Neighborhoods Built by Neighbors
Philadelphia was built one rowhouse at a time by small builders repeating plans that worked. Today the city has the land and the builders. It is missing the blueprint.
Why can't neighbors build their own blocks, one small building at a time?
Look closely at any rowhouse block
Philadelphia's first rowhouses were built by speculators who carved William Penn's green blocks near the Delaware into narrow lots for port workers. Over two centuries, builders followed the factories and the streetcars, putting up rows of the same few designs until rowhouses ran from river to river and outnumbered every other kind of home in the city.
The variety you see on a block is mostly on the surface: a cornice, a door surround, a bay. Underneath, a handful of plans repeat. That repetition was how a small builder stayed in business. A plan you have built before has known costs, known trades and no surprises. It is the idea this study proposes to bring back, with the city holding the plans.
Types, sizes and features from the Philadelphia City Planning Commission's Philadelphia Rowhouse Manual (2007). Drawings are simplified sketches for this study, roughly to scale by floor area.
Today every small project starts from a blank sheet
The review clock at L&I isn't the main problem. It targets 15 business days for a new one- or two-family home. The time goes into custom design and, for anything that doesn't fit zoning, a hearing at the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
Tap any segment of either path for the step behind it.
Adjust the other assumptions
Measured: L&I's 15-business-day review targets, the Zoning Board's median of about 190 days from filing to decision, with one case in four over 10 months (ZBA Watch), the Water Department's advice to start about 2 months ahead, roughly 9% Jumpstart loans, $5–10k design and $4.5–12.5k variance fees. Example values to adjust: design and correction time, money tied up, construction cost, cost rise and build time.
Every step in a table
| Step | Today: a custom design that needs a variance | With a city plan that fits by right | Change |
|---|
The Zoning Board approves nearly 9 in 10 small housing cases. It just takes about six months to say yes.
Since 2020 the Board has ruled on more than 2,300 variances for one- to nine-home projects and approved 87–90% of them. For the rowhouses a city plan would cover, the hearing rarely changes the outcome; it changes the schedule and the bill. A plan drawn to fit by right skips it. Data: Build Philly Now, ZBA Watch, from L&I records via CARTO; approval rates exclude withdrawn, continued and held cases.
Sources: L&I published review targets; Zoning Board wait times and approval rates from Build Philly Now's ZBA Watch (L&I data via CARTO, cases since 2020); variance costs from a contractor's 2026 permit guide; design savings from Pew (May 2026); Seattle ADU annual report 2024; Jumpstart loan rate from Resolve Philly; Water Department timing from phila.gov. See Sources.
The wait decides who gets to build
Months of carrying costs and a design fee paid before anything is certain are easy for a firm with capital and impossible for a neighbor without family wealth. That is one reason development in Black and brown neighborhoods so rarely belongs to the people who live there.
of Philadelphians are Black. Each figure is 1 in 100 residents.
of the city's real estate developers are Black. Each figure is 1 in 100 developers.
Black homeownership fell 5 points to 50% between 2000 and 2021. The city gained about 21,000 Black households in those years and ended with about 1,000 fewer Black homeowners.
Philadelphia already grows its own builders
In 2015, Germantown developer Ken Weinstein started Jumpstart, a short training course for neighbors who wanted to fix up the vacant houses on their own blocks, paired with mentoring and small loans that banks wouldn't make. It has since trained more than 3,000 Philadelphians and made 460 loans totaling about $57.9 million, at roughly 9% interest, mostly to rehab rowhouses in neighborhoods like Germantown, Kensington and West Philadelphia.
The people it reaches are the people development usually leaves out. The city's Minority Developer Program and the Black Squirrel Collective's Philly RiSE accelerator do the same for builders a step further along.
These builders mostly renovate today. A free plan is what would let them build new on the empty lot next door.
