I always feel that is connected to housing is transportation, though. Because I especially I moved here from Florida and and now living in DMB, I see my employees, some coming in an hour, hour and a half on the train and the buses, because they can't afford the transportation and the or the housing, and then the transportation, or their kids are in daycare or some school and they have to leave. The kids are an hour away. I mean, what are you doing in terms of transportation and your whole plan for redevelopment and all of those areas that connect to housing jobs, all of that?

Mayor Cherelle Parker, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 21:54

First, I want to say um uh I want you all to remember this. Two things. One, where you stand on the issue depends on where you sit. That's the first bullet. Where you stand on the issue depends on where you sit. The second thing that I've been trying to drill into this big head of mine is that you have to be careful about criticizing people about the decisions they've made when you don't know the options they had. Just those two things, okay? Criticize the decision, but you don't know the options. I say that because I didn't know how much as a district council person, and remember the district council people clients in the city may manage the land use. So when we talk about building the housing, we're talking about our ties, our transit-oriented development. The mayor doesn't have a say over that land use. I mean, I get to draft the legislation and I can, you know, propose it to council in the hopes that it will pass. But we local government, we get in our own way. So I just introduced, um, I'm a fairly uh, I'm the new mayor. This is my first term. I am not a veteran. So I'm you know, I'm I'm that's so when you hear me talk about being a sponge and learning, I'm trying to learn as much as I possibly uh uh can. We just introduced my third budget, it's the the one Philly, one future budget, seven billion dollar budget, um, and over our five-year plan, um, it's a $900 million invested in transit. Our mass transit system is called SEPTA, and uh we have a major part of it, which is um our 20, a $25 million investment for our key advantage. Our key advantage just helps low-income Philadelphians access transportation. But then we have a city of Philadelphia proper plan that we use to invest in municipal workers so that they can get to work. Because at the basics, you know, you can't have any kind of quality of life or be put on a path to self-sufficiency if you don't have a safe and reliable ride to get to the place you're gonna work. I mean, it's just it's like not complex rocket science. So we need to we need to do that. But then on the zoning side, everyone's familiar with the the transit-oriented developments, the Todd, but for us, we were so limited, and like just say it's a 300, you know, 300-foot radius of you know, around the transit hub, and we said, wait a minute, we need more density, you know, in the in the city that's landlocked like Philadelphia, so we have to expand the boundary. So we've just introduced that legislation in city council um, working to support our Pennsylvania General Assembly. Um, again, I'm I'm biased when it comes to city councils, and I'm biased when it comes to state legislators because I've I've served in both of those capacities. But we need new recurring revenue for mass transit at the state level. That's why we need to be careful about getting caught up in this partisan. Um because if when you serving in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, and when I had a Republican governor, a Republican-controlled house, and a Republican-controlled Senate, and I became the chair of that little thing called the Philadelphia Delegation. And if you don't get the funding, recurring revenue, uh, not a one-time cash infusion, but a real solution, recurring revenue for public education. Um, Dr. Height, then superintendent schools won't open. Guess what? I had to learn how to do. I had to learn how to GTY. I said, look, we're gonna fight about guns, we're gonna fight about choice, we're gonna fight about voter ID, but how can we get together and agree on this education? I said, okay, rural Pennsylvania and urban, if we put together a rural urban alliance, we are unstoppable, right? And so you all of those ways. So when I think about transit, uh intergovernmental collaboration, the private sector was extremely helpful uh when we did our uh Act 89, $2.3 billion investment in roads, bridges, and highways in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to what we're doing right now with expanding the boundaries for tides and making it more comprehensive so we can have more density to support more quality and affordable uh housing. All of it is interconnected, and and and you all can play a role in helping us there.

Clarence Anthony, CEO & Executive Director, National League of Cities 26:42

When when you think about innovation, and uh let me just say this. Um what time over to Ian? Uh oh, okay. I'm gonna um ask this question, but also I want to open it up for the audience if you have any questions of the mayor. Is that okay, Mayor? Yes, yes, yes. All right, that's probably more fun anyway. We could really have fun. I was ready with my script. Look at the look, I mean, look at look at this audience. We're gonna have fun with them. Um about innovation. Um anything you're dreaming about that you'd like to implement in the city? I mean, we got all this stuff with cyber, and everybody always like gets scared when you say that word, but that presents an opportunity. AI, I mean, what are you looking at as exciting that you uh want to do?

Mayor Cherelle Parker, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 27:32

Oh, thank you for this because now I get the chance to pitch. So if you know someone, send them my way. Um I don't care um whether or not the economist is a liberal, moderate, or conservative economist. If you ask them if we have a housing crisis in the US, they'll tell you yes. And then they'll tell you that two very specific things that if you want to address the crisis, you have to address these two issues. The first is supply, and then it's production. It's supply and production. So in Philadelphia, I'm I'm an eternal optimist, I have to be. So in my mind, talking about learning, I started watching Mayor Bibb in Ohio. And I said, I think Mayor Bibb done hit the jackpot here. He came up with this concept that, you know, you have ideas. I was still, I said, I'm gonna steal this idea. Mayor Bibb developed a process where he could lure private sector firms to consider building factories to produce modular housing in Ohio. So I said to myself, well, wait, Philadelphia, I'm talking to some experts, and they say, first you need the skilled workforce, then you need the land. And um, and I said, we have the building trades there. Just had Ryan Boy in the building trades public-private partnership. They just contributed $50 million, unheard of. People usually think of the building trades, oh, all they do is benefit from building. They, in partnership with PHA and our housing plan, they contributed $50 million to help with the building of affordable housing. So I said, what if we had factories, a few, right near the transit, major highways in the city with enough acreage, and we were producing modular housing 24 hours a day. I said, wait a minute. They can work around the clock, three shifts, because the climate is controlled. You don't have to worry about the elements. We know we have the demand that's here. We can use government-owned land. We have the land. Let's put all of these persistently vacant. Some, it's embarrassing to even say, but I'm gonna tell you. Some have been vacant for three up to 30 years. What you two imagine schools vacant from three to 30 years or government-owned buildings. We have Holmesburg, Holmesburg Prison, our old roundhouse, Prime Real Estate, right in the center of our city. I said, what if we incentivize that land? Came up with a subsidy. We also clearance, just so you know, the intergov and how it works. I know I needed to lower the private sector. I'm looking at interest rates, a lot of other things impacting the market. I said, I need an incentive. So I went to my Republican and Democratic friends in Harrisburg, and I said, I need a 20-year tax abatement. I've got to make the private sector an offer they can't refuse. Government-owned land, a 20-year abatement for you to convert any office buildings or government-owned buildings into housing, and we have the ability to offer some subsidy and assistance with our $2 billion home plan. And as I talk to the private sector, they say, well, now you're cooking. So what I'm gonna ask you to do, because here, this I'm thinking like the private sector, uh, competition is excellent. If you know somebody, a firm, I don't care where they are, Canada, in the US, West Coast, Midwest, and they're interested in building modular housing, you better tell them to reach out to Philadelphia. We want them.

Clarence Anthony, CEO & Executive Director, National League of Cities 31:26

Y'all heard it first right here, uh National League of Cities, and they need to be a member of the corporate partners program at the National Lagos Cities.