The biggest jump in Philadelphia’s property assessments this year occurred in Kensington, a measure that means many homeowners in the long-struggling neighborhood are likely to see higher taxes amid a concerted effort by the city to clean up the area.
That is according to an Inquirer analysis of recently released property assessments of single-family homes, which found that, citywide, there was a 3% median change in valuations from the 2025 tax year, the last time there was a mass reassessment.
That increase is far more modest than the widespread jump in valuations that homeowners saw two years ago, which captured multiple years of real estate growth and the volatile post-pandemic market.
What remains the same: who will be most affected.
The Inquirer’s analysis of this year’s property assessment data shows that low-income neighborhoods near gentrifying areas saw the sharpest jumps in valuations compared with the rest of the city.
The four areas that saw the largest percentage increases in median assessments — Kensington, Mantua, Grays Ferry, and Kingsessing — all border more gentrified neighborhoods like Fishtown, University City, and Point Breeze. The results of the analysis are a further sign that market pressures in higher-income areas are pushing into pockets of the city that have long been primarily home to Black and brown working-class residents.
Of the eight neighborhoods that saw the largest increases between the 2025 and 2027 tax years, five have median annual household incomes around $40,000 or less, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data. The federal poverty level is $33,000 for a family of four.
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In a statement, officials with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration noted that many homeowners in those five neighborhoods are benefiting from a popular city tax break. The city said that the median 2027 value in those five neighborhoods is $123,600, so for many homeowners in those areas, the median taxable assessed value is just $23,600.
That is because of the homestead exemption, a tax break for homeowners who live in their house as their primary residence that exempts the first $100,000 in home value from property taxes. Homeowners must sign up to be included in the free program.
At least 60% of homeowners in those neighborhoods have signed up for property tax relief programs, according to the city.
James Aros Jr., the chief assessor of the Philadelphia Office of Property Assessment, and Revenue Commissioner Kathleen McColgan said enrollment rates in property tax relief, including the homestead exemption and multiple tax freeze programs, are “encouraging.”
They said the city will “build on this progress through extensive targeted outreach, community partnerships, and efforts to make enrollment as simple and accessible as possible.”
The current property tax rate is 1.3998% of assessed value, which has not changed for nearly a decade. The revenue is split between the city and the Philadelphia School District.
Rising home values in Kensington
Citywide, the steepest increase in valuations was in Kensington, where the median property value jumped 15.3%, from $115,700 in the 2025 tax year to $133,400 now. That median increase would translate to a roughly $250 annual property tax hike.
That comes after Parker’s administration in 2024 launched a multipronged effort to address the long-entrenched open-air drug market in Kensington, which is the epicenter of the city’s opioid crisis and a site of sprawling homelessness.
In this 2021 file photo, a glass building at J and Tioga sits near a beer store in Kensington.Inga Saffron
Some neighborhood leaders have watched with anxiety as luxury housing developers and out-of-town investors gobbled up properties in the neighborhood, fearing that poorer residents and middle-class homebuyers may be priced out.
City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, a Democrat who represents the 7th Council District, which includes parts of Kensington, said she knew speculators from outside the area would want to make it “the next gentrified neighborhood” once the city changed its strategy to more aggressively clean up trash and improve public safety.
But Lozada said there are not enough programs specific to Kensington aimed at preventing displacement as a result of rising property values, especially as the city is investing millions of dollars a year to improve the neighborhood. She said her office is exploring additional tax relief measures.
“I’m going to do whatever I have to do to make sure that residents who have lived in that community can stay there, can raise their families there,” Lozada said. “We have witnessed what has happened on the southern end of the district, where there has been rapid gentrification.”
In this March file photo, City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada stands in Council chambers during Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s budget address.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
Lozada also said rising property values in Kensington are part of why she has been “so careful with projects presented to me” and has prioritized what she sees as equitable development in the neighborhood — at times to the chagrin of developers who think she has been too restrictive.
“I’m all about people making a return,” she said, “but you can’t continue to do it on the backs of poor people.”
The 3100 block of Arbor Street in Philadelphia on Tuesday, July 7, 2026.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
Continuing change in pockets of West Philly
There were also significant property value increases in parts of West Philadelphia.
The median increase in Mantua, the neighborhood north of University City, was the second highest in the city, at 15%, according to The Inquirer’s analysis. The median increase was 12% in Kingsessing, the neighborhood south of University City that in 2025 saw the largest jump of any neighborhood in Philadelphia.
Newly developed buildings along Fairmount Avenue in the neighborhood of Mantua in Philadelphia, Pa., on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, a Democrat who represents West Philadelphia and has made preventing displacement a key initiative, said that there has long been racial bias in the city’s property assessments and that the city must “get serious” about protecting low-income homeowners by revamping its system.
“There has to be a higher level of urgency in making sure that the city doesn’t have a hand in pushing out all of these homeowners that make Philadelphia what it is,” Gauthier said. “It’s unconscionable for us to destabilize our neighborhoods and the longtime homeowners who live there because we didn’t take enough care to make sure that our process was fair and equitable.”
For too long, she said, city officials have said they intended to examine the property assessment practices and identify improvements. In 2024, Parker convened a task force to study the process.
Aros told Council in April that the task force’s report was “being finalized.” He said OPA would look to implement recommendations from the report, including conducting more regular reassessments and improving property-level data such as property condition.
The city is also planning to hire an outside consultant to examine its mass appraisal practices, according to city records. The analyst will be responsible for drafting a report by the end of this year.
Deputy creative director John Duchneskie contributed to this article.
Pennsylvania elected officials are mourning the death of former State Sen. Shirley Kitchen, the second Black woman to serve in the state Senate and a champion for progressive issues who represented parts of North Philadelphia for more than two decades. She died Saturdayat 79. A cause of death was not immediately clear.
