Cashing out?: how small-scale landlords in Philadelphia perceive big development and tax policies

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the perspectives of small-scale landlords in Philadelphia regarding tax policies intended to incentivize big development and revalorize the housing stock. Drawing from 71 in-depth, semi-structured interviews collected between 2017 and 2019 with landlords and property managers in Philadelphia, we find that the city’s small-scale landlords perceive the implementation of tax policies which incentivize big development to be negatively impacting them. Landlords utilize varying approaches for coping with tax increases and other economic pressures, and for some small-scale landlords, the tax policies and heightened competition from big developers are pushing them to reevaluate their position among Philadelphia’s housing providers and cash out. This trend could exacerbate the lack of affordable housing options and adversely affect economically vulnerable tenants.

KEYWORDS:

• Landlords
• housing
• renters
• development
• tax policies
• gentrification

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant [#1823618].

Notes on contributors

John Balzarini

John Balzarini is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice at Delaware State University.

Melody L. Boyd

Melody L. Boyd is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at SUNY Brockport.