Eric Orts is a Legal Studies professor and a pioneer in the field of environmental management. He has four degrees and numerous publications to his name. None of these attributes, however, is what makes Orts the embodiment of a Penn vision.
While Orts undoubtedly makes Penn proud when he is at work, the University might be equally elated at what happens afterward -- he bikes back to his West Philadelphia row house.
In the 1960s, many professors lived in the neighborhoods that surround campus, but as local schools declined, crack cocaine flooded the streets and housing prices plummeted, many affiliated with the University chose to leave.
They relocated to the Main Line, New Jersey or Center City. They would live anywhere, really, except University City.
Now, thanks in part to Penn's renewed emphasis on an old program, more faculty and staff members are choosing to live along the quiet, tree-lined streets that reach to the both to the north and west of campus.
Community Housing
Penn's Office of Community Housing was created in 1998 with the intent of "integrating Penn into the community," said the office's first director, D.L. Wormley.
Wormley's successor and current OCH director Stefany Jones said that the goal is to "encourage faculty and staff to buy houses in and around the University City area."
To that end, over the course of its seven-year history, the OCH has served more than 400 faculty and staff members with two different programs, both of which are aimed, Jones said, at making University City the ideal living-working community.
The beneficiaries come from a broad pool. Faculty members such as Orts are eligible to participate, Jones said, as are all full-time staff members of both Penn and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
With the Guaranteed Mortgage Program, the University acts as guarantor on employees' mortgages on homes across a large swath of West Philadelphia.
The Enhanced Mortgage Program offers the features of the GMP, with an additional $7,500 loan, one-seventh of which is forgiven -- literally erased -- each year the owner lives in the home. This program is available for homes in the immediate University City area.
OCH participants who signed up before the 1998 implementation of this program can apply for the loans retroactively, as did Orts.
Even though the OCH is only seven years old, the idea of providing Penn employees incentives to live near campus is nothing new.
The Guaranteed Mortgage Program has been in existence since 1966, although it was administered by the treasurer's office until the creation of the OCH in 1998, when the Enhanced Mortgage Program was also added.
The office has made several changes to its services in recent years.
The Guaranteed Mortgage Program's eligibility area has expanded several times, and this year the office announced a three-block extension to the coverage of the Enhanced Mortgage Program to the west, from 49th to 52nd Street. Additionally, the program extends as far north as Haverford Avenue, expanded from Market Street.
Participants receive their mortgages with no down payment, a major plus for young professors and staff members with few liquid assets. In addition, a homeowner may overborrow on the mortgage or take out a loan up to 20 percent in excess of the home's value, Jones said.
These overborrowed funds, as well as the $7,500 from the Enhanced Program, may be used for home improvements, which is particularly important in some of the older West Philadelphia residences.
The Orts family used the loan money to make improvements to the rear entrance area of their home, which had been deteriorating and was poorly insulated.
In general, many Penn-affiliated neighborhood residents seem to improve their homes.
As Orts spoke, his neighbor, History professor Walter Licht, sat working on his porch.
Local amenities
The incentives for Penn employees to live in the University City area go beyond the financial.
Orts, who usually bicycles to work, said he enjoys being able to commute without creating air pollution, a strategy consistent with his professional work.
Dennis Culhane, a professor of Social Welfare Policy, has bought two homes in University City through the Guaranteed Mortgage Program -- one of them in 1990, upon his arrival at Penn, and the other in 1995, when he chose to upgrade to a larger house in the Garden Court neighborhood west of campus.
Culhane moved to the area from Boston and said that he wanted to minimize his commute time. Living in University City just made sense, he said.
Signs of Progress
Orts and his wife Janet moved into their house -- located on the 200 block of St. Mark's Square, which runs between 42nd and 43rd streets -- when he arrived at Penn in 1994. Since then, he has seen significant positive changes.
"I would say that every year since I've been here the neighborhood has been getting better," he said. "It's a nice neighborhood."
"One indication ... is that housing values on my block have tripled," Orts said.
Culhane echoed those sentiments, also noting a tripling in nearby home prices.
He described a problem of "creeping abandonment" that cast a pall over University City.
"That all reversed in 1996," he said, when Penn made a commitment to supporting the area. The University City District was then founded in 1997.
"University investments have really helped," Culhane said. "They have stabilized the neighborhood."
Now, Culhane said, "it is a completely different place."
"Crime is down," Orts said, and "one of the major factors has been the University Police. They've been extremely good."
While West Philadelphia's crime problem has not been solved, it has at least been reduced.
"You can't really stop crime in the whole city, but at least you can push it out of our neighborhood," Orts said.
Several University-supported programs have helped to make the neighborhood safer, he said, such as an initiative in the mid-'90s that subsidized homeowners' installation of outdoor lighting.