Kitchen represented the 3rd Senatorial District, composed of parts of North Philadelphia, for 20 years. She is remembered by her former colleagues as a pillar and matriarch of her community who worked tirelessly to improve the lives of low-income people, even after she retired.
“She did so many things for so many people. Now that I’m old enough to appreciate it, I’m not quite sure how she did it — and she did it with such force,” said State Sen. Anthony H. Williams (D., Philadelphia), who served alongside Kitchen in the Senate and had known her for decades. Kitchen was elected to the state Senate in 1996 and served five terms before retiring in 2016.
Her former colleagues, some through tears, credited many of Pennsylvania’s recent criminal justice reforms as being born under Kitchen’s leadership, with her early legislative proposals paving the way for their passage years later. For example, Kitchen authored early drafts of what is now known as the Clean Slate Act, which automatically seals some nonviolent convictions after 10 years, hiding them from most employer and landlord background checks. She first introduced similar legislationin Harrisburg years earlier and it failed. In 2018, two years after Kitchen retired, the Clean Slate Act became law in Pennsylvania and was heralded as a first-in-the-nation model for criminal justice reform.
Elected officials across the city shared their condolences, remembering Kitchen as an advocate who cared deeply for her community.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker in a social media post on Sunday recalled Kitchen as “fighting for people who often had no one else to fight for them,” and as a trailblazer for Black women in politics.
“Shirley Kitchen cared about working people, and she cared about Philadelphia,” said Parker, the city’s first Black female mayor and a former state representative.
City Council President Kenyatta Johnson said in a statement that Kitchen “never forgot who she was fighting for,” dedicating her life to making people’s lives better.
State Rep. Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia), Pennsylvania’s first Black female speaker of the House, wrote in a social media post that Kitchen was “a mentor and her service in the state House and Senate inspired me greatly.”
Williams added that Kitchen also sought to elevate other Black politicians, like himself, to elected office — and laid the groundwork for much of the city’s current political progressivism.
“The reality is that a lot of the infrastructure that helps them, Shirley had everything to do with it, and more,” Williams said, noting her advocacy and experience during the Civil Rights Movement. “I would hope the progressives in this generation would tip their hat to a generation that really created the progressive movement.”
State Sen. Sharif Street (D., Philadelphia) had known Kitchen since he was a child, and said she helped him see the power a Senate seat has in improving the lives of his neighbors. When she decided to retire, Kitchen encouraged Street, who was on her staff at the time, to run to fill the vacancy in the 3rd District following her fifth and final term in the state Senate.
Williams and Street recalled Kitchen as a fair but demanding mentor.
“If she told you to do something, you better do it,” Williams said, with a laugh.
For Street, Kitchen “didn’t limit her advice. She had opinions about everything in my life, including when my wife was right and I needed to listen to her.”
Street said he spoke with Kitchen weekly, and Williams said he remained in touch with her as recently as last month. She often had ideas or issues she wanted the senators to take up. Street spoke with her last week about a forthcoming Registered Community Organization meeting that she was leading about a new proposed development nearby, emblematic of her continued involvement in her community.
Prior to her election to the state Senate, Kitchen was involved in the National Welfare Rights Movement, which was a progressive advocacy group for the dignified treatment of women and children, largely led by Black women, during the 1960s and 1970s, Williams said.
Kitchen served as the minority chair of the Senate Public Health and Welfare committee, in which she often leaned on her social work experience to inform her legislative proposals.
A Democrat in a time where Republicans controlled the state legislature, she served her entire tenure in the minority party, but was still able to garner bipartisan support for some of her legislative proposals.
“This image of her being an urban Black woman from Philadelphia would limit her ability to get stuff done in the Senate just wasn’t true,” Williams added. “She could analyze people and figure out what way to approach them with exceptional skill.”
Born in 1946 in Augusta, Ga., Kitchen attended the Philadelphia School District and graduated from Antioch University in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in human services, according to her Senate Library biography. She went on to work for former Philadelphia Mayor John Street, Sharif Street’s father, before she was elected to the state House in a special election in 1987. After she lost reelection to the seat in 1989, Kitchen returned to Harrisburg a decade later after her election to represent the 3rd Senatorial District.
“She was a transformational figure that loved her community and understood that the purpose of those of us holding elected power is to be able to make a difference in the lives of the people we serve, in a way that they can feel and see,” Sharif Street added.
Funeral services will be announced in the coming days, he said.
Senator Shirley Kitchen in the audience during speeches in honor of the historical marker that was unveiled at Sullivan Progress Plaza September 14, 2016. The plaza was the first black-owned and operating shopping center in America. Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016.Margo Reed/ Staff Photographer
Police shot and killed a man outside St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in North Philadelphia on Thursday, authorities said.
Officers were called to the hospital shortly before 10:30 a.m. for a report by hospital staff of an “irate man,” said Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel.
At a briefing with the media Thursday evening, Bethel clarified that the man, whose name and age were not released, did not threaten anyone at the hospital.
“The hospital was at no time under threat,” Bethel said.
The man was at the hospital yesterday related to something involving a “child in the hospital,” Bethel said, then later adding that it was the man’s son.
The man was asked to leave Wednesday, and when he returned Thursday, he was not allowed to enter the hospital, said Bethel, who did not elaborate on why the man was asked to leave.
But when he returned Thursday, “he did not threaten” staff and was “compliant.”
Shortly thereafter, a relative called police and reported that the man was suicidal and may have a gun, Bethel said.
Police drove to the bus stop on Erie Avenue outside the hospital where the man was and an officer was just exiting from the passenger side of a police vehicle when the man allegedly pulled out a gun, Bethel said. The officer then fired.
The man was transported to Temple University Hospital, where he later died. Bethel said a gun was recovered at the scene.