How many times a dollar changes hands on the block
Where a home's money goes on the first payment matters less than what happens next. A dollar paid to a neighborhood builder gets spent again on a local crew, then at the corner store, the barber, the lumber yard, each round a little smaller. A dollar paid to a firm based elsewhere mostly leaves on the first trip. Economists call this the local multiplier: how many times money keeps moving inside a place before it leaks out.
How it's calculated: the home price is split by NAHB's 2024 shares of a new home's sale price (construction 64.4%, profit 11.0%, overhead 5.7%, commission 2.8%, financing 1.5%, marketing 0.8%). The 13.7% land share is left out because Land Bank lots sell for next to nothing. Money paid to a neighborhood business is assumed to be re-spent locally at 48% a round; money paid to a business based elsewhere comes back at 14%. Those are the averages Civic Economics and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance measured for independent versus chain retailers and restaurants, not for construction, so treat the totals as an illustration of the mechanism rather than a forecast. $280,000 is about what a Turn the Key home sells for.
Sources: Pew analysis of 2000–2021 data via the Inquirer; Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; KYW Newsradio; Planetizen on Jumpstart's loan data; NAHB 2024 Cost of Constructing a Home; Civic Economics and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance via AMIBA, The Local Multiplier Effect.
South Bend, Indiana, wrote its own pattern book
Once called one of America's dying cities, South Bend owned hundreds of vacant lots and a zoning code that made its own old houses illegal to rebuild. It fixed the code first, then commissioned a small catalog of free plans that fit its blocks.
South Bend didn't wait for a developer to arrive. It drew the houses itself and handed the plans to its neighbors.
Led the zoning rewrite and the plans. His account of the turning point: the city realized no one was coming to rescue it, so it would have to do the work itself.
Department of Community Investment →Ran the design process with Corcoran, and framed the plans as a tool to put new homes on vacant lots.
Department of Community Investment →Worked on the zoning rewrite, then drew the catalog's houses to fit lots they already knew. Kalamazoo later hired them for its own catalog.
Jennifer Griffin in conversation, Strong Towns →Studied the city's historic building patterns, combed the vacant-lot database and tested prototype designs on real lots before anything was published (Notre Dame News).
Notre Dame School of Architecture →A champion of South Bend's small-builder community. He liked the duplex plan because an owner can live in one unit and rent the other.
His work, Strong Towns, 2025 →Launched the sewer hookup reimbursement in July 2022, up to $20,000 a home, after builders kept hitting that cost on old lots.
City of South Bend →The place. South Bend peaked at about 132,000 people in 1960, when Studebaker still built cars there, and fell to about 101,000 by 2010, mostly to its own suburbs. The Near Northwest neighborhood alone had about 400 vacant lots. Most of the city's roughly 100 small-scale developers work in its historically redlined neighborhoods, which is where the plans were aimed.
U.S. Census counts. The houses the city lost people from are the vacant lots its plans now fill; By 2020 the city was growing again.
See them: Notre Dame News on the plans and the interns · WNDU on the launch · Strong Towns on the builders · the 2025 catalog itself
- 2014~600 lotsThe city starts acquiring tax-delinquent lots. It now holds about 600.
- 201736 variancesThe Incremental Development Alliance runs a zoning "stress test": rebuilding seven houses where seven had stood would need 36 variances, about $12,000 in fees.
- 2020New codeA new form-based zoning code takes effect, legalizing narrow lots, porches near the sidewalk and small multi-unit buildings.
- 20225 plansThe first catalog launches. Plans are drawn by J Griffin Design and Jennifer Settle, architects who worked on the zoning rewrite.
- 20259 plansNine plans, from a 576 sf carriage house to a six-unit building, each with three façades. Total city spend since 2022: $240,000.
- Now79–110 homesBuilt from the catalog so far, within 223 homes by the city's partner developers. Counts differ by source; see below.
Counts differ by source and date: 79 homes in 64 buildings (Niskanen Center, December 2025), 91 (Inside Indiana Business) and about 110 (Ivory Innovations case study), within 223 homes built by the city's partner developers. Some outside reports count all 223. South Bend hasn't published savings per home, but at Pew's $5,000–10,000 in design costs avoided per home, 79 to 110 homes kept roughly $0.4–1.1 million in builders' pockets, against $240,000 the city spent on the catalog, before counting permit time saved.
