PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/series/tenant-cities/)
More Pittsburgh households now rent than own their homes, and landlords control a growing share of the housing market countywide. COVID-19 is testing the health of this market, bringing eviction curbs, rent relief and a revived tenants’ rights movement. PublicSource and WESA are exploring these changes and examining the governmental and civic responses to the emergence of Tenant Cities.
Since January, PublicSource and WESA have been spending time with households facing eviction, as part of the Tenant Cities series. We’ve seen tenants try to tap rent relief, scrape to make payments, or take the difficult step of trying to move during a pandemic. Here are portraits of four households we’ve met.
A year after the COVID-19 pandemic changed the rules for landlords and tenants, the eviction capital of the county is deep in the suburbs, where tenants of one apartment complex are scrambling to avoid ejection.
In Allegheny County, and surrounding counties, only a fraction of applicants received rent relief.
The first in a joint WESA and PublicSource series on the Pittsburgh area’s growing, and troubled, landlord/tenant economy