A woman standing next to the man, who Bethel described as his girlfriend, was grazed by a bullet. He said she was in good condition.
“He did not fire his weapon,” Bethel said about the man.
The officer who fatally shot the man was placed on administrative duty while the shooting is investigated.
At an earlier media briefing, Bethel described the shooting as a tragedy that unfolded in a matter of minutes.
He added: “We have a lot to sort through,” including the mental state of the man who was killed. “He may have been going through some mental issue,” Bethel said.
No patients or hospital staff were injured, said hospital spokesperson Bill Tierney. The man who was shot did not come inside the hospital, he said.
The hospital initially went into a lockdown, which has since been lifted, Tierney said. Some entrances to the hospital were closed during the initial police investigation but they had reopened by Thursday afternoon, he said.
Police have not released the name, age, or rank of the officer who discharged his weapon.
Michael Lopez, a senior staffer at a sports complex across the street from the hospital, said he heard about a half dozen gunshots. Initially mistaking the gunfire for July Fourth fireworks, Lopez said he came out to Erie Avenue, where he saw a throng of police officers — and a woman he said appeared to be bleeding from her neck.
“It was gruesome,” Lopez said.
Thursday’s shooting was the second fatal shooting by a Philadelphia police officer in less than three weeks.
On June 14, three officers were injured and Eric Franks was fatally wounded after exchanging gunfire in the Wynnefield neighborhood of West Philadelphia. The officers — who were shot in the hip, leg, and face — were hospitalized and recovered, police said.
Their names had not been released as of Thursday because of an active threat assessment, said police spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp.
— Staff writer Robert Moran contributed to this article.
A 39-year-old man was stabbed during a fight on a SETPA bus in West Philadelphia early Monday, authorities said.
The incident began around 2:44 a.m. when two men got on theL1 Owl bus at 15th and Market Streets and began fighting, police said.
The bus driver flagged down a nearby Philadelphia police officer for assistance.
After an unsuccessful attempt to separate the men, the officer deployed a Taser on the 39-year-old man, whom police did not identify.
While taking him into custody, the officer saw that the man had been stabbed. He was taken to Jefferson Hospital, where he remained in stable condition late Monday morning.
Investigators are looking for a the second person they said was involved in the fight and fled the scene.
Officers recovered a knife. Police gave no motive for the stabbing which remains under investigation.
The Navy Yard got a new boat this month. It isn’t a military ship and won’t be setting sail.
The decommissioned 1977 tugboat, now painted in Urban’s signature yellow and marked by its logo, is now permanently stationed outside the company’s headquarters — as a sort of mascot, to company cofounder and CEO Dick Hayne.
The tugboat’s arrival coincides with a momentous anniversary for Urban: the company’s 20th year at the Navy Yard. Urban staff started relocating 500 employees there in 2004, and the headquarters was fully operational by 2006. Now it has 15 buildings and just over 2,500 employees.
And the company is continuing to grow.
Urban Outfitters chief development officer Dave Ziel stands with a retired tugboat the company acquired for display at its Navy Yard headquarters.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
Urban’s newest addition at the Navy Yard is a 117,000-square-foot photo studio building, which opened in April.
Urban announced earlier this month that it plans to hire at least 450 workers at the Navy Yard and at least 600 at a new Bucks County facility, which is set to open by 2028. Gov. Josh Shapiro joined Hayne for the news conference, and lauded the business as a home-grown global company bringing jobs to Pennsylvania.
“We intend to stay here,” said CEO Hayne. “We have no thought of leaving.”
How Urban grew from Philly roots to global retailer
Urban was founded in 1970. The company’s roots are in West Philadelphia, where it opened its first store, a Free People. It now has almost 800 stores across the globe under the brand names Urban Outfitters, Free People, FP Movement, and Anthropologie.
Walking into an Urban store doesn’t feel like stepping into a Macy’s where there are racks of clothes and bright fluorescent lighting, said senior analyst Gerard Machado at RetailStat.
“It’s not like you’re running an errand to get something,” said Machado. “You might want to spend a little time looking at things. That’s a unique feature of Urban Outfitters.”
Similarly, customers who wander into Anthropologie find artfully arranged dinner plates and glassware amid scented candles — not just items stacked in rows on shelves.
Analysts say Urban is one of the more successful names in retail today, with strong sales numbers, loyal customers, and the ability to market to different audiences with its multiple brands. The company competes with the likes of J.Crew, Abercrombie & Fitch, Uniqlo, Ralph Lauren, Zara, and H&M.
The company grew profits by more than 15% in its most recent fiscal year, with nearly $465 million in net income in the year ending Jan. 31.
The Anthropologie store at 18th and Walnut Streets in Center City is shown in this 2020 file photo. Heather Khalifa / Staff PhotographerPeople walk outside the Urban Outfitters store near 16th and Walnut Streets in Center City in November 2019.Heather Khalifa / Staff Photographer
One key feature of Urban is that it’s experimental and innovative, said Neil Saunders, a retail analyst and managing director at GlobalData. Nuuly, the company’s clothing rental platform, which launched in 2019, is one of the “very few players that’s really successful” in that industry, he said. For $98 a month, subscribers get six fashionable items delivered to their door, which they can wear for a month and then ship back.
But there have been financial hurdles, too.
The Urban Outfitters brand struggled with declining sales in recent years. Gen Z consumers migrated “heavily into ultra fast fashion,” said Machado, and the brand didn’t adapt quickly enough. As merchandise piled up in inventory, Urban cut prices, which consumers grew to expect.
To turn the brand around, the company set out to rebuild relationships with customers, bring on more items attractive to Gen Z, and engage with customers on platforms they were already on, like TikTok and YouTube, The Inquirer reported in 2023. The company hired a new president to helm the brand in 2024, and it returned to profitability last year.
