The Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is planning sweeping layoffs that will affect almost 300 of the agency’s 1,200 employees, beginning in January 2026.
The cutbacks are the result of dramatic changes in how PHA, which provides affordable housing to thousands of families across the city, does maintenance and repair work. Instead of directly employing union electricians, carpenters, and other workers, beginning next year, the agency will contract out for those jobs as needed.
“This is a housing program, it is not a jobs program,” said Kelvin Jeremiah, the president and CEO of PHA, in an interview.
“Do I use the resources that we have to protect residents, to advance the availability of affordable housing to the families that are most in need? Or do I use those limited resources to fund positions that I don’t need?” Jeremiah said.
There are 620 members of the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council employed full-time by the agency as maintenance staff. Jeremiah estimates that by almost halving that number PHA will see a cost savings of $24 million annually.
The agency said it currently costs $15,500 to maintain a single unit of traditional public housing annually, due to the agency’s complex work rules, which require many different union workers to make repairs. Most other multifamily providers have dramatically lower per-unit maintenance costs.
“PHA has engaged the unions throughout this process and can proceed with this policy decision without additional approvals,” an agency spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Although in-house building trades workers will constitute the majority of lost jobs, other positions will also be affected, including 33 managerial roles in PHA headquarters. Overall, PHA’s workforce will shrink by about 20%.
“We are going to talk and try to offer some alternatives, but this is an issue of price sensitivity and we have to understand, given the new environment, that there are less funds to do the same mission with,” said Ryan Boyer, business manager for the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, whose unions represent many of the affected workers.
More with less?
The cutbacks come amid an aggressive $6.3 billion plan unveiled earlier this year, through which the agency hopes to expand its housing portfolio by 7,000 units while rehabbing the 13,000 units it already owns.
Jeremiah said that the staff reduction should not be seen as PHA doing more with less, and that it will not limit the agency’s ability to execute his planned expansion.
“We will not be doing less than what we’re doing now, but we have been doing too little with too much,” Jeremiah said. He said other market-rate and affordable housing multifamily operators are able to do unit repairs for far less than what PHA pays.
“My colleagues have all been doing this at substantially less cost,” Jeremiah said. “The only difference between us is that they have an operating model that does not require six different trades to do a single thing.”
Because PHA’s layoffs will affect hundreds of members of Philadelphia’s influential building trades unions, Jeremiah said, he has been negotiating with Boyer on the work-rule changes.
“My reaction is one of disappointment. However, we remain partners with PHA and we will still build most of the stuff on the capital side,” Boyer said. “I don’t want it to be lost that when they build stuff, they will still be members of the Philadelphia building trades working, and there will still be members doing maintenance work.”
Boyer is also the business manager for the Laborers’ District Council and a close ally of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.
Jeremiah said maintenance technicians, laborers, and painters will be the only trades that remain directly employed with the agency after the work-rule changes go into effect.
The electricians union, IBEW Local 98, said it is still studying PHA’s new policy.
PHA will also still work with the trades for discrete repair and maintenance jobs within the agency’s housing portfolio but will no longer directly employ as many workers full-time, Jeremiah said.
The Trump effect?
PHA’s layoffs, and its expansion plan, are unfolding during a period of uncertainty nationwide for affordable housing policies and organizations like PHA.
Some housing experts were surprised to see PHA embark on its ambitious $6.3 billion plan amid President Donald Trump’s skepticism of affordable housing programs and a raft of austerity measures from his administration, which has sought to reduce public support for lower-income Americans.
Nearly all of PHA’s funding — 93% — comes from the federal government, according to the agency.
“If Congress and the administration coughs, it impacts us,” Jeremiah said. “If there is a reduction [in funding], it impacts us.”
Jeremiah said he is seeking to operate within the mandates set by Trump’s administration while continuing to support PHA’s tenant base and plans.
“Subsidizing employment … is just not the way to go at a time when we’re looking at less funding on the horizon,” Jeremiah said. “Where am I to get the funds not only to do more developments, acquire more, and preserve what we have at the same time [that] we have a workforce that is, quite frankly, I will dare to use the word bloated?”
Waves of layoffs
Despite the layoffs, Jeremiah believes the agency will still be a rich source of jobs for the building trades unions as the $6.3 billion plan unfolds. He points to an analysis of PHA’s 10-year plan by economic consulting firm Econsult Solutions, which said it would create 4,900 jobs annually in the city.
The first round of 260 job losses will hit in mid-January 2026, although Jeremiah says 93 of those workers will be retained in new positions as maintenance aides, laborers, and painters. A further 116-position reduction will occur next summer.
A vice president of development, Greg Hampson, also recently left PHA, although the agency declined to comment on that case. Jeremiah said that several vice president and director-level positions will be among the coming layoffs.
The last major round of layoffs at PHA was in 2016, when 14% of the staff was cut. Those positions were mostly administrative roles.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misstated the number of employees impacted.
