Early in 1965 a group of disturbed civic citizens sat down to study the area they lived in, some over a period of fifty years. The focus was on the housing, its positive and negative effects of the surrounding areas. The findings were mostly negative. The area analyzed were Washington Avenue to Mifflin Street, west of Broad to 25th Street.

Our children were leaving their roots and neighborhood identity for such areas as Mt. Airy, Germantown and West Oak Lane and even out of the city of Philadelphia. We wanted to instill in our youth the importance of maintaining their roots and giving purpose to staying rather then leaving.

Collectively we agreed that decent housing would be the incentive used in persuading our youth to want to stay in south Philadelphia. Our goal should be to fix up area housing (scattered site housing) and bring in new housing for low income persons and possible employment for our youth in the area.

October 24, 1967, our charter was registered, under the name South Philadelphia H.O.M.E.S. Inc. (Housing Opportunity Means Everybody Shares). We were now a nonprofit organization for Housing in the State of Pennsylvania and 501 C (3) tax exempt. The original chartered members were 15 and met in the old Musician Union Hall at Broad and Carpenter. This number extended to 30 active members. Many carried the ball over a period of 15 years; our leadership has been enhanced by our former leader the late Carl Moore.

The site we chose was the only available site at the time, 21st Annin Street and 22nd Ellsworth Street. We claimed land that was formerly the Adelta Tin Factory. We proceeded to work for finances for our project. We worked towards obtaining more subsidiaries from the state, city, and Federal Governments.
In 1982 our dreams were materialized. Our project was called Ellsworth Site 1. Since that project renovated two single houses: one an office for SPH 1997, and a single family affordable home 2000. We out grew our first office and move into our second office April 2005.

Growing as an organization taught SPH that housing was not enough, if we really wanted the community to profit from affordable housing. We learned that we must teach life skills and pre-housing counseling education classes to help our community benefit with the tools needed to sustain a home rental or home rental or home ownership. In the programs SPH planned we direct each consumer to budgeting, financial literacy, computer literacy, and predatory lending. We offer social service referrals and many city services to also help influence the communities' knowledge.

Today we have even gone a step further; we have college at SPH starting September, 2007 throughout June graduation 2009. The graduation will take place at Harcum College. The planned program is a two year Associate Degree program in leadership with a partnership with I lead and Harcum College. We also have nutrition classes to prepare the same clients how to prevent obesity and diabetics.

SPH is continuously seeking ways to help our community to grow beyond the scope of need, educating them to maintain a home: rental or home ownership, and live within it with wealth, according to their financial worth.