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Tariffs have also pushed the company to adapt in part by negotiating better terms with vendors, shipping items by sea instead of air, and slightly adjusting pricing.
There have been workforce challenges too. In 2020, when a racial reckoning erupted in the country and seeped into corporate offices following the killing of George Floyd, Urban saw criticism from within its own workplace. Reports emerged of employees allegedly racially profiling customers as potential shoplifters, and some employees said people of color faced challenges to advancing their careers at the company, or reporting discrimination.
“Since 2020, we have prioritized creating a culture of inclusion and belonging at our home office, in our stores, and at our facilities,” said Meaghan Condon, Urban’s director of communications and impact, in an emailed statement this month. She said that includes training for new hires and managers focused on inclusivity.
Another key ingredient in the company’s culture: the Hayne family.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (left) with Urban Outfitters CEO Dick Hayne at the company’s newest building, which houses photo studios. They held a press conference in June to announce Urban Outfitters’ plans to hire over 1,000 new employees.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
Cofounder and CEO Dick Hayne’s son, Dave, is chief technology officer and president of Nuuly, and his nephew, Azeez Hayne, is chief administrative officer. His wife, Meg, is Urban’s co-president and chief creative officer.
Frank Conforti, chief operating officer and co-president at Urban, said the family ties are an asset and part of the culture.
Having a cofounder still at the helm has allowed Urban to focus on long-term strategy and take calculated risks, said Conforti, such as launching Nuuly. Investors weren’t all in on the idea to begin with.
Now Nuuly has over 450,000 active subscribers — more than doubling that number since 2023.
“We sort of don’t rest on what we did yesterday,” said Conforti. “It’s not about yesterday’s bestsellers.”
Racks of clothing inside the Nuuly warehouse in Levittown, Pa., last year. Nuuly is a clothing rental subscription service that offers a variety of styles, sizes, and brands.William Thomas Cain / For The Inquirer
A more efficient process
In Urban’s newest building at the Navy Yard, rows and rows of wheeled clothing racks are spread across several rooms. Industrial metal shelves are filled with sneakers, sandals, and handbags. Lamps and armchairs wait to be photographed for e-commerce.
The space was once used for building and housing ship components, noted Jennifer Calliagas, Urban’s North America director of planning, who led the new building’s development. Urban bought it from Rhoads Industries in 2016 for an undisclosed sum.
Urban spent about $40 million to fit the space for its needs, which included stripping the building down to its structure, said chief development officer Dave Ziel. Construction started last year, and Urban employees began working in the space by mid-April.
Inside the new building are adjoining rooms to seamlessly carry out the photography process: Clothing, shoes, and accessories are received in one room, then moved into the next room to be styled, and finally to the studio where they’re photographed. Staging areas are set up to portray bedrooms and bathrooms, functioning kitchens were built for cooking food to show in photos, and plants are on hand to finish off the staged living spaces.
The Inquirer was not permitted to photograph the studios because the merchandise had not yet been released publicly.
Not long ago, the company’s photo work was done in rented studios in New York City, Calliagas said, or scattered across the company headquarters.
Vintage signage from the early days of Urban Outfitters, now displayed in the company’s Navy Yard headquarters.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff PhotographerMassive outdoor signage marks Urban Outfitters’ presence at the Navy Yard.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
“Anthropologie, for instance … would be receiving in one area and then going to another building for style-outs, and then sometimes going back into another building for shooting,” Calliagas said. “It was a really inefficient process.”
At the Navy Yard, the company’s brands are housed in separate buildings, in part because they each “speak to their customer” in a different way, said Oona McCullough, executive director of investor relations. She called this kind of separation “states’ rights.”
Consolidating the photo work under one roof has freed up space in other buildings, said Ziel, which is helpful for the continued growth of brands.
“The brands are still growing pretty aggressively,” said Calliagas.
Jennifer Calliagas, director of planning for North America, discusses how the company will use its photo studios at its newest building in the Navy Yard.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
A campus with more possibilities
Conforti refers to the headquarters as a “campus,” with a “youthful” and “very collegiate” atmosphere. When bankers or investors visit the headquarters, “we tell them to dress down casual,” he said. “They drop their tie.”
In keeping with standards set long ago by Google and other Silicon Valley tech companies, the campus is full of amenities. The newer ones include pickleball courts, a basketball court, and a walking track. And there’s plenty of green space for employees to walk their dogs, which are welcome in the workplace.
Most people work in the office at least three days a week, said Conforti.
“We’re not the most red-tape, bureaucratic company,” he said. “There’s just nothing like being here on campus getting things done. There’s an efficiency to it — and there’s a community.”
People walk to and from the building that houses Urban Outfitters’ cafeteria, which is open to employees and the public.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
On a recent Monday, Urban’s cafeteria was just about to start serving warm lunches, and a few dozen people waited in line, while others roamed the large building with its decorative pools. Some wore U.S. Navy uniforms — the cafeteria is open to the public. Options included pizza, Teriyaki beef rice bowls, and grab-and-go items like ice cream bars and boxed sushi.
CEO Hayne stopped in for a bag of chips and a wrap, seemingly unnoticed.
At the June news conference, he recalled his first impression of the Navy Yard over 20 years ago: “I drove down Broad Street, came in Kitty Hawk [Avenue], looked at all these beautiful old brick buildings from the turn of the 20th century, and I said ‘sold!’”
