For her whole professional career, Ava Goldman has been an advocate for affordable and accessible housing. So, in 2015, when two past presidents of Federation Housing asked her out to lunch at the Fourth Street Deli and proposed she join the board of the organization, it was a natural fit for the Philadelphia native.
“I thought it over, and I said ‘sure,’” she said.
Goldman now serves as president of the board of Federation Housing. She and the organization ground their work in Jewish values and are committed to providing senior residents of the area an affordable place to live. Those values are why she got into this sort of work in the first place.
“I think it goes back to those Jewish values that I was always taught — that I should care for people who were less fortunate than me, and I always felt like, I need to make a living, but gee, it would be great to make a living in a way that helps people,” she said.
Goldman graduated college with a degree in city planning and worked as a planner for a few years before shifting to other government housing work. She worked in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the beginning of the casino era in the mid-1970s when “quite a bit” of housing was built, she said, and then eventually moved into the private sector with the Michaels Development Company, later becoming president of the organization. For the past decade or so, she has been a private housing consultant. In that role, she helps private developers and government agencies create affordable housing.
In her role with Federation Housing, Goldman helps direct the vision. Recently, that meant reshaping the strategy. Federation Housing has always been an equal opportunity housing provider, but in the past, the organization primarily built structures in Jewish neighborhoods. As the demographics of Philadelphia change, the organization needs to figure out how to continue to make sure Jewish residents know that it is here for them.
“We talked about how to market ourselves so that the general Jewish community, particularly Jewish seniors, would know about what our mission is, which is to provide housing opportunities for senior citizens,” she said. “We talked about other programs that we could provide that would provide direct assistance to our residents.”
There is one program that Federation Housing offers now that might serve as a blueprint for its future: It gives financial assistance to Holocaust survivors who meet certain income requirements.
“We have been providing these systems solely for residents on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware Valley, and we are actually going to be expanding that program to South Jersey as well. So that’s one of the programs that we had in place, but we decided we could be helping more people, so we’re expanding it geographically,” she said.
While the organization is guided by Jewish values and does its part to help Jews, Goldman emphasized that those values also motivate Federation Housing to do good for seniors in general.
“Jewish values most definitely play a role in my life and play a very important role in Federation Housing. Honoring your parents seems to relate directly to the kind of help we provide for senior citizens,” she said. “We think it’s a large part of Jewish values to help seniors regardless of their ethnicity.”
While Goldman still lives by Jewish values, she stopped belonging to a synagogue during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I let it lapse, but, you know, I would like to join a synagogue [again],” she said.
Goldman said she has a few options, but they would have to be within walking distance of her home in Old City. She loves living in one of Philadelphia’s most storied neighborhoods and makes sure to take advantage of her area as much as she can. She and her sister share tickets to the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philadelphia Chamber Society.
“I live three blocks from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. That is just a little bit of a thrill. I mean, I go to the post office that was the former home of Benjamin Franklin, who invented the post office. I just get thrilled by living in Philadelphia. It’s such a historic city and it’s such a walkable setting,” Goldman said.
Philadelphia needs Mitchell-Lama type housing: affordable co-op apartments for well under $100,000 that form permanent homes. Three of the four co-op buildings built with subsidies to meet that need have gone market-rate, and the fourth is close to that. New buildings are needed, especially in Center City. They can easily be built over parking lots, which can be replaced by underground parking ramps.