It seems the stars are aligned in such a way that housing policy has risen to the top of the city’s political agenda. First City Council opened its new season by condemning the rising property tax assessments that have hit booming neighborhoods. Then on Tuesday, large swaths of the Philadelphia’s activist community packed the City Hall caucus room to demand more affordable housing for the poor.

Under the banner of the Philadelphia Affordable Housing Coalition (PAHC), groups including the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, the Women's Community Revitalization Project and Liberty Resources, an organization of people with disabilities, held a City Hall rally attended by a number of Council members. According to a PAHC study, for the 200,000 households in the city that earn less than $20,000 (the equivalent of just under $10 an hour for a 40-hour week), there is not enough housing to go around. At the rally, PAHC leaders accused the city of spending too much housing money on bureaucracy and too little on actual housing.

"Why is so much money spent on managing Philadelphia's housing crisis instead of trying to solve it?" Eric von Schmetterling of Liberty Resources asked to loud applause.

Administration spokesman Frank Keel concedes that "the demand for affordable housing far outstrips the ability of existing resources to meet that demand," but says the administration is committed to doing all it can to provide "safe, affordable housing for all Philadelphians."

While the activists were trying to put affordable housing on the agenda, at its session the previous Thursday, City Council was hard at work dealing with Philadelphia's other housing crisis -- the politically popular crusade to keep property taxes under control in desirable neighborhoods. The session opened with a resolution authored by Frank DiCicco urging the administration to stop the property tax increases that have hit sought-after sections of the city like DiCicco's South Philadelphia stomping grounds.

Mayoral spokesman Frank Keel called the resolution "political grandstanding" since the Board of the Revision of Taxes, not the administration, is in charge of property tax assessments. DiCicco staffers maintain that since the mayor controls the Revenue Department, he does have power to influence property taxes.

"The mayor believes that increased property values is great news for the city," says Keel. "What do we want, stagnant or declining property values?"

According to Keel, the administration will aim to help those truly burdened by property tax increases, especially senior citizens, but insists that those with the ability to pay should pay.

Nora Lichtash of PAHC agrees. "People who can afford it should pay," she says. For those who can't, Lichtash favors allowing homeowners to delay paying their property taxes until they sell their home. After all, that is when they'll get the windfall from their rising property values.

DiCicco wants to stay above the fray on the class-based rhetoric of the administration and activist groups. "I'm for all the guys," DiCicco explains, "little guys, middle guys and rich guys. Without the rich guys who go to the theater we wouldn't have jobs for the neighborhood guys. This isn't us versus them, it's just [about finding] a fair and equitable way of treating people who pay taxes."

Who's the Tax Man?

The split over how well to treat the more fortunate among us spilled over into another housing-related issue at the Sept. 12 Council session. As they took their seats in the makeshift caucus room, Council members were greeted with a letter from the mayor explaining that he would not be enforcing the bill they had passed in June requiring the city to pay condominiums’ trash collection bills.

Administration lawyer Milton Valez explained, "It's a separation-of-powers argument. The way the bill is written it appears to dictate to the administration how to spend money, in this case making arrangements to pick up trash from these condos. As a result it basically violates the City Charter from our perspective as to City Council telling the executive branch how to spend money in specific ways. They can do lump-sum budgeting," says Valez, but Council cannot require the administration to foot an open-ended bill.

Scott Tocher, who heads the Philadelphia Condominium Managers Association, was happy to leave the legalese to the lawyers. To him all it meant was the mayor never liked the bill and was going to keep fighting it in any way he could. As for the money, Tocher said his group is committed to working with the administration to implement a plan that is "cost-effective."

"This is an insult to all of the members of City Council," Tocher said, citing the fact that the bill had passed unanimously. "Why do we have a City Council if the Mayor can completely ignore [it]? This is a democracy, [Street] is not the king."

With the legislative and executive branches of city government at odds, the bill appears headed for a fight in the courts.