Last May, private developer Todd Meyer filed for conservatorship over an abandoned residence on Boyle Street in the Central Northside, intending to rehabilitate the property, according to court documents. But the nonprofit Rising Tide Partners intervened in the case later that year, urging the judge to appoint them as the conservator instead.
After months of legal proceedings, Judge Chelsa Wagner gave control of the property to Meyer. While acknowledging that the state’s conservatorship law calls on her to prefer nonprofits over individuals as conservators, she wrote that Rising Tide’s plans were “generic, general and vague,” while Meyer was “credible and forthright.”
With that decision, Wagner, of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, shook the conservatorship system locally in two ways.
- She dealt a setback to Rising Tide, which has used conservatorship to assemble scores of properties in an effort to turn around part of East Hills.
- Her ruling has been appealed by Rising Tide to the Superior Court, which could decide whether nonprofits should get preference for conservatorships, and conceivably debate whether the process is constitutional.
For Rising Tide Executive Director Kendall Pelling, nonprofits’ ability to use the conservatorship law is crucial to addressing the affordable housing crisis. “We can’t just watch these houses rot away for the next 10 years and then wonder, ‘Huh, why aren’t there any houses for people to live in?’” Pelling said in an interview.
Gregory Biernacki, a lawyer who has represented people defending their property against conservatorship petitions filed by Rising Tide, noted that properties can be subjects of conservatorship filings even if the owner is up to date on taxes and there are no city code violations. He said he sees “a lot of potential for abuse in this system. … I think there needs to be more safeguards.”
What is conservatorship?
Pennsylvania’s legislature enacted The Abandoned and Blighted Property Conservatorship Act in 2008 in an attempt to create a tool to halt dilapidation and abandonment. Since then, private companies, nonprofits and neighborhood organizations have filed hundreds of petitions to become court-supervised conservators of properties that fit certain criteria. Once named a conservator, a group can spend money on improvements and then place a lien on the property. The lien can later be used to collect money or take ownership. Nonprofit organizations and for-profit real estate players have used the tool to improve and, increasingly, take ownership of problem properties.
Setting a new precedent?
The North Side property on Boyle Street is a two-family residential building owned by Audra Chisom. County property records show Chisom bought the property in 2015, but the building has been unoccupied for at least a year, according to court filings.
In May, Meyer filed for conservatorship to clean and secure the property, writing that he would fix it up “for the purpose of providing affordable rental housing in the community.” Chisom never filed a response.
Pelling said Rising Tide intervened in this case “to help make sure that there was a fair conservatorship that would enable the [Chisom] family to retain as much of their generational wealth as possible while still ensuring that the vacant house would get appropriately renovated.”
After several subsequent filings, Wagner ruled against the nonprofit’s intervention in September, writing that she was “underwhelmed by the evidence and testimony offered by Rising Tide Partners, which appeared to rest and rely upon its status as a non-profit without presenting anything else of substance.”
Of Meyer, she said he presented “vastly more evidence than did Rising Tide Partners as to his suitability to serve as the conservator.”
Wagner noted that Meyer is “the owner of an adjacent property that is directly impacted by the blighted condition” of Chisom’s property, and she found the private company “to be committed, capable, and possessing the necessary capacity and expertise” to quickly fix the Boyle Street house.
Pelling rejects this and has appealed to the state’s Superior Court. “We felt the process by which that hearing was held did not give us the proper opportunity to prepare and present our case to be appointed as conservator of that property,” he said.
The Superior Court is now hearing arguments from Rising Tide’s attorney, Wayne Cobb, on why they should take up the appeal.
That court is in a position to set a new precedent in this case because it is “often the final arbiter of legal disputes,” according to the court’s website. And while the state Supreme Court may grant a petition to weigh in, most petitions are denied and the Superior Court’s decision is left with the final word.
Conservatorship in East Hills, East Liberty
Legal entanglements are only the beginning of the process to restore homes. The long and costly process of renovating buildings is exemplified in Pittsburgh’s East Hills neighborhood.
In part through conservatorship, Rising Tide has gained ownership of 47 properties on a single street — Park Hill Drive — in East Hills since 2021. Forty of those are occupied rentals, according to Pelling. These efforts are supported by, among other sources, $481,000 in loans from the Urban Redevelopment Authority in 2021.
Tree branches cast shadows on a home under conservatorship on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 on Park Hill Drive in East Hills. (Photo by Anastasia Busby/PublicSource) 
Kendall Pelling, executive director of Rising Tide Partners, talks with Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh leadership after a special City Council meeting on Oct. 30, at the City-County Building in Downtown. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource) 
Tree branches cast a shadow on a wall littered with graffiti on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 along Park Hill Drive in East Hills. (Photo by Anastasia Busby/PublicSource) 
The inside of a crumbling home is seen through an open window on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 on Park Hill Drive in East Hills. (Photo by Anastasia Busby/PublicSource)
Though Park Hill Drive continues to have many of the same issues it did in 2021 — vacancy, safety concerns and neglect — Pelling said work has been done on the buildings to stabilize them internally and reduce overall decay.
In other neighborhoods, Rising Tide’s work is supported by a network of loans, grants and donations.
For example, Rising Tide’s North Side efforts are supported by a $5 million program-related investment from the Buhl Foundation, meant to enable the nonprofit to buy and redevelop properties, then repay the money in 10 years.
“Because they recognize that if we’re going to have a North Side that is a safe and healthy place to live, you need to have a place to live, but then you also shouldn’t have to live next to an abandoned disaster,” Pelling said.
