{"id":313057,"date":"2025-10-18T09:31:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T09:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/313057\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T09:31:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T09:31:12","slug":"philadelphia-community-garden-lots-bought-by-land-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/313057\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia community garden lots bought by Land Bank"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This story is part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/whyy-news-climate-desk\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>WHYY News Climate Desk<\/strong><\/a>, bringing you news and solutions for our changing region.\n<\/p>\n<p>From the Poconos to the Jersey Shore to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, what do you want to know about climate change? What would you like us to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\"><strong>Get in touch<\/strong><\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>When Stephen Drain was growing up in Southwest Philadelphia, the vacant lots between rowhouses on Reinhard Street attracted trash and debris.\n<\/p>\n<p>Now, these lots grow sweet corn, watermelon, collard greens, jalape\u00f1os and chilis.\n  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the last five years, we\u2019ve been able to develop the lots into a thriving food oasis that also has space for people to sit and reflect,\u201d said Drain, farm director at the <a href=\"https:\/\/reinhardstreet.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Reinhard Street Community Farm and Kitchen<\/a>. The organization runs a community fridge and delivers free produce to neighbors.\n<\/p>\n<p>But like many community gardens in Philadelphia, the Reinhard Street Community Farm and Kitchen does not own most of the abandoned land it operates on. The farm has <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/peoples-kitchen-is-latest-community-garden-threatened-by-sheriff-sale\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">struggled with the threat of land speculators or developers purchasing <\/a>the land out from under it.\n<\/p>\n<p>But the farm inched closer to securing the land in August, when the Philadelphia Land Bank purchased six of the more than two dozen lots that make up the farm at sheriff\u2019s sale. The Reinhard Street Community Farm and Kitchen hopes to eventually buy these parcels from the Land Bank.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re in a more secure position than we were when we first started growing,\u201d Drain said.\n<\/p>\n<p>Plan to secure 91 garden lots moves forward<\/p>\n<p>The Reinhard Street plots are among 35 garden parcels once <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inquirer.com\/news\/philadelphia-community-garden-tax-lien-us-bank-gentrification-20211006.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tangled up with privately held tax liens<\/a> that the Land Bank bought at sheriff\u2019s sale in August, said Land Bank spokesperson Karen Guss. The purchases are part of a multistep plan orchestrated by garden advocates and some City Council members to transfer abandoned land now used for agriculture to gardeners or nonprofit land trusts.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re talking about community gardens that have been in the hands of community for 20-plus years, where neighbors have created a garden oasis in the middle of blight,\u201d said at-large City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, one of the architects of the plan.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk, bringing you news and solutions for our changing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":313058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[157740,5229,1448,2830,1311,157741,12771,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,49740],"class_list":{"0":"post-313057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-community-gardens","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-land-bank","14":"tag-planphilly","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa","21":"tag-whyy-news-climate-desk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115394477371354935","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}