Editor’s note: The topline was updated on June 7, 2022, to include all poll questions rather than only those analyzed in this brief. 

Overview

Philadelphians are struggling with record-high gun violence, and residents throughout the city are concerned for their safety. They also still feel the COVID-19 pandemic’s far-reaching impacts, such as changes in their physical and mental health, household finances, and employment.

Against this backdrop, Philadelphia residents express more pessimism about the city’s future than at any time since The Pew Charitable Trusts started polling residents in 2009—with 63% of residents now saying the city is pretty seriously on the wrong track.

Pew polling conducted Jan. 3-31, 2022, finds that 70% of Philadelphians see crime, drugs, and public safety as the most important issue facing the city—up nearly 30 percentage points from 2020. The portion of residents who feel safe in their neighborhood at night dropped to 44%, the lowest since the poll’s 2009 onset. Sixty-five percent of city residents reported hearing gunshots in their neighborhood in the past 12 months. And 85% believe that gun violence in Philadelphia has gotten worse over the past three years.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to complicate Philadelphians’ lives in ways that affect their livelihood, financial security, and overall outlook toward the city. Nearly half of adult residents know someone who has died from the virus, double the percentage in August 2020. Fifty-eight percent say they experience anxiety or nervousness when thinking about the pandemic, while 34% of those with children say their child’s emotional health is worse than before the pandemic. In most cases, Hispanic and Black Philadelphians experienced these impacts more than White residents, and all Philadelphians with lower incomes and education levels were particularly hard hit.

Fifty-four percent of residents’ jobs changed during the pandemic, and one-third of respondents say they are worse off financially than they were in March 2020. For example, 44% of city residents reported having at least a little difficulty paying their rent or mortgage since the pandemic began. And 61% of Philadelphians with children under age 18 living with them reported difficulties paying their rent or mortgage. So perhaps it is no surprise that many Philadelphians recognize that the recovery for the city and their family may be long or incomplete, with about one-third believing things will never get back to the way they were before the pandemic and 14% expecting it to take at least a year.

And looming issues of violence and poverty continue to dampen the city’s outlook. Just 53% of Philadelphians rated the city as an “excellent” or “good” place to live, down from 66% in 2020. Only 58% of residents expect to be living in the city in five to 10 years, down from 72% in 2019.

Despite this, Philadelphians offered a slight glimmer of hope: A majority said the city’s best days are ahead.

The survey—conducted for Pew by SSRS, an independent research company based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania—used address-based sampling, with individuals initially contacted by mail. SSRS collected data from 1,541 adult Philadelphia residents; 1,110 filled out the questionnaire online, and 434 completed it on paper. The margin of error for results involving all respondents is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Analyses in this report show weighted percentages among valid responses.

Public safety and gun violence

Gun violence has soared since the beginning of the pandemic, affecting how Philadelphians view their neighborhoods and the city overall. In 2021, the 562 homicides and 2,326 shooting victims represented the highest recorded totals since the 1960s.¹

And even more than in recent years, Philadelphians see public safety as the most important issue facing the city, overshadowing other quality-of-life concerns.

When asked an open-ended question about the most important issue facing the city, 70% gave the answer crime, drugs, and public safety—a noteworthy increase of 29 percentage points over 2020 and the highest percentage recorded by Pew polling. The concern about public safety is shared across the city by all demographic groups and neighborhoods. 

After crime, drugs, and public safety, 14% of respondents cite poverty and homelessness as a concern. (See Table 1.) Other issues that had previously been highly ranked, including education/schools and jobs/the economy, became less pressing in 2022. Although at least 5% of respondents mentioned a variety of other concerns, the lesser concerns made up a smaller percentage of responses than in past years.

Since the first poll in 2009, Pew has asked Philadelphians how safe they feel in their neighborhoods at night. That number dropped below 50% for the first time in the 2020 poll. The decrease continues in 2022, with only 44% of Philadelphians saying they feel “completely” or “pretty” safe in their neighborhoods at night.

Figure 2 breaks this response down by race and ethnicity. Although 63% of White Philadelphians say they feel generally safe in their neighborhoods at night, only 35% of Black and 32% of Hispanic Philadelphians say they feel safe, a decline since 2019.

Only 24% of Philadelphians who live in the ZIP codes with the highest violent crime rates feel completely or pretty safe in their neighborhoods at night; meanwhile, 60% of Philadelphians who live in the ZIP codes with the lowest rates of violent crime say they feel completely or pretty safe in their neighborhoods at night.