Older frame houses with gaps where houses were demolished. Most lots are 33 to 50 feet wide.
See the real drawings: South Bend's 2025 catalog (PDF), every type and façade option as the city publishes them · the program page, where builders request the full construction sets · for comparison, Kalamazoo's catalog and Tulsa's T-Town Home Catalog.
In South Bend a catalog house clears review in about two business days.
Philadelphia figures are L&I's published 15-business-day targets for one- and two-family homes and the Zoning Board's median 190 days to a decision (ZBA Watch, cases since 2020), converted to calendar days. Design time, the Water Department and corrections are left out on all three.
Plan footprints and minimum lot widths from South Bend's 2025 catalog, all at one scale. The narrowest South Bend lot is nearly twice a Philadelphia rowhouse lot, which is why Philadelphia needs its own plans.
The value is in sharing the lot. A detached Narrow House costs about $200–250K per home; the Stacked Duplex about $160–185K; the six-home Small Apartment about $114–122K.
The city's own fall 2021 cost estimates, divided by the homes each plan holds. Every plan also arrives with design, zoning fit and code review already done, which is where the fee and time savings come from.
The catalog in numbers
| Plan | Homes | Finished sf | Footprint | Lot width | Est. cost, fall 2021 | Per home | Per sf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carriage House | 1 | 576 over garage | 24' × 24' | 34' min | $130–180K | $130–180K | $226–312 |
| Narrow House I | 1 | 1,120 | 20' × 36' | 30–60' | $200–250K | $200–250K | $179–223 |
| Narrow House II | 1 | 1,390 | 20' × 51' | 30–60' | $220–270K | $220–270K | $158–194 |
| Standard House I | 1 | 1,632 | 24' × 42' | 32–60' | $235–285K | $235–285K | $144–175 |
| Standard House II | 1 | 1,902 | 24' × 60' | 32–60' | $255–305K | $255–305K | $134–160 |
| Stacked Duplex | 2 | 880 each | 22' × 48' | 32–70' | $320–370K | $160–185K | $182–210 |
| Side-by-Side Duplex | 2 | 3,468 building | — | 44' min | $370–420K | $185–210K | $107–121 |
| Small Apartment | 6 | 4,840 building | 40' × 72' | 50–80' | $685–735K | $114–122K | $142–152 |
From the City of South Bend's 2025 catalog. A cottage plan is also listed; a bungalow and a townhouse were reportedly added in 2026. South Bend's narrowest plan needs a 30-foot lot, nearly twice a Philadelphia rowhouse lot.
One plan, three fronts
A study for the pilot's rowhouse plan: 16'-0" wide, three stories at 10'-0" floor to floor, the same openings and structure behind each front. Option B answers the conservation overlays that ask for a set-back third story; option C keeps a brick base under a lighter upper bay. South Bend's own elevations are in its 2025 catalog.
The plans were one of four moves
South Bend's catalog worked because the city cleared the other obstacles at the same time. Each one has a Philadelphia counterpart.
Paid for the pipes
Up to $20,000 per home to replace sewer laterals, and no utility connection charges for buildings of five homes or fewer.
Why it mattered. Old lots usually need a new lateral, and it's a cost a builder can't see until digging starts. On a $250,000 house, NAHB's average 11% profit is about $27,500, so one $20,000 surprise can take most of it.
Supplied the land
About 600 city-held vacant lots, mostly from county tax sales, matched to builders.
Why it mattered. Plans need somewhere to land. Builders didn't have to win lots on the open market, and the city could steer plans to the blocks that needed them.
Backed the builders
$11.1 million in loans and grants to partner developers for 223 homes, about $50,000 a home, plus boot camps and coaching.
Why it mattered. Free drawings don't build anything without someone who can carry a project. Uptake grew once partners were funded; first-time builders followed the nonprofits.
