Getting your first credit card is a huge step towards financial independence, but if you didn’t grow up in a household that talked openly about money and personal finance, you may not know how to pick a good first credit card… or even why you should get one in the first place.
But you’ll absolutely need a credit card in your adult life, for things like buying a plane ticket, renting a car, and, most importantly, building credit. Unfortunately, many of us don’t build credit while we’re in college...

After nearly two years of protests, encampments, lawsuits, and the displacement of nearly 70 families, the University City Townhomes affordable housing saga appears to have a resolution.

But the underlying issue that caused the situation is far from unique.

Over 20% of the city’s affordable housing complexes that rely on the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and Section 8 subsidies — about 100 out of 450 — are set to expire over the next decade, according to the National Housing Preservati

It’s just before noon on the Saturday of St. Patrick’s Day weekend, and two tipsy Penn students stumble into a shop on the 34th block of Sansom Street. One is dressed normally save the green color of his shirt and a string of clover–shaped beads around his neck, while the other wears a St. Patty’s–themed scarf tied around his midsection like a sarong.

“How are you doing, John?” the latter of the students, Oliver Corcoran (C ‘22), says. “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!”

“You’re a bit late,” the owner

Affordable housing activists set up a new protest encampment in West Philadelphia over the weekend, with at least 15 tents so far taking over the lawn facing 40th Street at the University City Townhomes. The installation is part of a multi-group push to keep the 40-year-old residential complex from being sold and redeveloped.

When an early June altercation on South Street spiraled into a shooting that killed three people and wounded 11, national news outlets played up concerns the area’s nightlife was encouraging violence.

A Billy Penn analysis of police reports along some of the most commercially active blocks of South Street, however, found that not only do shootings seldom occur, but the business district is also among the safest in Philly.

Some headlines in the wake of June’s South Street tragedy, which happened on a busy Saturday evening, compared it to mass shootings in Chattanooga and Buffalo with zero acknowledgement of how often physical violence in Philly escalates into gunfire.

“It’s the rhetoric around the incident that bothers me the most,” Jenea Robinson told Billy Penn. She owns Marsh + Mane, a natural hair care store on the corner of 4th and South that specializes in Black beauty products. When she opened the store in 2018, Robinson said South Street was one of the few neighborhoods that welcomed her business.

Now, she is dismayed by how the shooting was framed. “The details of the incident are being reported factually,” Robinson said, “but I think this was used in a political way to push a particular agenda.”

Eleanor Ingersoll, president of the Queen Village Neighbors Association who has lived adjacent to South Street for 23 years, told Billy Penn that shootings “don’t scare” her away from South Street, but they are concerning. These concerns manifest differently for business owners and longtime Queen Village residents. Everyone, it seems, wants to see the street become safer for all to enjoy, but there’s little agreement over what constitutes danger in the first place.

“I’m more worried about these low-level crimes creating a wellspring where ‘everything goes,’” Ingersoll said, arguing that city departments need to work together to monitor how bars, clubs, and BYOBs are enabling crime with lax policies around drinking.