PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/category/develop-pgh/page/2/)
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Develop PGH Bulletins updates you on the Pittsburgh region's economy, including coverage of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, City Planning Commission and other agencies. Check back frequently, sign up for the Develop PGH newsletter and email rich@publicsource.org with questions, tips or story ideas. 4/30/21: Low-income families to get help finding rentals in well-off neighborhoods
The region's two largest public housing authorities have won nearly $4.1 million in federal funds to help families with housing choice (Section 8) vouchers to move to neighborhoods with lower levels of poverty and more opportunity. The Allegheny County Housing Authority and the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh will share $4,089,540 and also get a total of 74 additional vouchers, each of which allows a low-income household to rent housing and pay the landlord 30% of their income, with the government covering the rest. Leaders of the authorities said in September that they wanted to use federal funding to recruit new landlords to their voucher programs, ease the apartment hunting and moving processes for families with children, and cover counseling and other measures to help those families to get acclimated to new neighborhoods.
The city has made a variety of efforts to tap its large, tax-exempt nonprofits since it fell into financial distress in 2003. Peduto said those efforts yielded just a total of around $34 million in contributions to the city through 2020.
The Devines are only moving one block. But for Jasmine and her three daughters, the impending relocation within a little square called Enright Court is a big jump, and not just because they’ll have a fourth bedroom, plus a bigger yard. They’ll finally own a townhouse, rather than renting. With that, they’ll be gaining some control over their destinies in East Liberty, a neighborhood where demolitions and rising rents have torn many families out by the roots. “I’m building a legacy for them,” said Devine, 32, as she stood in her current driveway with her eldest daughter, Jah’Niya, 13.
As conversations heat up over development plans for the Lower Hill District, one voice is drawing religious history into the spotlight. Bethel AME Church, founded in 1808, was once a thriving congregation and center of learning and social activism. As part of the Lower Hill redevelopment project of the 1950s, the City of Pittsburgh seized the church by eminent domain and demolished it, despite eminent domain laws excluding churches from their reach.
The human and economic costs of eviction far outweigh the price tag of helping people stay housed, according to a report released by The Pittsburgh Foundation*, which lays out a potential path to fewer landlord-tenant cases. The foundation's report comes at a time when federal and local curbs on evictions have pushed landlord filings against tenants well below pre-pandemic norms. Foundation officials contend that the heightened attention to the effects of eviction spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic creates an opportunity to change a system that upends the lives of thousands of Allegheny County families each year. "We have increased knowledge and awareness,'' said Michael Yonas, the foundation's vice president for public health, research and learning. “We’ve had political and legislative action that has helped to protect people during COVID." He added that the respite in filings creates a window of opportunity to improve the system before any return to normal levels of eviction filings.
A change to an obscure boundary that may benefit the Penguins’ Hill District development hopes crossed procedural lines with important assists from the United Steelworkers union and others, but not from a neighborhood group that fears a resulting loss in federal funds.
Barber sat in her living room, reading aloud the reasons outlined in the landlord’s complaint: “‘Property owner’s right to renovate is being impeded. Additionally, we have multiple issues with Section 8.’”
PublicSource talked to 13 academics, politicians and leaders to ask: What are the most pressing infrastructure needs for Pittsburgh?
Develop PGH Bulletins updates you on the Pittsburgh region's economy, including close coverage of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, City Planning Commission and other important agencies. Please check back frequently, sign up for the Develop PGH newsletter and email rich@publicsource.org with questions, tips or story ideas. 03/30/21: Attorney explains bid for conservatorship of 97 properties
A former City of Pittsburgh attorney who has filed an ambitious conservatorship petition said that it was driven by a developer’s desire to improve a neglected part of the North Side amid slow progress by a community group and government officials. Dan Friedson, who was an assistant city solicitor from 2014 through late 2019, filed a March 5 petition on behalf of East Allegheny-based October Development, seeking conservatorship over 97 properties in and around that neighborhood. Of the properties, 29 are owned by the city, two by the Urban Redevelopment Authority [URA], eight by the Community Association of Spring Garden and East Deutschtown [CASGED] and the rest by an assortment of individuals and apparent businesses or nonprofit entities.