Then & Now: Building 18 in 1917 and in 2024. Built in 1908 and used as a machine shop, it is now part of the URBN campus. Building 16 in the background was also used as a machine shop and is now a another example of an adaptive reuse project. #discovertheyard#navyyardhistorypic.twitter.com/VutWsQwrUc
The good times roll at Khyber Pass Pub in Old City, where the menu of New Orleans-style comfort food includes a hearty share of vegan items. The chicken-style po’ boy, for example, delivers crispy, thinly breaded seitan while keeping the classic New Orleans formula intact. Served on a crackly Leidenheimer roll, it’s dressed with shredded lettuce, tomato, pickles, vegan mayo, and Creole mustard, delivering a satisfying mix of crunch, tang, and subtle heat. It’s a convincing plant-based rendition that feels like a true po’ boy, not a compromise. Khyber Pass Pub, 56 S. Second St., 215-238-5888, khyberpasspub.com
— Michael Klein
Fried silverfish — a Cantonese delicacy that’s pretty similar to a French Fry — at Grand Palace, 600 Washington Ave. #3B.Kiki Aranita / Staff
Fried Silverfish at Grand Palace
Weekend dim sum at Grand Palace in South Philly’s Little Saigon is a party where the whole family (second cousins and all) is invited, so the party-sized portions of Cantonese delicacies deserve special attention. The rice-flour-battered and fried silverfish (also known as noodlefish or whitebait) are generously sized and hopelessly addictive. More delicious than any French fry — though similarly salty, crunchy, and thin — the tiny fish are lightly funky and just barely scented with jalapeños and scallions. I haven’t stopped thinking about them since. Grand Palace Restaurant, 600 Washington Ave. #3B, 215-645-0079, grandpalacechineserestaurant.com
— Kiki Aranita
An array of empanadas and a dulce de leche medialuna at Jezabel’s in West Philadelphia.Beatrice Forman / Staff
Empanadas and a dulce de leche medialuna at Jezabel’s
Empanadas are the main attraction at Jezabel Careaga’s eponymous West Philly cafe, where the open-concept kitchen feeds into a dining room that allows customers to watch bakers knead, shape, and pack the dough tight with fillings. The lineup is special, but simple: a stewed chicken empanada lightly seasoned with aji dulce; a vegetarian version stuffed with leeks and gooey white cheese; and a vegan version packed with a summery lentil and corn salad. Careaga’s empanadas are baked — not fried — and so light that it’s easy to snack on several in one sitting.
Even more excellent are the cafe’s medialunas, an Argentinian pastry that sits somewhere between brioche and a croissant. The dulce de leche version is ultra-decadent, its butter crescent-shaped layers peeling apart to reveal a core of caramel cream. When Careaga returns to Fitler Square with a second location — likely opening this fall, I’m told — it’ll still be empanadas and medialunas galaore. Thank goodness. Jezabel’s, 206-208 S. 45th St., 215-554-7380, jezabelsphl.com
Rachel Maddow’s brief turn as a Philadelphian began with her bicycle being stolen on the first day of a new job.
“I got to work at 9 a.m. and I got out for lunch before noon, because I didn’t have anything to do,” Maddow said. “My bike was already gone.”
MS NOW’s top star was in Center City on Thursday night to interview constitutional legal expert Sherrilyn Ifill live in front of nearly 2,000 people at the Academy of Music.
But prior to the event, she reminisced about her brief time in Philly in the early 1990s, shortlyafter she came out as gay during her freshman year of college at Stanford University.
“It didn’t go well at home, so it was a bit of a scramble in terms of like paying for college, figuring out what I was going to do, where I was going to live,” Maddow said. “And I got an internship at a think tank at Penn.”
Maddow lived in West Philadelphia and basically ate nothing but Ethiopian food for a few months, though she can’t remember the name of the street: “It was in the 40s and it was one of the tree-named streets.”
In college she was an AIDS activist and focused on healthcare policy, so landing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics seemed liked an ideal fit.
Maddow said her job was to answer the phone. But the internship didn’t last long.
“I was not an additive,” Maddow said. “I don’t think I was an asset to the organization.”
Kiyoshi Kuromiya seen here in 1992, was a gay civil rights activist who helped establish ACT UP Philly. GEORGE REYNOLDS / Staff Photographer, file
Maddow’s activism began when she was still in high school, when she began working at a hospice for people who were dying during the AIDS epidemic.
Still, those few months living in Philadelphia influenced Maddow’s developing political voice. She idolized ACT UP Philly, an activist organization fighting for people with HIV/AIDS, and thinks that gay civil rights activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya is the city’s most overlooked hero for the work he did helping connect people with hard-to-find information about the virus and treatment.
“He saved millions of lives,” Maddow said. “The city needs to build a statue for Kiyoshi Kuromiya.”
Maddow has returned to Philly a number of times over the years, and every time she does, it makes her feel like she’s 19 again. Things have changed — seeing Indego bicycles to rent on street corners after hers was stolen is pretty jarring — but though her time living here was brief, she didn’t hesitate saying, “Philly was really formative for me.”
“The thing I loved about Philly at the time, and that I kind of fell in love with, even before I really knew what to do with it, was the really sparky, edgy, impolite activist spirit,” Maddow said. “I think I’m just a middle-class polite kid who doesn’t like to offend anybody, and Philly kind of shook me out of that a little bit, and made me aspire to edgier things.”
More live events and a new app coming from MS NOW
Nearly 2,000 people attended Thursday night’s event at the Academy of Music. MS NOW
A strong Philly current ran through MS NOW’s event Thursday night, which highlighted the messy history of the American experiment leading up to the country’s 250th anniversary next week.
“My mother’s best friend of 70 years lives here,” Psaki said.
Thursday’s event was part of a larger strategy of engagement at the network after breaking away from NBC and becoming part of Versant, hence the name change from MSNBC to MS NOW. Ratings are up, but the cord-cutting trend is undeniable, so MS NOW is attempting to secure a digital future while it remains a popular TV destination.
The network has now hosted three large fan events since 2024 and another is planned for Sept. 26 ahead of the midterm elections, though further details have not been announced. Attendees in Philly on Thursday night received a free, one-year subscription to MS NOW’s membership product that is set to launch soon. It will act as a streaming platform and online community for the network’s progressive fans and provide access to its biggest stars.
