Why I Love This Town but Worry About Its Future

Photo: Andy Shelter

Whenever I drive into Swarthmore, a peacefulness settles over me. Turning onto Juniata Avenue (or Swarthmore Avenue, or Hilldale, or Drew), I feel a sense of relief, like letting out a long-held breath. 

Partly it’s the trees. This is true in any season, whether they’re wearing their summer green or autumn gold, or standing bare-branched in winter, straight and gray and solemn as the Quakers who founded this town.

Partly, too, it’s the houses that calm me. I love the way the styles are jumbled together: brick colonial sitting companionably next to turreted Victorian, stucco bungalow next to shingled twin with porches facing politely in opposite directions. As you approach the center of town, small apartment complexes spread across grassy lots or rise up, four stories tall, close to the train station. One of my regular walks takes me past the large stone houses of Swarthmore Hills, another down along a winding road where clapboard houses hide in the woods, a third past a row of narrow twins in the historically Black neighborhood.

But mostly, of course, it’s the people who make the town what it is. 

As a newcomer 20 years ago, I first met locals while waiting on the corner for my older daughter’s school bus. I met them at the playground across the street, watching my younger daughter slide down the slide, and at our street’s annual block party. My near neighbors include a biologist, a computer-systems saleswoman, an EPA administrator, a high school English teacher, a county transportation administrator, and a social worker, along with stay-at-home parents and retirees. 

One of the things I’ve most loved about Swarthmore is the mix of people: Co-op cashiers, piano teachers, emergency room doctors, electricians, small business owners, young political staffers, post-doctoral fellows, travel agents, college professors, and all kinds of writers: novelists, journalists, children’s book authors, historians, and more than our fair share of poets.

But over the two decades I’ve lived here, I’ve seen the balance of people change. As prices in the real estate listings have grown ever more eye-popping, the cars beneath our street trees are more often BMWs than Toyotas. 

A College Town Without College Professors?

I loved this town even before I moved here. At the tail end of the twentieth century, my young family was living in a perfectly decent suburban house on a cul-de-sac in Delaware, where the streets were all named after towns in Connecticut. I knew we were lucky to live there, but I hated the sameness of the houses, their undersized windows punched into the vinyl siding, the excessive lawns with the occasional quick-growing Bradford pear. 

We had friends who lived in Swarthmore—45 minutes away—and we used to drive up sometimes and visit them in their small stone house. I was always sad to go home.

Then, Swarthmore College hired my husband, David, as an assistant professor. Thrilled, we bought a smallish house on a street at the edge of the town and began to settle in. We met other young faculty members and their families. We enrolled our girls in school and joined the swim club. Nostalgic for my Quaker high school days, I started attending the Friends meeting.

But if we had moved more recently, I doubt we would have been able to afford a house in Swarthmore.

Since the year 2000, when David joined the college faculty, only one new professor in his department has settled in Swarthmore. More recently, three new hires all bought houses elsewhere, commuting to the campus each day rather than becoming part of the community. The rising cost of real estate here wasn’t the only reason, but it was a hefty part. The town’s lack of diversity played a role too. Of course, given our country’s wealth gap (caused by decades of segregation), Swarthmore’s racial homogeneity (we’re about 85% White) is related to its cost.

Each time one of David’s colleagues bought a house in a different town, I felt sad. Not so much for them: there are lots of great places to live in the area. But for me—that they wouldn’t be my neighbors. For my community. A college town where college professors can’t or don’t want to live is troubling. 

The Pandemic Accelerator

Around that time, a friend who had rented an apartment in town for a dozen years started house hunting. Her family had long outgrown their two-and-a-half bedroom apartment. They’d been saving money and decided that 2020 would be the year they could afford to buy a place in town. 

Then the pandemic hit. Prices spiked. Bidding wars for houses became frenzies. 

“We waited too long,” my friend lamented. Despite strong family ties to the borough, she and her husband moved away, deciding to try their luck in a different state. They’ve been gone nine months now, and I miss her all the time. 

It wasn’t long before I heard another story like my friend’s. Then another. If apartment living works for you, Swarthmore has some reasonably priced rental options. But if you want to own your own place—build some equity, have a yard for your kids to run around in—that’s pretty tough. As I watched people I cared about move away—less affluent people who had brought their energy and creativity to our civic life—I felt as though I were witnessing the draining of some of Swarthmore’s quintessence.

Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that rich people are any less interesting or less civically engaged or make less good neighbors than non-rich people. I don’t mean that.

But I do mean that I’d rather live among people who do a lot of different kinds of jobs, including the ones that don’t pay that much—who are of a range of races and live in a variety of family constellations—than to drift in a comfortable homogenous sea.

So I’ve decided to stop drifting and try to do something about it.

Doing Something

I know that the lack of reasonably priced housing is not just a Swarthmore problem. There’s an affordability crisis all over this country: you can find articles about it in the newspaper nearly every day. 

Mostly that’s terrible news. But it does mean that many communities are wrestling with the same problem and experimenting with a variety of approaches and solutions. There’s a lot to be learned from them. 

Over the last few months, I’ve helped organize a Task Force on Development and Affordability authorized by Swarthmore Borough Council, which will make recommendations to the council early next year. We’ll be talking to neighbors about their ideas, needs, and concerns, and delving into the trials and successes of other towns. I’ve already begun meeting with zoning experts and town planners in places where some approaches have been tried. 

I’m hopeful that—if we search—we can come up with ideas that will work here in Swarthmore, with our particular community, history, buildings, and people. 

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