Blue Ribbon Winner: Mantua Preservation Project,  Mt. Vernon Manor CDC

Mt. Vernon Manor CDC aims to increase fair and affordable housing, environmental sustainability, and quality of life in West Philadelphia. Working primarily in Mantua, MVMCDC champions a safe and accessible community for longtime and newly arrived residents through principles of equitable development. MVM has been a trusted provider of affordable housing in West Philadelphia for over 40 years. MVM built and began stewarding 125 apartments across Mantua in 1977, and in 2017, MVM revitalized 121 units through a public-private partnership. In 2019, we worked with city and state agencies to save and renovate 29 affordable rental units in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood.

As a Neighborhood Advisory Committee, MVM helps over 1,000 low-income residents access rental aid, utility funds, home repair subsidies, public benefits, and property tax payment plans each year. Alongside the housing developments, these services help residents remain—and live safely— in their homes.

Mt. Vernon Manor CDC began its involvement with what would become Mantua Preservation Project (MPP) affordable housing redevelopment in 2016. Early that year, a Mantua resident informed them that the affordable housing development in which they lived was undergoing an illegal sale by the owner. They feared the sale-- and the building's planned transformation into lucrative student housing-- would displace them from the block they had called home for decades. Working with city, state, and federal agencies, MVM stepped in to stop the illegal sale of twenty-nine of these apartments across ten distinct buildings. In 2018, Mt. Vernon Manor purchased HUD's lien on the properties to acquire, renovate, and steward the builds as permanently affordable rental housing.

The $3 million renovation of the Mantua Preservation Project properties began in 2019 with support from LISC Philadelphia, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, The Reinvestment Fund, Community Lenders, and the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency and was completed in early 2021. Mt. Vernon Manor's dedication to serving past and future low-income tenants of this development drives their commitment to permanently and entirely subsidizing rent for the four legacy tenants who remained in the development through its transition. In addition to this in-house subsidy and the provision of permanently affordable housing to over 30 predominantly Black Mantua residents below 80% AMI, the Mantua Preservation Project offers extensive housing, workforce development, and supportive services to support resident stabilization. These services-- and Mt. Vernon Manor CDC’s dedication to hiring BIPOC contractors in the predevelopment, construction, and occupancy stages-- have been made possible through key partnerships with MWBEs and a handful of West Philadelphia CDCs, representing a broader effort to combat displacement in the area's increasingly tight housing market. In this way, MPP serves not only as a backstop for households experiencing socio-economic stressors, but also as a springboard for those households to continue staking long-term claims in their community.

PACDC celebrates Mt. Vernon Manor CDC for being recognized as a Winner of the Blue Ribbon Award for Community Development Excellence.