“We’re always looking for ways to connect with our MS NOW community, to meet more viewers where they are, and to engage them in new ways,” said Lauren Peikoff, the network’s executive producer of live events.
Cecil Parker, a Philadelphia musician, said the state of affairs in Washington compelled him to attend Thursday’s event.
“Urgency. That’s the all-encompassing word,” Parker said, who often tunes into MS NOW to get their take on the news. “They have their opinions, but it’s based on the facts. So I dig that.”
Some audience members traveled from as far as Arizona and California to have a chance to hear Maddow and her MS NOW colleagues in person.
Tony Clyburn and his wife, Lisa, drove more than 10 hours from West Columbia, S.C., to take part. A radio host back home, Clyburn said it was inspiring being in a room with people from different walks of life who want what’s best for their neighbors and their country.
“These gatherings are good because they’re as close to a town hall as we can get,” Clyburn said.
A West Philadelphia man who was convicted last year of seeking to build bombs in support of Islamic extremist groups was sentenced Thursday to 20 to 40 months in prison and six years of probation.
Muhyyee-Ud-din Abdul-Rahman, 20, was found guilty in September of charges including attempting to possess weapons of mass destruction after jurors concluded he had experimented three years ago in and around his Wynnefield home with dangerous chemicals often found in high-volume explosives.
Authorities said that Abdul-Rahman had done so after he communicated with Syrian extremists on Instagram, and that their arrest of Abdul-Rahman in 2023 had prevented him from unleashing a terror attack on the region.
Jurors, however, found Abdul-Rahman not guilty of the more serious charge of possessing weapons of mass destruction, suggesting they believed he intended to build a bomb but had never succeeded. Common Pleas Court Judge Michele Hangley also threw out a conspiracy charge after ruling that prosecutors had not proved Abdul-Rahman had been working with anyone else.
Abdul-Rahman told Hangley after being convicted that he had matured during his time in custody, much of it spent in a juvenile facility because he was arrested as a teen. And he said he had come to reject the radical beliefs promoted by the group he was following, Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad, or KTJ.
Still, District Attorney Larry Krasner said Thursday that he was “deeply concerned” by what he cast as an insufficient penalty for a would-be terrorist. Krasner said his office had asked that Abdul-Rahman serve at least 10 years behind bars because prosecutors believe he remains “an extreme danger” to the city.
“We ought to be able to live in a city where a terrorist is kept off the streets for a reasonable amount of time,” Krasner said.
Federal investigators looking into KTJ’s activities in the United States in 2023 found that Abdul-Rahman was the only person in the country exchanging messages with some of its key online propagandists. Further investigation later revealed that Abdul-Rahman, around that time, had also applied for his first passport, tried to reach out to a Syrian border-crossing office, and purchased or possessed wires and chemicals common in homemade bombs.
When authorities went on to conduct surveillance of Abdul-Rahman, officials said at trial, officers tailing him at a Lowe’s store saw him buy muriatic acid, a key component in a violent explosive dubbed TATP, also known as “the mother of Satan.” And a review of his internet search history around that time showed he had been looking up Philadelphia parade routes, trash can bombs, and nuclear power plants — something authorities said was consistent with “target and tactic” research.
When federal agents questioned Abdul-Rahman inside a police station, an official testified, he admitted conducting bomb tests near his house and said he wanted to become a “bomb guy” for KTJ in Syria.
Authorities arrested Abdul-Rahman in August 2023, just as he was to begin his senior year in high school. At the time, he was a promising wrestler with a college scholarship offer, and his father, Qawi Abdul-Rahman, is a well-known criminal defense lawyer who has mounted unsuccessful campaigns to become a city judge.
Abdul-Rahman’s attorneys said at trial that he had made mistakes, but that he was an impressionable teen who had fallen down a “rabbit hole” of online propaganda. They also said he had never succeeded in building a bomb and did not take serious, in-person steps to advance the radical views he expressed online or in his house.
At a hearing last month, one of his attorneys, Donald Chisholm, urged Hangley to consider that Abdul-Rahman’s path to the crime began when he was 16 years old.
“Even at the age he is now,” Chisholm said, “he’s not fully matured.”
Chisholm, said Thursday that he thought the sentence was fair, and that Krasner’s continued insistence on casting his client as dangerous was “disingenuous” and did not account for factors such as his client’s age at the time of arrest, or his growth over the last several years.
The case attracted attention in part because it was a rare example of the district attorney’s office seeking to convict someone it described as a would-be international terrorist.Although federal counterterrorism agents were heavily involved in the investigation, juveniles are rarely prosecuted in federal courts.
Krasner said Thursday that Abdul-Rahman likely would have faced a significantly harsher penalty if he had been convicted of similar conduct in the federal system, and he criticized the state’s sentencing guidelines, which prosecutors said Hangley cited when imposing her penalty.
Abdul-Rahman has already served about 34 months in custody, meaning he will face a maximum of another six months in prison under the penalty Hangley imposed.
Krasner said his office was weighing whether to appeal the sentence.
Staff writer Jillian Kramer contributed to this article.
An overwhelming majority of Philadelphians feel safe in their neighborhoods and more than 40% believe that the city has become cleaner under the leadership of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, according to a new poll, suggesting that city residents see significant progress on the mayor’s key campaign promises.
However, there is not a broad citywide consensus on Parker’s tenure as she heads into an expected reelection campaign next year, and there were also red flags for her and the city, including alarmingly bad evaluations of the public school system.
That is according to a recent Suffolk University/Philadelphia Inquirer poll that surveyed 500 Philadelphians across the city on issues including crime, quality of life, city services, and education. More than half of those surveyed said they would rate Philly as a “good” or “excellent” place to live.
