Philadelphia Weekly

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At the devastated intersection of Germantown and Indiana avenues, an aging heroin addict who calls himself June leans on a cane while hawking syringes for $2 apiece. A block away, fresh-faced Marquita Irby smiles in the doorway of the brand-new townhouse she and her little boys are moving into.


North Philly’s long-forsaken West Fairhill neighborhood is gradually becoming a study in such contrasts: the blighted versus the sparkling, the shady versus the squeaky-clean, and the hopeless versus the starry-eyed.


And affordable housing initiatives such as the one that’s allowing Irby—who’s struggled economically since becoming pregnant at 19—to move her two sons into state-of-the-art digs are making a strong case for optimism.


“It’s a blessing,” gushes the petite 24-year-old clad in a denim outfit and sandals. “I said a lot of prayers for this.”


Praying may or may not have helped, but the Women’s Community Revitalization Project (WCRP) certainly has. A nonprofit dedicated to providing social and economic assistance to low-income mothers, the WCRP built the townhouse that Irby and her sons live in as part of a $13 million, 40-unit development called the Evelyn Sanders Townhomes—named after a neighborhood activist who fought for affordable housing to be built in West Fairhill. (Sanders died in 2005 before her goal was accomplished.)


WCRP Executive Director Nora Lichtash hopes another 30 units will be up and occupied on the same site—the 3000 blocks of Percy and Hutchinson streets—by spring 2010. WCRP, which receives private and government funding, has erected similar developments over the past 16 years at Sixth and Berks, Fourth and Master, and Seventh and Somerset streets. Lichtash says the desperate need for affordable housing is reflected by the number of people who line up whenever it becomes available.


“In this case, 1,500 people picked up applications for 40 units,” she says. 


Anyone with kids, including couples and single fathers, could apply if their income fell within the median range of $36,000 for a family of four. Irby definitely qualified.


Although she aspires to become a nurse, she’s presently an $8.50-an-hour supermarket cashier. She usually works about 30 hours a week. That figures to a little more than $13,000 a year.


Before getting the townhouse, Irby’s living situation wasn’t enviable. She rented rooms for the past five years, most recently paying her grandmother $360 a month for a cramped bedroom she shared with 4-year-old Hyseem and 2-month-old Jayden.


She’ll now pay $387 for three bedrooms, a living and dining room, a modern kitchen and a utility room equipped with an energy-efficient washer and dryer. She especially likes her walk-in closet. And her green home was designed to be durable, not to mention low on mold, mildew and other indoor toxins. 


Irby says she’s light on cash right now, so plush couches, loveseats, plasma TVs and glass coffee tables will have to wait. But she’ll get started immediately on one decorating project: doing up Hyseem’s room in a Spider-Man motif.


“That’s what he wants,” she says. “And he’s going to get his Spider-Man room.” 


Her eyes sparkle as she says it. 


The only sober note amid all this giddy karma has been struck by the Rev. 
Clarence Hester, a longtime West Fairhill (he calls the neighborhood Glenwood) activist who lives a block north of Irby’s new Percy Street townhouse. Although he complained about Glenwood’s lack of new housing in a May 2008 PW cover story, he now harbors a NIMBY-esque concern about all the low-income renters moving into Evelyn Sanders.


More specifically, he’s concerned about the men some of them might be seeing.


“These young women are of course going to have young male acquaintances,” Hester says. “We don’t know how many of them will have that thug mentality where we’ll be dealing with booming stereos, all kinds of noise and traffic. And we feel like anytime you have a low-income environment, it brings the opportunity for vice to come back.”


Back in the 1980s, Hester led Glenwood’s response to the crack cocaine epidemic that engulfed his and other city neighborhoods. Armed with a bullhorn and plenty of guts, he got in dealers’ faces, refusing to back down even after they threatened his life.


“We don’t want to go back to that,” Hester says. “If we see those seeds being planted, we’re going to nip it in the bud.”