Culhane pointed to UCD safety ambassadors as one significant step toward creating safer neighborhoods.
Not only is the area safer, it is also more pleasing to the eye.
When he first moved in, Culhane said, the streets were plagued by debris and litter, something that is much less of a problem now.
Additionally, the UC Green Program, Orts said, has helped to improve the aesthetics of the neighborhood, by planting trees among other activities.
Penn's involvement in the renovation of several apartment buildings around campus has been another boon to the attractiveness of University City, Orts added.
There is a boundary, ill-defined though it may be, to westward gentrification.
"To me ... it's about at 50th Street," Orts said, although he noted that there is variability within the blocks up to that point.
"Philadelphia is really a block-by-block city," he said.
Community backlash
"McPenntrification" is a word that has arisen to describe what some view as Penn's hegemony over West Philadelphia -- the term originating in a battle beginning in October of 1999 over the proposed construction of a McDonald's at 43rd and Market streets. Some community groups felt that Penn was behind the plan, which has now been abandoned.
Larry Falcon, a local reverend and member of Neighbors Against McPenntrification, said that Penn views the local housing situation differently than do those who have lived in West Philadelphia their whole lives.
"Penn sees houses in terms of real estate value. Residents see houses as homes," Falcon said.
Like Orts and Culhane, Falcon noted a tripling in home values in recent years, but he sees that trend as detrimental to minority and low-income homeowners, who are being pushed out of their neighborhoods.
Falcon sees a potential solution to the current situation -- he believes that Penn should "make the same incentives [offered to University employees] available to the community."
When presented with this solution, Jones said that it is not so simple, as the programs are costly to the University and function as employee benefits.
As far as friction between the local community and Penn-affiliated West Philadelphians, Orts said that "maybe three years ago, that was at its peak" but that the issue had faded since.
Orts attributes this more peaceful coexistence to several initiatives and development plans started by former Penn President Judith Rodin.
He said that the new theater the Bridge: Cinema de Lux and the Freshgrocer, both located at 40th and Walnut streets, have demonstrated that Penn development can also benefit others in the community not affiliated with the University.
By the numbers
Census data from 2000 -- the most recent year they are available -- paint a picture of a West Philadelphia that declined in many respects during the '90s, but at a slower rate than the city as a whole.
During the decade, the aggregated population of the census tracts in and around University City declined 2.7 percent, as compared with a 4.3 percent decrease for Philadelphia.
So-called white flight continued, but at a slowed pace. In 1990, 35.24 percent of the local population was white, as opposed 31.15 percent 10 years later.
Occupancy rates held relatively steady, going from 87 percent in 1990 to 86.92 percent in 2000.
There are many reasons, such as the rapid increase in housing prices, to believe that the statistical outlook may improve significantly by the 2010 census.
Fruits of hard work
"There has been a population explosion on my block," Orts said, as many young, Penn-affiliated families with small children now inhabit the area.
Orts' block bustled with activity Saturday, as children played catch with their friends and parents.
This raises the issue of the quality of schools, long a negative for Penn families contemplating calling University City home.
While the issue is still of concern, Orts said, the area has made significant headway with the 2001 creation of the Penn Alexander School, a 500-student, K-8 joint venture between Penn and the community.
"Penn Alexander has provided another option," Culhane said.
Orts -- a proponent of the Penn Alexander project -- said that many faculty members still choose to send their children to private schools outside University City, however.
The professor's son, 7-year-old Emmett, attends the French International School of Philadelphia, which is located in suburban Bala Cynwyd. Orts is a board member at the school.
While Orts said he would have no problem sending his son to Penn Alexander, he likes the idea of bilingual education, even though his wife must reverse-commute to get their son to and from school.
Another point of view
Wormley, the first director of the OCH, said that there are several positive externalities associated with having Penn faculty and staff living in the immediate area.
Sometimes, she said, it can be difficult for the University to understand the impact of its plans from the point of view of a local resident. With Penn affiliates living in West Philadelphia, "these voices could be heard."
There are advantages, she said, to "having people from the community sitting when things are discussed about the community."
The Penn Alexander project is an example of one such venture. Orts was very active in the process of creating the school, and he was pleased to be able to see the plans from a deeper viewpoint than could most of the Penn community or most of the non-University-affiliated residents of the area.
Right now, University City is a neighborhood in transition and on the rise. Each year, with the aide of the University's programs, new Penn families move into refreshed houses in more vibrant, cleaner neighborhoods. When they arrive, they find improving schools, lower crime rates and a greater connection with their workplace.
In the future, there are sure to be some points of contention as the city as Penn, its employees and native West Philadelphians try to allow their respective interests to coexist. It is this type of disagreement, compromise and synchonicity, however, that give University City the richness, texture and diversity that it enjoys.
