Winners of Competition to Make Philadelphia More Millennial-Friendly Announced
By John McDevitt
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The City of Philadelphia continues its efforts to attract and retain young people, ages 20 to 34.
Today, mayor Michael Nutter was on hand to congratulate more than a dozen participants of the city's first public policy case study competition.
The mayor's policy office created the competition to get ideas from Millennials on how to keep more of that desirable demographic group from moving out of the city.
"Thank you for your participation," Nutter told them. "We look forward to more of these case study competitions."
University of Pennsylvania student Matt Steele's group won with a project on a student housing cooperative network.
"The thing about co-ops is that they are kind of like equity investments, for the most part," Steele (far right in photo) explained after today's ceremony, "so the students are actually owners of the house. And they manage it as owners. And so, as homeowners, there's a lot of research that has shown that being a homeowner actually connects you to the place a lot more. So the idea was to blend that rental tendency and home ownership in a kind of program."
The city has seen an explosive growth in Millennials, with a net increase of about 100,000 residents from 2006 through 2012.