Kept the hard part honest
Said plainly that construction costs and low appraisals remain the main obstacle.
Why it mattered. Plans save design fees and months of waiting; they don't close the gap between what a house costs and what it sells for. Saying so kept the program credible.
What a pre-approved plan actually is
A pre-approved plan is a building that has already passed review. The city checks the house once. Each builder still has to show that it fits their particular lot.
Nine of its thirteen sheets are drawn and reviewed once. A builder adds only the four that belong to the lot, and gets months of their life back.
Follow a builder through South Bend's six steps, or tap any sheet to see what it tells a builder.
Browse real pre-approved plans: Kalamazoo (houses to fourplexes) · South Bend (houses to a six-home building) · Tulsa · Port Angeles · Seattle and San Jose (backyard cottages) · Canada's national catalogue.
The sheet list
Solid: drawn once and reviewed once by the city. Dashed: added by the builder for every lot. Sheet list from Kalamazoo's 2024 catalog. Kalamazoo's sets are architectural only; builders confirm structure with truss or lumber-yard shop drawings or an architect's stamp, and licensed trades pull their own permits.
Two ways cities do it
Some cities commission and hold the plans themselves. Others run a library: private designers submit plans, the city reviews and lists them, and builders buy directly from the designer. The choice decides who carries the liability and who gets paid.
| City-commissioned set | Designer library | |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | South Bend, Kalamazoo, Tulsa, Claremore, Port Angeles | Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles, Bend |
| Who designs | One firm or a small team hired by the city | Any designer who applies and passes review |
| Cost to builder | Usually free | Designer's price; Seattle caps fees at $1,500–2,500 a home |
| Who owns the drawings | Often the designers, with a royalty-free city license | The designer |
| Who carries liability | The builder, through a hold-harmless agreement | The designer, through insurance and indemnity (Bend: $2M professional liability plus 24 months' tail coverage) |
| Variety | A small, consistent catalog | Many options, uneven fit to local blocks |
| Track record | South Bend 79–110 homes, by source; Claremore 27 since 2022 | San Jose nearly 3,000 permits since 2019; Seattle 199 cottage permits at about 61 days vs a ~160-day median |
The fine print: code, liability and upkeep
Residential or commercial code. Most catalog plans stay under the residential code (IRC), which covers houses and townhouses up to three stories. Three or more homes in one building usually fall under the commercial building code (IBC), which needs a stamped set and fuller review. Alaska, North Carolina and Rhode Island have extended the residential code to three- and four-unit buildings.
Attached homes. Rowhouses share walls, and the code requires fire-rated separation running from foundation to roof. A plan drawn once for a party wall is a plan every builder can reuse.
Liability. Many city-held programs make the builder accept the plans as they are and release the city and designers. In Toronto, the national architects' institute objected that a no-changes rule plus a stamp requirement leaves the stamping architect responsible for drawings they didn't make. Programs that let a local architect adapt the plan, with that adaptation recorded, avoid the problem.
Upkeep. Plans are tied to a code edition and go stale when the code changes, roughly every three years. Programs that skip updates watch their catalogs go unused.
Pitfalls seen elsewhere. Plans that don't fit local zoning; a utility charge nobody planned for (Kalamazoo's own test build hit an $18,000 water line bill); façades no inspector checks; and catalogs launched without builders trained to use them.
More programs to compare
| Program | Launched | Plans | Review time claimed | Uptake |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kalamazoo, MI | 2022–24 | 9, up to a fourplex | 1–2 weeks | 48 homes by early 2024, partly through a partner program |
| Tulsa, OK | June 2026 | 18, up to a triplex | Up to 5 days | New |
| Claremore, OK | 2022 | 29 by 2026, up to 8 homes | 1–5 days | 27 homes; variance cases fell from 13 a year to 1 |
| Port Angeles, WA | 2023 | 5, including a townhome | Not stated | Not reported |
| Spokane, WA | 2023 | 5, including two townhouses | Site plan only | Not reported |
| Canada, national catalogue | 2025 | About 50, up to sixplexes | Adapted locally | About 30 municipalities pre-reviewing |
Few catalogs anywhere include true rowhouses. Spokane and Port Angeles have townhouse plans, but nothing is drawn for a 16-foot lot. Philadelphia would be designing the first.