Gun violence

Overall, nearly two-thirds of Philadelphians indicate that they had heard gunshots in their neighborhood during the previous 12 months. And 85% of Philadelphians say that gun violence is getting worse, a view held by nearly all demographic groups and neighborhoods in the city. Furthermore, 48% of Philadelphians said either they, an immediate family member, or a close friend had been the victim of a violent crime such as an assault, robbery, or gun violence in 2021; 52% said neither they nor anyone they know closely was a victim of a violent crime at all.

Gun violence affects certain city neighborhoods and demographic groups more than others. Overall, 42% of Philadelphians believe that gun violence has a major impact on their neighborhood. But when the responses are disaggregated by race and ethnicity, Black and Hispanic respondents were more likely than White Philadelphians to indicate that gun violence had a major negative impact on their neighborhood. (See Figure 3.)

There are also differences among neighborhoods in assessing the impact of gun violence. Sixty-eight percent of residents living in ZIP codes with the highest violent crime indicate that gun violence had a major negative impact on their neighborhood, compared with only 19% of those living in the ZIP codes with the lowest violent crime.

Views on police

In 2022, nearly 3 in 5 residents said they had a “great deal” or “good amount” of respect for the police in Philadelphia—with 4 in 5 Philadelphians age 65 and older as well as residents of the Northeast expressing strong support. Conversely, residents ages 18 to 29 were more likely than those age 50 and older to have “just some” or “not much” respect for the police.

Forty-two percent of Philadelphians say they have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of confidence that the police will treat Black and White residents equally, which is down 5 percentage points from the 2020 poll. White Philadelphians are more likely to view the police as fair; Black and Hispanic residents view police as less fair in 2022 than they did immediately after the 2020 protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd. (See Figure 4.)

The survey also explored the attitudes of residents on the number of police officers—and whether they believe more or fewer are needed. Sixty-one percent of Philadelphians said the city needs more police, up from 45% in 2020. (See Table 2.) Of those living in the quartile of ZIP codes experiencing the highest violence, nearly 70% said the city does not have enough police. Those more likely to say the city has enough or too many police included residents ages 18-49, those with incomes above $100,000 annually, and those with at least a college degree.

Attitudes on the pandemic and its impacts

The direct effects of the virus

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, Philadelphians continue to experience the virus’s impacts. Forty-seven percent of residents say they know someone who has died from the coronavirus, up from 24% when Pew asked the same question in 2020. (See Figure 5.) The percentage was not uniform across demographic groups, with White (37%) and college-educated (40%) Philadelphians less likely to know someone who died.

The indirect emotional toll

Slightly more than half of Philadelphians—58%—say that the pandemic causes them at least some anxiety or nervousness. Of those with children under the age of 18 in their household, one-third say their child’s emotional health is worse than before the pandemic, with more than one-quarter (28%) saying the child or children in the household are very anxious or nervous.

Vaccination uptake and attitudes

In the survey, 88% of Philadelphians say they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. There was not a statistically significant difference in vaccination rates between racial and ethnic groups, but Philadelphians with college degrees and those with yearly incomes of $50,000 or more had rates higher than 95%. Respondents say the major reason they got vaccinated was to protect their own health (73%) or the health of family and friends (71%).

Impacts on finances, employment, and income

When asked about their personal financial situation, about one-third of Philadelphians say they are worse off today than when the economy shut down in March 2020. Answers varied depending on the respondent’s educational attainment, race, and income: Those with lower levels of educational attainment were especially challenged, with 40% of those with a high school diploma or less and 38% of those with just some college saying they were worse off financially. (See Figure 6.)

Only 22% of White Philadelphians say they are worse off, compared with 36% of Black Philadelphians and 40% of Hispanic city residents. And just 12% of those making $100,000 or more say they are worse off financially, while nearly half of those making less than $50,000 answer that way.

A similar pattern emerges when respondents were asked whether they have had any difficulty paying their mortgage or rent since the COVID-19 outbreak: 44% of all Philadelphians say they have had at least a little difficulty, but Hispanic (55%) and Black (50%) Philadelphians report having had a substantially harder time than White Philadelphians (29%). Furthermore, 61% of Philadelphians with children under age 18 living with them report difficulties paying their rent or mortgage, compared with 35% of those without children living in their household.

