If you have been supporting the work of Habitat for Humanity in Philadelphia for any length of time, you are aware that one of the key reasons for merging the four Philadelphia affiliates was to increase our capacity to build affordable housing in the City. In the roughly four years since that merger took place the local landscape has changed tremendously. Philadelphia, like many other major cities, experienced a real estate boom that increased property values exponentially and resulted in much new construction throughout Center City and the areas closest to it. This expansion, though good for the city in many ways, has not surprisingly created a greater need for affordable housing, and made the costs associated with that work much higher.

In conversations with Habitat Philadelphia's many supporters, questions about building costs, property acquisition, as well as some about why we do what we do the way we do it, have come up. In response, over the next several months, Habitat Philadelphia invites you to follow the building of a Habitat home from beginning to end. Entitled House Story, this series will highlight the process we have in place from site acquisition through to the settlement table with homeowners. In the end, we hope that you will have a better understanding of the challenges we face, as well as the many successes we achieve on a regular basis. All of the installments in this series will be available on our website throughout its run. We look forward to your feedback on the series and on our program.

Work has begun on Philadelphia's first low-income, LEED-certified green homes. The seven-home Stiles Street Project will not only allow for greater homeownership in a Philadelphia community that is in dire need of affordable housing, but will also environmentally complement a neighborhood that is gradually becoming a prosperous, mixed-income community. But what is the story behind this promising neighborhood? Habitat supporter Arthur Cherry shares his tale as he visits the construction site first-hand.

The seven new Habitat homes are to be constructed on Arthur's old block of 4200 Stiles Street in the East Parkside neighborhood of Philadelphia, his childhood home. Arthur last visited his old West Philadelphia neighborhood in 1972, a time when much of the area's middle class picked up and fled Philadelphia for its bucolic suburbs. The neighborhood since that time had seen a loss of almost fifty percent of its total population with an estimated twenty-eight percent of its current residents living in poverty.

Arthur remembers before Philadelphia's population decline when his block overflowed with working class families driving and supporting Philadelphia's preeminent position as the "Workshop of the World." Arthur describes his old neighborhood as a warm, family-oriented, productive and busy community comprised mainly of working class Jewish residents who worked in the local garment and manufacturing industries there. The vitality and density of the neighborhood lent itself to an atmosphere of community cooperation and pride, a place where stickball was as common to be found on a neighborhood street as water ice on a hot summer evening. This personally invested vision of community compels Arthur's excitement about the plans Habitat has for his old street.

East Parkside has already seen the renovation of dozens of housing units on the border with Fairmount Park, including 25 Habitat houses, and will soon be home to the Please Touch Museum at the site of Memorial Hall in West Fairmount Park, drawing new residents and visitors to the neighborhood. Habitat's project in the East Parkside neighborhood will ensure that neighborhood residents who have lived in the community for years can remain and retain ownership in a neighborhood that is enjoying a part in Philadelphia's real estate boon.

Amid the rubble of the construction site in a neighborhood that has seen its fair share of decline, Arthur Cherry stands with Habitat, proudly smiling. The digging of fresh dirt and the bustle of happy laborers bring Arthur back to his days on Stiles Street with the hope that new families will soon be able to enjoy the neighborhood as he once did.

Frequently Habitat Philadelphia is contacted by schools and youth organizations about volunteer and educational opportunities for children. If you are among them you know that volunteers must be over the age of 16 to build on site due to child labor laws and OSHA regulations, so we have had to turn away the vast majority of groups, until now. Beginning in July, Habitat Philadelphia will launch a new section of our website dedicated to helping kids learn about the environment, poverty, affordable housing AND it will offer opportunities for students as young as eight years old to make a difference in their communities.

Habi-Kids, the program under which the website and other activities will fall, is being developed by volunteers, many of whom teach in Philadelphia, and staff. The program will focus on three E's: Education about the environment and affordable housing; Empowerment - we seek to instill a sense of control over their ability to affect positive change in their community; and Expansion of Community Context by providing a forum for engagement of students from various neighborhoods, both urban and suburban.

Beginning in the fall of this year, Habitat Philadelphia will launch the Brownfield Birdhouse Project, a program that includes both classroom and self- directed discovery related to housing, beginning with students' own homes and radiating out into a discussion of housing around the world. Students will then work at creating an environment in their own communities for native birds and build and design birdhouses meant to attract their particular species. Follow-up activities will include counting birds, tracking bird activity, and reporting that data on our website and comparing notes with other students in the program

The Brownfield Birdhouse Project pilot will include 6 urban schools with planned expansion to included suburban schools in 2008. Curriculum for this program is being developed by Nancy Lee Bergey, interim head of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

We have a need for volunteer teachers, curriculum developers, and web-page designers to help us move forward. If you would be interested in participating in one of these ways on the Habi-Kids Committee, please contact Alexis Jeffcoat at 215.765.6000 x10 or at volunteer@habitatphiladelphia.org.

Visit Habitat Philadelphia's homepage each month to take our poll. Poll questions will help us gauge, as an organization, how our city understands and relates to the state of housing and poverty within its borders. We will then attempt to shed light on these issues in future newsletter articles.