The land and the builders exist. The plans don't.
The land
The H.O.M.E. plan pre-authorizes Land Bank parcels for housing. Turn the Key has sold hundreds of three-bedroom rowhouses at about $280,000 on nearly free city lots.
The builders
Jumpstart has trained more than 3,000 Philadelphians. The Minority Developer Program and Philly RiSE train and back Black and brown builders. H.O.M.E. adds a list of pre-approved developers.
The plans
No free, city-held set of designs fitted to Philadelphia's lots. Every builder still starts from a blank sheet, at their own cost and risk.
954 lots the right width. A third are buildable today.
vacant Land Bank lots, 15 to 18 feet wide, zoned for rowhouses or small multi-home buildings.
District 3, in West Philadelphia, has the most lots ready now, with no historic or conservation layers. District 5, in North Philadelphia, has the most lots big enough for a multi-home building.
The numbers by district
| District | RSA-5 lots | RSA-5 min. lot | RSA-5 buildable | RM-1 lots | RM-1 fourplex-size | Ready |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 136 | 960 sf | 97 | 21 | 11 | 108 |
| 5 | 169 | 960 sf | 103 | 141 | 24 | 102 |
| 7 | 116 | 960 sf | 36 | 130 | 18 | 54 |
| 2 | 93 | 960 sf | 25 | 11 | 2 | 27 |
| 4 | 47 | 1,440 sf | 4 | 23 | 8 | 12 |
| 8 | 37 | 1,440 sf | 7 | 13 | 2 | 9 |
| 1, 6, 9 | 15 | varies | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Data pulled November 5, 2026 from the city's property assessment records (owner Philadelphia Land Bank, vacant land), zoning overlays, local historic districts and 2024 Council districts. Lot areas are the assessor's. "Ready by right" means the lot meets its district's minimum lot area and sits outside historic districts and conservation overlays; it does not account for each Council overlay's text, utilities or soils. One lot is in a historic district; 34 are in the Strawberry Mansion conservation overlay. Most lots in Districts 4, 5, 7 and 8 sit under that district's Council overlay, and many fall in the Mixed Income Neighborhoods overlay, whose small-project rules need checking.
The tool already half exists. L&I's Master Plan Review approves a building prototype once. Every later permit is copied from it and gets only an administrative check, and the Water Department reviews the whole project once. The fee is $406 for a building of three stories or less. The catch: it works only inside a single project of at least 5,000 square feet under one contract. Extending it to city-held plans used by many builders on scattered lots is a smaller ask than inventing something new.
Fit by right, or nothing. A one- to four-home project that meets zoning skips community meetings, the Zoning Board and Civic Design Review entirely. A single variance brings all of it back. So the plan set has to be drawn to the zoning that's actually mapped. RSA-5, the most common rowhouse district, allows one home per lot. RTA-2, created in 2025 for two-family rowhouses on 16-foot lots, exists only on paper until Council maps it.
Side sections, street to the left, not designs. All three allow 75% lot coverage on an interior lot and a 9 ft rear yard (7 ft in RTA-2). Height is 38 ft in RSA-5 and RM-1, and 35 ft and three stories in RTA-2. RM-1 allows one home per 360 sf of lot for the first 1,440 sf, so a 1,440 sf lot holds four. The minimum lot is 960 sf for RSA-5 in Districts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 (1,440 sf elsewhere), 1,080 sf for RTA-2 and 1,440 sf for RM-1. From the Planning Commission's Zoning Code Quick Guide (February 2026), which has the city's own diagram for every district.
