John Kromer is a housing and development consultant who specializes in strategic planning, public agency capacity building, and program and policy development for urban communities and metropolitan regions.
As the City of Philadelphia’s Director of Housing from 1992 to 2001, Kromer supervised the expenditure of more than a billion dollars in public investment in support of housing preservation and development activities that improved living conditions for thousands of Philadelphia families. As a consultant since that time, he has assisted government, institutional, and nonprofit clients in organizing and implementing reinvestment strategies. Within the past five years, he has been a key participant in the design and implementation of state-authorized economic recovery plans for the cities of Camden, NJ, Reading, PA, and Altoona, PA.
Through consulting assignments with the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania, Kromer has developed training materials and conducted information sessions for statewide audiences consisting of government administrators and managers, institutional and business leaders, and nonprofit and civic organization board and staff members, on topics such as the acquisition and reuse of vacant properties, the organization of land bank authorities, and the use of court-ordered conservatorship as a remedy for placing neglected properties under the control of responsible developers.
Recent clients include the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, Prince George’s County (MD) Office of Audits and Investigations, Rutgers Camden Center for Urban Research and Education, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Downtown Raleigh (NC) Alliance, the Wyomissing (PA) Foundation, the Center for Community Progress, and others.
Kromer is the author of "Fixing Broken Cities: The Implementation of Urban Reinvestment Strategies" (Routledge, 2010) and "Neighborhood Recovery: Reinvestment Policy for the New Hometown" (Rutgers University Press, 2002).