Homeowners and renters show differences as well. Sixty-five percent of renters indicate that they have had difficulties paying rent, with more than a quarter noting “a lot of difficulty.” In comparison, 36% of homeowners say they have had difficulty in paying their mortgage, with less than 10% indicating “a lot of difficulty.”

Fully half (54%) of those who were employed on March 1, 2020, say their employment status changed during the pandemic: They are working in a new place, lost their job, their employer closed, or they had their pay or hours reduced. (See Figure 7.) In 2020, 40% of Philadelphians said the pandemic had negatively affected their employment.

Those on the lower end of the income scale got hit hard. For example, 28% of Philadelphians earning less than $30,000 say they were laid off or fired, compared with 11% of those making $50,000 to $99,999 and 10% of those making $100,000 or more.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Philadelphia’s unemployment rate was an estimated 5.8% in December 2021, roughly the same rate as in the months before the pandemic, but nearly 14 percentage points lower than when the peak impacts were felt.

Working conditions

Policymakers continue to grapple with the potentially lasting impacts of increased work-from-home options. Forty-three percent of Philadelphians say they work at least partially from home: 22% work entirely or mostly from home, and 21% go in to work some days and work from home other days. This leaves 57% of city residents in the workplace most or every day. (See Figure 8.) Of those employed and going to their workplace at least sometimes, a majority—56%—say they are at least a little nervous in the workplace because of the pandemic.

Here, too, the results vary by income and level of education. For example, 80% of employed residents with a high school degree or less and 72% of employed residents making less than $30,000 per year say they are in the workplace most or every day, compared with 41% of employed college graduates and 37% of those making $100,000 or more.

Post-pandemic feelings

Philadelphia residents expect it to take substantial time to get their lives back to the way they were before the pandemic, if ever. More than one-third of Philadelphians believe things will never get back to the way they were, with an additional 14% expecting it to take more than a year. (See Figure 9.) A full 22% of residents are unsure when life will return to the way it was before the pandemic. This leaves less than 1 in 5 who see a return to pre-pandemic life within a year.

Nonetheless, most residents believe their financial situation will either improve (38%) or remain the same (38%) over the next year.

Perceptions of Philadelphia’s future

Philadelphians’ poll responses, gathered shortly before the start of the third year of the pandemic, show that residents have an undecided view of their city: Fifty-three percent of Philadelphians rate the city as an “excellent” or “good” place to live, down from 66% in 2020. Philadelphians also strongly view the city as being on the wrong track with a jump of 25 percentage points since before the pandemic, from 38% in 2019 to 63% in 2022. (See Figure 10.) In 2019, 5% of respondents selected a “mixed” view of the direction of the city; that choice wasn’t an option in the 2022 poll. Seventy-nine percent view the city as a worse place to live (42% indicating it had “gotten a lot worse”). Despite these views, Philadelphians expressed some optimism, with 53% saying the city’s best days are ahead.

The pandemic has sparked nationwide concerns about whether people will continue to want to live in urban areas, and questions as to whether the pandemic will greatly affect migration patterns. In 2022, 58% of Philadelphians indicate that they “definitely will” or “probably will” be living in Philadelphia in the next five to 10 years, down from 72% in 2019. Residents ages 18-29 are the least likely to project remaining, at only 40%; those most likely to say they will continue living in the city are longtime residents (65%), older Philadelphians (79%), and those with a high school degree or less (62%).

About this brief

This brief was written and prepared by Katie Martin and Jason Hachadorian from Pew’s Philadelphia research and policy initiative. Sandra Shea, a senior officer with the initiative, edited the brief, along with Carol Hutchinson and Cindy Murphy-Tofig. Sarah Spell, an officer with Pew’s research review and support team, and Larry Eichel, senior adviser to the Philadelphia research and policy initiative, also contributed to the research. The firm SSRS conducted the survey. The brief benefited from the comments of two independent reviewers: Dr. Ajima Olaghere, assistant professor of criminal justice at Temple University, and Monica Medina McCurdy, former vice president of health care services at Project Home. This brief does not necessarily reflect the opinions of these individuals or their institutions.

Appendix A

Endnotes

1. Philadelphia Police Department, “Crime Maps & Stats,” accessed Feb. 28, 2022, https://www.phillypolice.com/crime-maps-stats.