What a Philadelphia plan set would have to handle
Two code tracks. Single-family rowhouses fall under the residential code as townhouses, up to three stories. L&I treats most traditional duplexes under the building code, so two-family and larger plans need a second, stamped track.
The 2021 codes. Philadelphia's 2021 code editions became mandatory July 1, 2026. Master approvals are tied to a code edition, so the set would be redrawn each cycle.
The site layer. Every permit still needs the Water Department's utility plan review and sewage planning sign-off, which the department advises starting about two months ahead. A template utility sheet would standardize it but can't remove it. Small one- and two-family projects are exempt from post-construction stormwater rules.
Overlays and history. Neighborhood conservation and district overlays can dictate cornices, materials and third-story setbacks. Historical Commission staff approve over 90% of permits in historic districts. Façade options can be drawn to satisfy common overlays.
Air tightness. Under the 2021 codes, air-barrier and duct-leakage testing is a special inspection. That is work an architect of record could offer to small builders.
Sources: City of Philadelphia L&I master plan review page; Philadelphia Code Title 14; Bill 250525 (RTA-2); WHYY on Turn the Key; Resolve Philly on Jumpstart. See Sources.
By right on the base map isn't by right on the block
Three layers sit on top of base zoning, and each can send a plan back into review. A Philadelphia plan set has to be designed for them from the start, and the pilot should begin on lots where none apply.
Who decides each layer, and what the plan set has to do
| Layer | Who decides | What it can control | What the plan set has to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Council district overlays | Written by Council, applied by L&I's zoning review | Density, accessory units, bonuses, uses. District 8 and 10 bills pending in November 2026 would ban accessory units and density bonuses there. | Check every lot against current overlays. Ask Council to keep plan-ready Land Bank lots by right when it adds new ones. |
| Neighborhood conservation overlays | Planning Commission, which must issue a Certificate of Compliance before L&I issues the building permit | New construction and visible façade work: materials, setbacks, massing, cornice lines, per each district's own guidelines | Draw façade options to the guidelines of the overlays where plans will be used, and ask the Planning Commission to certify them once |
| Historic districts and designated properties | Historical Commission. Staff approve over 90% of permit applications, at no fee; the rest go to the Architectural Committee and the full Commission at public meetings. | Anything visible, including the design of new buildings on vacant lots | Leave historic districts out of the pilot, or pre-clear one or two contextual façades with Commission staff |
What a conservation overlay looks like in practice. The proposed Southwest Center City overlay would require a mansard-style third story next to two-story homes, keep first floors within 12 inches of their neighbors, and bar vinyl siding and EIFS (the foam-and-stucco panels common on new construction) on street fronts. Each rule is a drawing decision a plan set can make in advance.
Where the layers fall. A conservation overlay can't overlap a historic district, and when one is created, no more than 20% of its lots can be vacant. By rule, then, conservation overlays sit where few lots are empty. Whether particular Land Bank lots fall in a historic district or overlay is a map check, and the pilot should start where neither applies.
- Base zoning: does a catalog plan fit the district's lot, height and density rules by right?
- Council overlays: does a district overlay change the density or use?
- Conservation overlay: is there a pre-certified façade for this overlay's guidelines?
- Historic district: outside the pilot, or a pre-cleared façade?
- Water Department: start the utility plan review about two months before the permit.
Base zoning, zoning overlays and historic districts are published as city map data, so the first four checks can be run on a whole list of Land Bank lots before a builder sees one.
Sources: City of Philadelphia, Historical Commission review process; Planning Commission, Neighborhood Conservation Overlay fact sheet; Build Philly Now on the November 2026 overlay bills.
Free plans alone build almost nothing
The programs that produced homes paired plans with zoning that already fit, land the city controlled and money to close the gap. The ones that offered drawings and nothing else stalled. Each failure below happened in a real city. None has happened here yet; each is a risk a Philadelphia program can design around from the start.
Plans offered with nothing else
3 homes from 5 designs; other departments still required approvals and owners preferred custom plans. The risk here: a catalog launched without lots, builders or a review path.
