• Philadelphia has the highest rate of home ownership of any major American city: 62 percent of the roughly 600,000 dwellings are owner-occupied.

• The median sales price of a house in the city in 1997, based on an Inquirer study of all sales, was $49,900, down slightly from 1996. Turnover was 3 percent of all houses; the rate for the Pennsylvania suburbs was 5 percent. A third of the homes sold were in Northeast Philadelphia.

• The city demolished 1,539 structures as unsafe in 1998, up from 1,244 in 1995.

• The city has roughly 27,000 abandoned homes and 16,000 vacant lots.

• Number of housing units, permanent or emergency, available to the homeless:

8,597, according to the Mayor’s Report on City Services for 1998.

Number of emergency shelter beds: 2,052

Number of requests for help from homeless, 1998: 31,641, up 13 percent

• The city budget for anti-graffiti efforts, 1998: $3.2 million
• Number of structures cleaned, 1998: 25,824, more than in 1995-97 combined
• Number of murals painted in 1998: 147

• Recreation department participants, 1998: 137,976
• Potholes repaired, 1998: 21,877, down from 81,048 in blizzard year of 1996
• Trash pickup: The city claims a 95.5 percent on-time pickup record in 1998, compared to 81 percent in 1996.