Norman Blumberg Apartments

Owned and operated by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, they were viewed by many as a symbol of the City's failure to address concentrated poverty and crime and were partially demolished in 2016.

The population was 80% black and consisted mainly of laborers and mechanics with an average annual income of $900-1,800 and a high number of families on public assistance.

Though the apartment towers had some early critics,[12] they were initially well regarded by residents and included a 900 square foot garden and community programming.

During a snowstorm that brought record cold temperatures in February of 1979, 40 residents of the Blumberg Apartments blocked traffic at Ridge and Columbia Avenue in protest of the lack of heat, burst pipes and general state of disrepair in the project.

[18] During a political battle over the agency's future, PHA Executive Director Gregory Kern called conditions at the Blumberg Homes "unmanageable" due to crime and physical deterioration.

[22] The PHA also deployed funding it received through several HUD grants in the late 1990s to expand community policing throughout its properties, including at the Blumberg Homes.

First, the City purchased and demolished rows of low-rise housing to the south and east of the Blumberg Apartments during Mayor John F. Street's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.

The aim of this policy was to subsidize private development by consolidating parcels of land to make them viable for the construction of new market-rate housing.

[28] With many of the surrounding Northwest Philadelphia neighborhoods having seen reinvestment and Sharswood lagging behind, the PHA applied for a $500,000 federal grant to create a master plan for the greater Sharswood-Blumberg area.

[10] In December 2019 the PHA opened 83 prefabricated low rise apartments built using modular wood frame construction techniques.