Oakdale Apartments
Where: Strawberry Mansion, North Philadelphia
In addition to preserving affordability of its existing properties for years to come, PHA has also had success strengthening Philadelphia’s neighborhoods by developing vacant land and distressed properties into affordable housing. One example is Oakdale Apartments.
Completed in 2015, Oakdale involved the development of eight two-bedroom townhouses and four one-bedroom duplex units on vacant land across the street from the Widener Library in the city’s Strawberry Mansion neighborhood in North Philadelphia.
Oakdale was the first of three PHA developments planned for the neighborhood that will eventually transform other vacant parcels into new affordable housing opportunities for individuals and families.
In addition to turning vacant land into affordable housing, these PHA initiatives also provide job opportunities for the community. For Oakdale, 86 people were hired during development, 65 of them through Section 3, a designation that provides economic opportunities to low- and very low-income people who are public housing residents or live in an area where a HUD-assisted project is located. Of the 65 Section 3 hires, 10 were PHA residents.