Rising Tide has also used conservatorship in Homewood and Garfield.
Conservatorships and community development stabilized East Liberty into the redeveloped neighborhood it is today, according to Pelling, and he hopes to continue that success in other neighborhoods. Pelling noted his prior work at East Liberty Development Inc., which played an important role in shaping East Liberty’s 20-year-change to a hub for Pittsburgh’s tech scene. ELDI continues to use conservatorship to take ownership of properties.
Many who lived through East Liberty’s transformation have viewed the changes unfavorably — not as progress, but as displacement.
Pelling said Rising Tide now has a more systematic understanding and approach to “neighborhood stabilization efforts.”
The organization aims to “restore communities and prevent displacement,” Pelling said. “We assemble vacant, abandoned properties to enable affordable rental and homeownership projects.”
That approach now takes about five to seven years to be fully realized. On Park Hill Drive, Pelling said, Rising Tide started efforts in 2020. In many ways, the external appearance of the neighborhood remains largely unchanged from four years ago, with abandoned buildings and mounds of dog waste dotting the area.
Brenda Jones has lived in Park Hill for about 30 years and on a recent morning she recalled that the area used to be good when it was filled with homeowners.
She said that she hasn’t seen any recent construction or rehabilitation activity in her area and said it wasn’t good to have abandoned houses in the area.
Rehabbing homes or robbing homeowners?
Whether nonprofits should be given preference in conservatorships is being considered by the courts at the same time as lawyers representing property owners are questioning the fairness of the conservator act.
Some even wonder about its constitutionality.
Elizabeth Tarasi and Gregory Biernacki are two local lawyers who work in real estate litigation and have represented property owners in court to oppose Rising Tide’s conservatorship requests.
“People just don’t know what to do when they get hit with conservatorship,” Tarasi said. “It’s a constitutional issue, whether they can just take your property like this.”
Biernacki worries about the constitutionality of the statute and said the statute leaves room for abuse. “As soon as you file this petition, it becomes an attachment on the real estate, so it goes into the court’s index to let everybody know that there is something going on with this property,” he added. “Now you have to deal with this lawsuit before you can settle or sell the property.”
Under the conservatorship act, a conservator is granted legal control and an ownership interest in the property, allowing them to file plans, secure permits and apply for funding or assistance from public and private entities.
Biernacki noted that even if a property owner pays taxes, they could still be targeted for a conservatorship filed by a third party like Rising Tide or a private company. “I’ve had situations where there haven’t been any citations by the city. So if the city is not that aggrieved that they haven’t come out and issued a violation … Why should some private actor be able to come in and take that property and be awarded the conservator [status] and the windfall from that? That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Biernacki said the court process for conservatorships does not allow for due process and there is no way to fully protect your property from being targeted by a conservatorship. “You’re forced to defend yourself, to hire that attorney. So maybe there should be some pre-notice done.”
And once a court grants a conservatorship, the property owner has no recourse.
“The conservator steps into the shoes, and they become the top dog in this situation and your wishes don’t really matter as an owner,” Biernacki said. “It’s almost like a guardianship or power of attorney, the court grants the conservator the power to do what’s necessary to get this property up to code and ready for sale or to sell it with the court’s approval.”
Tarasi, a real estate litigation attorney, said her first experience with conservatorship was about 10 years ago. It is not a staple of her practice.
When William Good came to her in 2023, a year after Rising Tide filed a petition for conservatorship on his property, Tarasi wanted to help him.
“My client said, ‘I didn’t get a notice,’ but he had a P.O. Box. He just wasn’t paying attention to it,” Tarasi said. “He went to them and said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with my property.’”
The property in question is a warehouse and fenced-in lot where, according to Tarasi, Good stored cars, boats and equipment. In Rising Tide’s petition for conservatorship, filed in February 2022, Cobb argued that a conservator should be appointed because the property was “a public nuisance” that needed “substantial rehabilitation.”
Tarasi said that when he came to her, Good “was scared. He did not know what to do.”
By the time Tarasi became Good’s lawyer and filed a late response in opposition to the conservatorship request in June 2023, it was too late. The judge in the case, Terrence O’Brien, granted the conservatorship to Rising Tide in February 2023.
Then, Good wanted to try to sell the property. Tarasi found a potential buyer and spoke with Rising Tide, who advised that they had already done $120,000 worth of work on the property. But the sale never went through as Good stopped responding, according to Tarasi.
“It was tough. He was beaten down. And then I withdrew” from the case, Tarasi said.
In the conservatorship process, costs incurred by the conservator when fixing up the property are added as a conservator’s lien. When the property is sold, the proceeds go to paying off the conservator up to the amount of the lien, leaving the remainder to the owner.
Most recently, O’Brien approved the implementation of Rising Tide’s abatement plan.
Biernacki said he now usually resolves any such cases he gets before they even reach a hearing.
“Because the leverage that these folks have . . . it’s sort of like, ‘Hey, you could pay me to go fight this. And, you know, maybe we win, maybe we don’t, and if we don’t, this is what’s going to happen.’ So really, the key to any of these is to get them dismissed before the hearing stage.”
Correction (3/19/25): The number of conservatorships pursued by Rising Tide Partners is 87. Court filings by a similarly named entity were mistakenly included in the total initially reported.
Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.
Bella Markovitz is an editorial intern at PublicSource and can be reached at bella@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Jake Vasilias.
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