About 83% of residents reported feeling safe in the city just five years after record-high rates of gun violence in Philadelphia, with respondents in neighborhoods most affected by violent crime most likely to say they feel that crime has decreased since Parker took office in 2024.
And the city’s public school system emerged as a primary concern, with 45% saying they would rate Philadelphia’s schools as of “poor” quality, while more than half of the poll’s respondents said that schools play an important role in whether they stay in the city or move out.
The survey was conducted last week, after the financially struggling Philadelphia School District and its controversial school closure plan dominated local headlines for more than a month.
David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, said the poll provides Philadelphia policymakers with a blueprint for how to keep people in the city: continue progress on crime and improve the public schools.
“If that happens,” he said, “then Philadelphia is poised to be a renaissance city.”
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker attending the Juneteenth Block Party at the African American Museum in Philadelphia on June 19.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Parker said in a statement that her administration “values both qualitative and quantitative information.”
“The real-life, lived experiences of people in this city are what matters most,” she said. “Polling is not my North Star in how I govern. My solutions always come from the ground up, from what people can see, touch, and feel.”
For Parker’s political fortunes, the poll represents mixed results. It showed that the substantial base of support that lifted the mayor to office in 2023 is holding up, with Black residents and older Philadelphians most likely to say they have a favorable view of her and see progress on her campaign promises.
But Parker has not consolidated broad citywide enthusiasm, with 44% of respondents saying that they have a favorable view of the mayor and 35% saying they have an unfavorable one. That is positive territory for Parker more than halfway through her first term, but not overwhelmingly so.
Her biggest vulnerability is with young people — respondents under age 45 were more likely to say that they had an unfavorable view of the mayor than a favorable one. White residents were also more sour on Parker.
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Paleologos said that the poll shows there are “pockets of strength” that make Parker, a centrist Democrat, electorally strong, but that he would not consider her support broad-based.
Those results come as the city’s most prominent progressive political groups are weighing whether to mount a challenge against Parker next year. As the incumbent, Parker would be the hands-down favorite in any contest, as no Philadelphia mayor has lost a campaign for reelection in modern history.
Aren Platt, the executive director of People for Parker, the mayor’s political arm, said in a statement that Parker’s support “has always been under-counted, especially in public polling.” He cited polling conducted during the 2023 mayor’s race that showed her tied with or trailing her top opponents in the Democratic primary, in which Parker prevailed by a commanding 10 percentage points.
Platt also said the Suffolk University/Inquirer poll is not necessarily predictive of how the mayor could perform in a theoretical reelection race. The poll was of Philadelphia residents, not likely primary voters.
“This poll may reflect the demographics of Philadelphia, but elections are decided by the people who show up to vote on election day,” he said. “In Philadelphia, those are two very different universes.”
The poll also showed relatively positive marks for one of Parker’s potential successors: City Council President Kenyatta Johnson. He has said that he supports Parker for reelection, but Philadelphia mayors are limited to two terms and Johnson is widely seen as a potential future contender for the city’s top office.
Overall, 48% of respondents said they had a favorable view of Johnson and only 12% had an unfavorable one. Johnson is also far less publicly known than Parker, with 40% of those surveyed saying they had either never heard of him or were undecided on their view of him.
Negative reviews of the Philadelphia School District
About one in five respondents said that schools and education are the most important issue in the city, making it second only to crime. Paleologos said that is somewhat unique to Philadelphia — in other major cities where he has polled public opinion, he said, respondents often rank jobs and the economy as greater concerns.
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Nearly 75% of respondents said they would rate the quality of Philadelphia’s public schools as “fair” or “poor.” Younger residents were far more likely than older ones to rate the schools as “poor,” and more than half of all respondents said the public schools are an important factor in determining whether they and their family stay in the city or move away.
“That’s a big number,” Paleologos said. “That research alone gives the policymakers a bird’s-eye view of what they need to do to keep people here in Philadelphia.”
The survey also shows that residents see issues across the school system. When asked what should be the highest priority in improving the schools, there was little consensus among respondents: About a third said teacher pay, while a quarter said school safety, and another quarter said building repairs.
Just 4.4% said the highest priority should be instituting year-round school, an initiative that Parker campaigned on and that the district is piloting.
Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr., School Board President Reginald L. Streater, and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker stand together during an announcement at the School District of Philadelphia Headquarters on June 10.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
In a statement provided to The Inquirer after the initial publication of this story, Monique Braxton, a spokesperson for the School District of Philadelphia, said district leaders share “the public’s sense of urgency to significantly improve public schools in the City of Philadelphia.”
She said the district is making progress toward the superintendent’s goal of making the district the “fastest improving large urban district in the nation.”
Braxton added that the district’s own survey suggests most parents are satisfied. The district’s 2024-25 survey, Braxton said, found that 90.3% of more than 26,000 parents whose students attend district schools said they were pleased with the quality of education their child received.
The quality of Philadelphia’s public schools has been a perennial concern, and city leaders have long pointed to the chronic underfunding of the Philadelphia School District. In 2023, the state Commonwealth Court ruled that Pennsylvania had for years unconstitutionally deprived students in low-wealth districts of an adequate education, and state lawmakers are now funding schools under a new formula.
District leaders have undertaken significant efforts in recent years to improve academic performance. There have been some positive results, including improvement on test scores and a recent report that said Philadelphia School District students’ learning post-pandemic was tops in the nation among large urban districts.
The district also earlier this year adopted a sweeping, $3.3 billion effort to renovate and modernize 169 schools. That multiyear plan was hotly debated, as it included the closure of 17 schools.
Councilmember Nina Ahmad shows off her T-shirt during a rally outside of the School District of the Philadelphia School District headquarters building on May 28. Council members rallied to oppose the school closure plan.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Parker said the Commonwealth Court “got it right” in declaring that low-wealth districts like Philadelphia’s are chronically underfunded.