Read more: Pew, May 2026 →Interest, but no builders
1,767 applications, 30 homes sold. The risk here: buyers want homes, but too few small builders are ready to build them.
Read more: Michigan Municipal League →A hidden utility cost
The city's own test build hit an $18,000 water line charge. The risk here: Water Department tap and lateral costs aren't published.
Read more: Strong Towns →Cost above appraised value
Uptake grew only with about $50,000 a home in partner funding. The risk here: many new rowhouses cost more to build than they appraise for.
Read more: Mayors Caucus memo →Plans fitted to zoning nobody mapped
Programs work only where zoning already fits the lots. The risk here: RTA-2 two-family rowhouses exist in the code but on almost no lots.
Read more: Pew, May 2026 →Plans go stale
Catalogs not updated for a new code edition stop being used. The risk here: the 2021 codes became mandatory in July 2026.
Read more: Pew, May 2026 →Architects stay away
A no-changes rule plus a stamp requirement drew the national architects' institute's objection. The risk here: local architects asked to seal drawings they can't change.
Read more: Royal Architectural Institute of Canada →Sources: Pew (May 2026) on Cupertino; Michigan Municipal League on Jackson; Strong Towns on Kalamazoo; City of South Bend and the Mayors Caucus memo; Royal Architectural Institute of Canada on Toronto. See Sources.
Start with a few lots in one district, two plans and one cohort of builders
The ask is to add plans to what H.O.M.E. already does, and to prove it on a handful of lots before drawing a catalog. South Bend and Kalamazoo both built a test house first. It is how they found the costs nobody had planned for.
Can a new home go on a Land Bank lot that's smaller than its district's minimum? 617 of 954 lots wait on L&I's answer.
One written interpretation from L&I on how the code treats existing undersized lots (the nonconforming-lot rules in §14-305) would settle it. If yes, the pilot's pool nearly triples. If no, Council can fix it with a small-lot provision. See the 617 on the map.
- Settle the small-lot question. Ask L&I whether a new home can go on an existing Land Bank lot below the district's minimum lot area. Two-thirds of the Land Bank's 15- to 18-foot lots depend on the answer.
- Start in District 3. It has the most Land Bank lots that are buildable by right today, 108, with no historic or conservation overlays and several blocks with four or five ready lots side by side, such as 3900 Brown Street and 3900 Wallace Street.
- Draw two plans. A single-family rowhouse for RSA-5 under the residential code, and a two- to three-home building for RM-1 under the building code, with a fourplex option for the few lots large enough. Two façade options each. District 5, with the most RM-1 lots that fit a fourplex, is the second stop.
- Review them once. L&I, the Water Department and the Planning Commission review both plans together, as a master approval open to any builder in the pilot.
- Build with one cohort. Jumpstart, Minority Developer Program and Philly RiSE graduates, trained on the plans, with Land Bank lots, financing and an architect of record each.
- Measure and fix. Record every cost and delay, revise the plans, then decide whether to widen the catalog.
L&I and Council, first
Make the Land Bank's small lots buildable. Most of its 16-foot lots are under their district's minimum lot area. Either confirm that a new home can go on an existing undersized lot, or map RSA-6, whose minimum is 700 square feet, onto those blocks.
The city
Own the plans. Extend Master Plan Review so any builder using a city plan gets the administrative check. Reserve plan-ready Land Bank lots for small builders, with a sale process sized for one- to four-home projects, offered first to training-program graduates. Sell the homes to neighborhood buyers.
The Water Department
Publish tap and lateral costs for small infill, accept a standard utility sheet for the plans, and fund a connection grant like South Bend's, which pays up to $20,000.
Council
Keep pilot lots by right when new district overlays are written, and map RTA-2 where two-family rowhouses fit, so a second plan can follow.
Harrisburg
The Senate passed a pre-approved plans bill, SB 1281, 50–0 in June 2026. As written it doesn't reach Philadelphia (Philadelphia Citizen on why). Amend it in the House to include the city.
