Michael Nutter has named a director of the Office of Research, Planning, and Policy: Wendell Pritchett, of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (so yeah, he had to deal with me and Dan in class).

During the primary campaign, I questioned--um, speaking delicately--Michael Nutter's emphasis on declaring a state of emergency, and wondered whether his commitment to tax cuts would limit him from really addressing the poverty and inequality that persists across many Philadelphia neighborhoods (as the recent Urban League Study glaringly showed).

But among the things that I did like and respect, the greatest were Nutter's positions on housing, community development, and city planning. I have quoted Nutter maybe twenty times now on the need for assertive and visionary city planning. His papers on zoning and planning reform and housing and community development are really pitch-perfect. I complain a lot (I am Jewish, it is my real birthright), but I have no complaints about the policies outlined in those papers. They include reworking the tax abatement so that it fosters development of affordable housing and development targeted to areas still needing revitalization; unifying related agencies; and creating a land bank for vacant property. The policies are attentive to the need to balance gentrification with neighborhood preservation. If we do half of what they propose, the landscape of housing and development in this city would be both more efficient and much fairer.

The man who was central to developing those policies was Wendell Pritchett. Professor Pritchett is a great academic and an expert on land use and fair housing law. More than that, though, he brings an engagement with progressive public policy. That means turning a critical eye towards how law and policy have served to reinforce poverty and segregation, and having a vision of how they could instead ameliorate it.

One of the most striking parts of the recent Daily News assessment of NTI was that NTI bond dollars were being used to substitute for missing federal money:

Over the years, NTI morphed into a dizzying array of programs. Demolition and acquisition activities remain the anchors, but there also are home-loan and repair programs, a retaining-wall program, programs to work with the issues of homelessness and predatory lending, and support for commercial corridors.

Many of these activities were pre-existing programs in city government, all financed by federal tax dollars. Trouble was, those dollars started to disappear, particularly after the Iraq war began.

Kevin Hanna, the city's housing secretary, said NTI bond money was used to "backfill" many of these existing programs.

Without the bond money, Smith said, many housing programs would have been cut in half. But even with the inflow of new NTI money, "we were basically treading water."

NTI was ambitious and it was unfinished, and that bond money is slated to run out in July. As the discussion around the recent "Inclusionary Housing" bill has shown (here and here) there is great need, made even starker by the lack of federal dollars for housing and urban redevelopment. But we are entering this new administration with someone who understands the problems and has knowledge and experience to bring to bear. Congratulations, Professor Pritchett, and thank you for taking the job.