Mel Hairston, resident at the UC Townhomes, protests with Fossil Free Penn to save UC Townhomes on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. Photo by Siena Christopherson
by Anonymous, 2025
Following a period of relatively cordial relations established by William Penn himself and ended by his death, his sons engaged in a legalistic swindle of the Lenape’s land. First, the sons produced a fraudulent treaty wherein the Lenape ceded land to the English. Second, they drew a skewed map, distorting the size of the land they attempted to lay claim to. Third, they lied about what land they were claiming and the Lenape’s access to it.
The Lenape, convinced by these successive deceptions, signed a tightly binding treaty, letting the Penn sons’ lay claim to all the land a day and a half’s walking distance from Philadelphia. But therein lay a final trap. In secret, the colonizers had run test trials, found the most efficient path, cleared the trees, and blazed the path. Then, they recruited their most durable runners, and set them out at a running’s– not a walking’s– pace. In that day and a half, the only successful runner of three marked out a distance of 60 miles.
Some 200 years later, in the 1960s, we find the University of Pennsylvania ramping up its own land grab. The Lenape had, by this point, been thoroughly cleansed and extirpated from their Land. The University had already bought large portions of West Philadelphia, but the predominantly black neighborhood called the Black Bottom remained a vibrant, large, and Penn-independent neighborhood in West. The Black Bottom housed enslaved people brought over by William Penn himself and welcomed a great influx of recently freed slaves during the Great Migration.
However, partnering with Drexel University to form the West Philadelphia Corporation, Penn swallowed up the Black Bottom, buying their land, clearing buildings, and replacing it with their own institutions. To do this, they weaponized their political influence, leveraged the excuse of “urban renewal”, and exploited their extensive wealth to erase the Black Bottom and radically reshape West Philadelphia in their image.
Amidst Penn’s assault, a commission was created to develop three low income housing units to replace the some 414 homes they destroyed. In the end, none of these were built. The only redress ever given to this community was the UC Townhomes, a low-income housing unit for.
In 1982, a lot “blighted” by Penn’s urban renewal was bought by IBID Associates for $1. On this, they built the UC Townhomes. The Townhomes were a too small but still tangible win and necessary concession for the community. Fast forward to three years ago, when IBID associates announced it wouldnot renew the Townhome’s affordable housing status, and instead, sell the land to the highest bidder, and raze the building. Despite fierce resistance from the residents and students, the Townhomes are now rubble, its residents scattered to the wind.
These stories remind us that our struggles are connected. Gentrification is only today’s urban incarnation of colonization. They will cast you aside if it’s convenient.
These stories remind us that the devil wears suits. Colonizers and gentrifiers alike weaponize good-faith agreements, legal documents, and the supposed necessity of economics to push their interests.
These stories remind us to be wary of shaking the colonizer’s washed hand. There can be good deeds which nevertheless erode a community’s control over their land and autonomy. Even though IBID Associates initially did the good thing of building the Townhomes, in doing so they gathered power over the community.
These stories enlighten us, that gentrification cannot just be about literal displacement of people. Although usually defined as just that: the displacement of low-income residents by higher income residents, gentrification begins not when people are displaced, but when people start to lose control over their own land, their own community, their own culture, and their own sovereignty. Putting all of our attention on displacement itself allows institutions to skirt criticism as long as they maintain a few good looking metrics. We need to focus on how gentrification happens, and how gentrification happens is loss of sovereignty.
We can find the seeds of gentrification in West Philadelphia wherever a project, institution, or people must respond to the anti-democratic beck and call of the University of Pennsylvania’s trustees and their donors. We can find the seeds of gentrification wherever people cannot control their own fates.
So, how does Penn gentrify today?
Penn controls Land. Penn owns 185 properties in West Philadelphia, and only 64 of those are on its campus proper. The other 119 are some combination of facilities, centers, Greek life houses, and apartments.
Let’s focus on these apartments. Penn directly owns, by way of University City Associates, 75 apartment properties in West Philadelphia. Additionally, Penn partners with Campus Apartments to provide housing to its students. Campus Apartments owns 150 properties of its own and is run by a Penn Medicine trustee.
These apartments, along with faculty residences deep into West, serve as the frontline of Penn’s land and cultural control. The students these landlords serve come with student desires, student behaviors, and student needs.
Prime among these needs is treating fear. Penn students and especially Penn parents are scared shitless of West Philadelphia. This fear creates the “need” for the Penn Public Safety patrol zone. The patrol zone is the area under which Penn employs a private army to police. This police is limited in its abilities, but like all police, serves the needs of capital. The police surveil; the police kick out unhoused people; the police follow people and protesters home. They disturb the peace of normal life.
This changes people’s life patterns and gives Penn boots on the ground control over the areas it patrols. It’s used this power to tail students after a vigil and to raid a student’s house. Moreover, Penn, in its recent open expression guidelines, has reserved the right to kick out any person who is unable to produce a Penn ID off their campus. This is a massive barrier to the free flowing and free existence of unaffiliated Philadelphians.
This is one arm of Penn’s gentrification today. Here’s the other arm:
We start at Land again. In America, our public schools are funded by the property taxes of your zip code. Penn, being the largest landowner in Philadelphia, should therefore be the largest funder of our public schools. Yet, because Penn is a non-profit, it pays zero in property taxes. Zero. It also doesn’t participate in a voluntary program called PILOTs (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) to offset this lost income that all other Ivy League universities pay (for a more in depth look see: How Penn is Cheating Philly Public Schools). Instead, it sometimes provides earmarked and finite cash infusions to solve specific problems. Once again, the issue we return to is autonomy. It is good that Penn pays to solve these problems, but the schools should not have to beg for that money.
Thus, we are in a situation where our schools are grossly underfunded while Penn and its trustees continue to increase their wealth. In the face of this crisis, Penn provides a different (also underfunded) solution: the Netter Center. The Netter Center is Penn’s center for community partnerships. It connects undergrads with schools to tutor students, it works with schools to create curriculums, and generally is supposed to help the community solve their problems.
But here again is our problem. The Netter Center, and thus its partners, are dependent on the Trustee’s grace and funding. No matter how democratic its internal decision making, it is unfree to properly address the problems it faces, for it is owned and dominated by Penn. More than that, it exploits its undergrads and via their presence, subtly imposes the Penn worldview into Philadelphia.
Thus, Penn creates an economic and cultural hegemony over Lenapehoking, the Black Bottom, West Philadelphia, University City.
So what is there to do?
1. Penn needs to be democratized. The trustees must be composed of democratically elected students, faculty, and community members.
2. LAND BACK. Penn needs to sell and return land, and in particular housing, to community control in low-income housing.
4. Penn needs to either pay PILOTs or property taxes to fund public schools.
5. The endowment must be subject to democratic community review.
6. Penn’s campus must be and always remain open to all people.
7. Penn Public Safety needs defunding and reform.
Penn Disorientation Guide 