DEBBY FREEDMAN: “Our whole model is that we do not want to be seeing the same clients over and over.”
public funding sources. Freedman has set an audacious mission for her agency: to preserve home-ownership among Philadelphia’s working class and thereby transfer intergenerational wealth. Philadelphia is famed among cities for its high proportion of blue-collar home ownership. But low-income families are faced with many chal-
T
he challenge: a blocksized former school building in the middle of a residential neighborhood in South Philadelphia; eight stories high, 340,000 square feet of space, on the National Register of Historic Places – but fronting narrow streets, with minimal parking. How to come up with a practical new function for it? Rising to that challenge: Scout, an urban design and development practice started eight years ago in London, England. Scout’s co-founder and managing partner, Lindsey Scannapieco, had deep roots in South Philadelphia. “My parents got married in St. Rita’s,” she notes. She also has deep roots in real estate: her family runs Scannapieco Development, a prominent
builder in the city and South-
LINDSEY SCANNAPIECO: “Philadelphia is attracting people who want to make it better.”
eastern Pennsylvania. Scannapieco attended London School of Economics, earning a master’s in city design. “I was interested in placemaking and contextual development,” she says. With her partner, Emma Rutherford, Scannapieco engaged in creative projects reimagining public spaces for the runup to the
2012 Olympics in London. Scannapieco moved back to Philadelphia in 2014. The next year, she acquired the vacant Bok Vocational High School building and launched a $21 million project that really had no precedent in this city. She rejected the idea of residential conversion. “In South Philadelphia, there already is a lot of residential, so there is no need for new residential condos,” Scannapieco explains. “But there is a need for places to work.” Scout thereupon redeveloped the building as a beehive of small workplaces. True to Bok’s vocational history, scout favors light manufacturing, but its 160 tenants span a wide range of artistic and service businesses (Cont. Next Page)
T HE P UB L I C R E CO R D
lenges when they try to pass on inherited real estate. Freedman wants to combat these, she says, in order to “preserve the fabric of the community.” Under her leadership, CLS has worked to be out in the neighborhoods at community meetings, trouble-shooting. Housing is a key area of legal hazard for Philadelphia’s poor. In addition to home ownership, CLS puts a lot of effort into representing clients in evictions. Freedman has held several positions at CLS, including deputy director, managing attorney of CLS’s North Philadelphia office and managing attorney of CLS’ Family Advocacy Unit. In these management roles, Freedman’s (Cont. Next Page)
O C TO B E R 3, 2019
I
n a city with a high poverty rate like Philadelphia, Community Legal Services plays an outsized role in providing lawyerly guidance and assistance to one-quarter of its residents. The person who makes it all happen is CLS Executive Director Debby Freedman. Under Freedman’s leadership, CLS has grown significantly over the last four years. Its role is to provide for civil law what the Defender Association of Philadelphia does in criminal law: to provide vital legal support for those citizens who cannot afford to pay for it. CLS helps over 10,000 low-income Philadelphians a year. Freedman is helped by donations from 120 highpriced Philadelphia law firms and a complicated host of
P H IL LY R E CO R D.C O M - 215 -755 -20 0 0
Leading the Way 2019 - Sponsored by: Lindsey Scannapieco Debby Freedman
5