Funders
Pay a firm to draw and update the plans each code cycle, fund research with the Incremental Development Alliance, and fund the builder cohort. South Bend's whole program cost $240,000 over three years.
Architects
Draw the plans. The city, or PHDC for the Land Bank, issues a request for qualifications and selects a local firm to design the pilot plans and update them each code cycle, the way South Bend and Kalamazoo hired their designers.
Adapt them, lot by lot. A second, open call builds a roster of pre-qualified architects of record who serve pilot builders at a published fee, with the right to adapt the plan to each lot and responsibility for those changes.
About $240,000 for the plans. Here is what comes back.
How it's figured, per home: $15,000–28,000 saved by the builder (the timeline above at its defaults: fees, interest and cost rise over a 6-month median wait); about $31,000 of builder profit (NAHB's 11% average on a $280,000 home) earned by a neighborhood builder instead of an outside one; about $464,000 of local spending once the money has changed hands (the multiplier above, all roles in the neighborhood); and about $3,900 a year in property tax at Philadelphia's roughly 1.4% rate on a $280,000 assessment, reduced in early years by the new-construction abatement, on lots that pay almost nothing today. The $240,000 is South Bend's actual cost; a Philadelphia set could cost more. Estimates to show scale, not a forecast.
Six numbers to track from the first lot
| Measure | Why it matters | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Homes permitted from the plans | The test of whether builders use them at all | L&I permit records |
| Days from application to permit | The program's promise; compare to the same lot types without plans | L&I eCLIPSE dates |
| Hidden costs per home | Utility, foundation and site surprises the plans didn't cover | Builder cost reports from the cohort |
| Built cost against appraised value | Whether the homes pencil without subsidy, and how much subsidy closes the gap | Builder pro formas and appraisals |
| First-time and neighborhood builders | Whether the program changes who builds, the study's central claim | Cohort records; builder address against lot |
| First-time and neighborhood buyers | Whether the value lands with residents | Sale records; Turn the Key and ONE Philly Mortgage data |
Every one of these can be counted from the pilot's first lot. If the first five homes don't move these numbers, the program should change before it grows.
The same block, other questions
Where the numbers come from
- City of South Bend, Pre-Approved Building Plans; 2025 catalog; application and license; small-scale developer handbook; sewer lateral program
- Mayors Caucus memo on South Bend's costs and partners, August 2025
- Ivory Innovations, Little Book of Housing: South Bend case study
- Kalamazoo pre-approved plans catalog, September 2024
- City of Bend designer applicant agreement; Seattle pre-approved cottage summary; San Jose preapproved ADUs
- Royal Architectural Institute of Canada on Toronto's preapproved plans
- Michigan Municipal League, Using Pattern Homes to Jumpstart Local Housing Solutions (Jackson); Strong Towns on Kalamazoo's test build
- Pew, Preapproved Building Plans Help Cities Improve Housing Affordability, May 2026
- City of Philadelphia, master plan review for multi-phase projects; L&I review times; Build Philly Now, ZBA Watch: Zoning Board wait times and approval rates since 2020; variance costs
- City of Philadelphia property assessments, zoning overlays, local historic districts and 2024 Council districts, via OpenDataPhilly and the city's map services, queried November 5, 2026
- Planning Commission, Zoning Code Base Districts Quick Guide, February 2026; Philadelphia Code, Title 14 dimensional standards; Bill 250525 (RTA-2)
- City of Philadelphia, Historical Commission review; Planning Commission, Neighborhood Conservation Overlays; Build Philly Now on the November 2026 overlay bills
- City of Philadelphia, H.O.M.E. Initiative; WHYY on Turn the Key, May 2026
- Inquirer on Pew's homeownership analysis, July 2024; Inquirer on the Philadelphia Fed's homeownership gap report; KYW on Black developers
- Resolve Philly on Jumpstart; Planetizen on Jumpstart's loan data
- Pennsylvania SB 1281; Philadelphia Citizen on SB 1281 and Philadelphia