The
Homesharing Program

Would you like to be part of an intergenerational community? Participating in the 2SC Homesharing Program offers Mantua homeowners the repairs needed to ready their homes for sharers, and Drexel students or alumni the opportunity to pay a lower-than-market rate in exchange for agreed-upon responsibilities in the home.

How a university-community home-sharing collective is creating a new model for affordable housing in West Philadelphia

One Million

One Year

The National Science Foundation awards $1M to Second Story Collective's arts-centered model for intergenerational co-housing and affordable homeownership.

Culture-based, artist-led, community-driven equitable development

Imagine a place where people of different races, religions, genders, sexualities, and cultures can live and create together. A place where we can support each other. Love each other. Recognize ourselves in each other. Where we can be a part of something bigger—make something bigger—than ourselves. Just by being ourselves. 

Second Story Collective is, above all, a collaborative venture—a collective of artists and scholars, activists and architects, and West Philadelphia residents is united by a vision: shared living space and shared stories can create a foundation for meaningful cohabitation. For the past 7 years, we have used arts-centered processes, engaged in community-driven research, and developed partnerships to make our vision of alternative housing an actual thing in the world. We are working to create a sustainable, transferable model for co-designed equitable development, particularly for historically marginalized Black communities.

What's New(s)

What's New(s)

  • FEB 2024

    Swiss Center for Design and Health
    D.S. Nicholas travels to the Swiss Center for Design and Health to learn about health innovation centers and present on her work with the Mantua Creative Standard for Aging in Place and Second Story Collective.

  • FEB 2024

    Enterprise Center’s Leap Into Health Fair
    AmeriCorps VISTA Noel Gantt and Community Engagement Liaison Victoria Huggins Peurifoy get the word out on Second Story at the Leap Into Health Fair sponsored by the Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity and the Enterprise Center.

  • JAN 2024

    JoY Lab publication of AmeriCorps-funded research
    "A sandwich effect: Gentrification and Black residential displacement in the university-adjacent West Philadelphia Promise Zone" comes out in the Journal of Race Ethnicity and the City.

  • DEC 2023

    HUD presentation
    Members of the Placekeeping team are invited by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to present as part of a national panel on participatory research.

  • NOV 2023

    Neighborhood Assistance Program Award
    The Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development awards funding to repair two additional Mantua houses in preparation for intergenerational homesharing.

  • OCT 2023

    NSF Launch
    The official launch of the Placekeeping Project brings Civic Innovation grantees to Alexandria, Virginia, the headquarters of the National Science Foundation.

  • JUNE 2023

    Groundbreaking at the future homeownership project site. Construction at Village Square on Haverford gets underway.

The Plan

Origin Story

Origin Story

  • “What if we made a community writers house?"

    Drexel President John Fry calls the question. Founding Director Rachel Wenrick embarks on a year of planning with students and neighbors.

  • Writers Room Launches

    Students, faculty, and neighbors co-create arts programming at the Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships, Drexel’s urban extension center.

  • Anthology Release + Carol's Displacement

    Our first book release is a standing room only celebration.

    Carol, a founding member of Writers Room and local resident, and her family lose their housing when a developer buys their apartment building and then markets its units to students.

    The seed for our co-living project is planted.

  • Drexel Design Research for Health Lab

    D.S. Nicholas and Rachel Wenrick meet over coffee to discuss co-living and the application to ArtPlace and enter into a yearslong conversation about creativity and aging-in-place.

  • JoY Education Lab

    Dr. Ayana Allen-Handy attends an event at the Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships with her mom and infant son, Aidan where they meet Rachel, Carol, and her son, Jordan. Sharing a meal and stories that evening sets the foundation for long-standing relationships and the community-driven research that would follow.

  • Studio HADA

    When Uk Jung presented his award-winning “Flexible House” rowhome during a Dornsife community dinner, it was clear that his design—adapting to the needs of residents, incorporating shared spaces—was a perfect fit for the collaborative intergenerational nature of Second Story.

  • Mantua Civic Association

    Our partnership with the Mantua Civic Association was fused when Gwen Morris and Rachel Wenrick met to discuss the co-housing network as a pathway to homeownership for neighborhood families. Morris became a homeowner in the 1970s by purchasing a duplex and living cooperatively with her tenant.

  • HOME Symposium

    This year-long symposium series centering neighborhood history became a cornerstone in forming Second Story Collective as we embarked on our co-design process. Sponsored by TD Charitable Foundation.

  • Anti-Displacement

    Launch of our Community-Driven Participatory Action Research study empowering our intergenerational team to examine the landscape of affordable housing in West Philadelphia and investigate co-housing as an alternative option. Sponsored by AmerCorps.

  • Catalyst Fund

    Support from the Barra Foundation enables us to develop the the pilot phase our intergenerational co-living model: leveraging the arts for community cohesion, neighborhood stability, and economic mobility.

  • Lomax Real Estate Partners

    Charles Lomax and Rachel Wenrick meet during MCA’s meeting at Grace Lutheran Church. They discuss partnering on the homes at Village Square on Haverford as a pathway to homeownership and new generational wealth for neighborhood families.

  • The Stats

  • 2014

    The year Mantua and Powelton were designated as part of a federal Promise Zone, an area of high poverty with high opportunity to connect its 35,000 residents to vital resources

  • 46%

    Percentage of Promise Zone residents living in poverty, nearly twice the Philadelphia average of 26%

  • $4.5B

    Cost of innovation district development projects within the Promise Zone

  • 77%

    Increase in white population in Mantua in the last 10 years

  • 44%

    Income Black households earn compared to their white neighbors

  • 88%

    Percentage of white homebuyers nationally, the highest since 1996

  • 3%

    Percentage of Black homebuyers nationally, down from 6% in 2021

A New Model

01

Create a home sharing network with an anchor hub for public programming centered around the arts and creativity. Students and neighbors live together in intentional communities rooted in storytelling and sharing.

02

Provide viable affordable housing and anti-displacement options, with students paying below-market rent which subsidizes the homeowners' rent. Leverage partnerships with city agencies and nonprofits to help older homeowners repair and retrofit their homes so they can age in place.

03

Partner with Lomax Real Estate on the development of 18 new homes at Village Square on Haverford in Mantua—designed from the foundation up as intergenerational co-housing, helping neighborhood families become homeowners and creating new generational wealth.

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“This is an opportunity to change the narrative of university-adjacent development from one of displacement of long-term residents to engagement and community building. We have the team around the table to do it.”

—Charles Lomax // Chairman + CEO, Lomax Real Estate Partners

Our Partners