“If we had all the resources we need, we’d see even more enhanced improvements in our schools,” Parker said. “I’ll never stop fighting for our children and their right to a high-quality education.”
Crime is the top concern, but most residents feel safe
Despite rates of violent crime in the city plummeting to record lows under Parker, public safety remains the top concern for three in 10 Philadelphia residents, suggesting that people who live in the city are still anxious about crime.
When asked about whether they believe crime in their neighborhood has increased or decreased over the last two years, a third of respondents said they believe it has increased, about 32% said it has decreased, and 28% said they believe it has stayed the same.
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A closer look at the results shows that a plurality of respondents in the neighborhoods most affected by violent crime, including North and West Philadelphia, believe that crime has decreased.
The respondents most likely to say that they believe crime in their area has increased live in Northeast Philly. But public data maintained by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office show overall crime has decreased there, too. There are five Northeast Philadelphia police districts, and the total number of crime incidents reported to police declined in all of them between 2023, the year before Parker took office, and last year.
Despite the mixed poll results, a vast majority of Philadelphians — nearly 83% — said that they feel safe in their own neighborhood.
That is good news for Parker, who ran for office as a tough-on-crime Democrat amid a historic wave of gun violence and who vowed often to “bring order back to our city.”
Philadelphia police officers stand along the 2800 block of Kensington Ave. after a police involved shooting on May 23. Police shot a robbery suspect.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
Parker said in a statement that the polling results are evidence that her public safety strategy is working, calling it her “number one priority.”
She also vowed to continue her administration’s efforts in Kensington, the epicenter of the city’s opioid crisis. The Parker administration has deployed a multipronged approach, including increased police patrols in the neighborhood and an expansion of offerings for people in addiction.
But 53% of poll respondents said they do not believe the mayor’s efforts there are working, and those who live closest to the problem were the least supportive. In the region that encompasses the Lower Northeast and the river wards, where Kensington is located, 68% of people said Parker’s strategy is not working while only 18% said it is.
The mayor’s overall favorability was also lowest in that area of the city, the only region where more respondents said they had an unfavorable view of the mayor than a favorable one.
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Parker acknowledged that there is “much more work to do” in Kensington and said that “changing culture and going to war with the status quo is never easy.“
Parker’s ‘clean and green’ message is landing
For a city derisively called “Filthadelphia” and where cleanliness has been a longtime concern, a significant number of people seem to think Philadelphia is getting cleaner.
When asked about trash and litter, 41% of poll respondents said they believe the city has gotten cleaner over the last two years. Just 19% said Philadelphia has gotten dirtier, and 38% said it has stayed the same.
A sanitation department truck is seen along Cresson Street at West Earlham Street in Philadelphia on the first day of trash collection after a strike on July 14, 2025.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
Those are positive marks for a mayor whose slogan is “safer, cleaner, greener” and who has instituted new programs including twice-weekly trash pickup in the densest parts of the city.
Despite those efforts, Philadelphians gave worse reviews to the overall quality of city services in their neighborhood. About six in 10 respondents said the quality was either “fair” or “poor,” while 40% said “good” or “excellent.”
Staff writer Michelle Baruchman contributed to this article.
At $5 million, Philadelphia’s primary arts and cultural fund is not one of its many substantial burdens for taxpayers, amounting to well under a thousandth of the multibillion-dollar municipal budget. And yet, the city’s politicians can’t seem to resist the allure of the minuscule expense as a canvas for their financial creativity.
Having narrowly survived fiscal extinction during the pandemic, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund took another disproportionate cut in the city’s recently enacted budget for fiscal 2027, which begins next week. The spending plan recently passed by City Council and signed by Mayor Cherelle L. Parker appropriates $3.5 million for the fund, nearly a third less than this year, according to the fund’s executive director, Gabriela Sanchez. It’s hardly a rounding error in Philadelphia’s $7.1 billion budget, but it’s likely to devastate many of the tiny arts and cultural groups the line item supports citywide.
Nearly 100 of the almost 300 arts organizations that depend on the fund are expected to lose the aid as a result, Sanchez said in a statement. She said the fund would halve its eligibility threshold, limiting grants to groups with budgets of no more than $1.5 million, among other “untenable decisions,” hobbling neighborhood theaters, festivals, music programs, and more. “In practice,” Sanchez added, “this means that community-based arts and culture groups … will lose essential operating funding that sustains their day-to-day work.”
Created three decades ago to supplant more traditionally Philadelphian methods for distributing tax money — according to the whims and still less defensible motives of local politicians — the cultural fund brought a measure of evenhandedness and transparency to bear, offering clear rules and a fair process. Today, it funds groups ranging from A Book a Day, which has donated thousands of books to institutions serving young readers in West Philadelphia, to the Wyck Association, dedicated to preserving and interpreting the historic house of that name in Germantown.
The impact of these groups, economic and otherwise, is far greater than their cost: A 2024 report by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance found that nonprofit arts groups generate more than $2 billion in yearly economic activity, providing $1 billion in household incomes and $265 million in tax revenues. The alliance also found that the sector suffers from inadequate, unreliable, and uneven public funding.
The cut is cruelly contrary to what city arts groups and some Council members argued for amid the Trump administration’s retreat from federal arts funding, which was to increase the cultural fund’s allocation by 20%. It’s also at odds with a city budget that raises overall spending by about 3% over this fiscal year. At that rate, given the fund’s benefits, the city should at least be able to hold it harmless and maintain this year’s relatively meager contribution.
Philadelphia’s arts groups shouldn’t be perpetually on the budgetary brink just because most of them are small and lack powerful political patrons, making them easy to pick on. The mayor and Council should find a way to restore this funding and stop creating trouble for the city’s invaluable creators.
