A Q&A with State Sen. Joe Picozzi

This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Like many of his friends, 30-year-old state Sen. Joe Picozzi is saving up to buy his first home – and, like many of his friends, he’s navigating a forbiddingly expensive housing market. “For previous generations, they would work for a year or two and purchase a starter home, right? And that’s clearly not the economy we’re living in,” he told City & State recently, noting that Pennsylvania’s typical first-time homebuyer is now nearly 40 years old.

As chair of the state Senate Urban Affairs & Housing Committee, Picozzi is in a position to do something about it. City & State recently caught up with the first-term Philadelphia lawmaker as he discussed the state of the commonwealth’s affordable housing, potential legislative solutions and his optimism about what he views as a quintessentially bipartisan issue.

What are Pennsylvania’s most pressing housing challenges?

We’ve got a shortage of supply – we’re about 100,000 houses short of our needs. And we’re an older commonwealth – Philadelphia itself is older than the United States – so we have a massive aging housing stock.

With inflation, everything gets more expensive. Construction and maintenance costs for housing are huge, and they only seem to be going up. The average price to build a new single-family home in Pennsylvania in 2023, according to the Home Innovation Research Lab – which used housing permit and sales data from the U.S. Census Bureau – was $721,000. A lot of that is regulatory burden: $33,200 just for zoning approval. 

To give another example, the median home price in my own zip code increased by 128% from 2014 to 2024 – from $80,000 to $184,000. So there are numerous challenges for first-time homebuyers trying to climb the asset ladder. And it’s a significant challenge for our seniors, who are living on fixed incomes, and are essentially being priced out of their homes – some unexpected expense comes up, and now they can’t afford their rent.

Do urban and rural regions have different challenges?

For example, in Philadelphia, our affordable housing stock is in more dangerous neighborhoods. So it’s tough for people trying to start a family, because where you can afford to buy is not necessarily where you want to raise your family. We have a challenge as well with absentee landlords or people not maintaining their properties … That’s been a big problem for us in Northeast Philadelphia and across the city.

The aging housing stock challenge, however, is both urban and rural. But in rural areas, populations are decreasing, so they’re dealing with abandoned, deteriorating properties that create blighted areas.

What kinds of solutions is the Senate mulling in response?

There’s a home preservation grant program that senators have been working on, which is extremely bipartisan. The leaders are Sen. Nikil Saval, who represents South Philly, and Sen. Dave Argall, who represents a more rural community in Northeast Pennsylvania. They work closely together on this legislation, and it illustrates how this challenge has crossed us across urban and rural.

The goal really is preserving housing stock. Right here in Philadelphia, we have all these commercial buildings that are underused, and their values have decreased as less people are coming to work in the city. I think there’s a need to look critically at what can be done to perhaps divert some of these to residential buildings. That’s a very expensive process. But ultimately, it’s going to make the city thrive.

Is affordable housing a bipartisan issue in Pennsylvania?

I think it’s very bipartisan. We have a really good cross-chamber, cross party relationship, and I think you have four chairmen (in the House and Senate) who really want to get things done on this issue. Between the four of us, we bring different perspectives – urban, suburban, rural – and I think that’s going to be really productive.

I don’t think there’s perfect consensus on how we go about it. For example, one thing being discussed in legislature is rent control. And I think a bill is coming our way from the House regarding manufactured homes. So there’s a difference in philosophy sometimes, on how you go about it, but I think there’s a consensus that there’s a need for action and forward-looking ideas. We all feel a serious responsibility to get something done.