Council decision means a lot to struggling families
Last week, city council finally passed a funding measure that will generate at least $10 million per year in the city’s five-year budget plan to resource the Housing Opportunity Fund and address Pittsburgh’s affordable housing crisis (Dec. 20, “Pittsburgh City Council Raises Tax on Realty Transfers”).
This is a tremendous victory for our entire city, but it is especially meaningful for local families who have struggled for far too long to secure the most basic of human needs. I understand what that’s like, because I’m one of them.
Just a couple of years ago, my landlord doubled my rent, and I could not afford to stay in my Lawrenceville home. Unexpectedly, I found myself a displaced, homeless and struggling single mother. My own experience with housing insecurity taught me that having a safe, quality, stable and affordable home is the foundation we all need to thrive. Local residents who will benefit from the Housing Opportunity Fund are people like me.
The Housing Opportunity Fund will directly assist low-income families with home repairs, rental rehabilitation, rental assistance and closingcost assistance. It will assist neighborhoods with acquisition and rehabilitation of vacant homes, and it could help with the creation of permanently affordable housing for our communities. It will permanently change the lives of Pittsburgh families and, through a representative oversight board, place the community at the center of fund management and decision-making.
Every person in Pittsburgh deserves a place to call home. The affordable housing crisis required our elected leaders to take action, and that’s what they did.We should all be grateful.
CELESTE SCOTT Housing Justice Organizer Pittsburgh United
North Side state-of-the-art wildlife park setting similar to what Disney has in Orlando, Fla.? The animals could enjoy a more natural environment. Tours could be done on vehicles that take the visitor into the enclosures with the animals. Somerset would no doubt become a year-round recreation destination for the region.
The zoo could finance the development of this new wildlife park by selling its current Highland Park home for development. Just make sure the property is sold to a tax-free entity. No use letting the city of Pittsburgh profit handsomely from the sale after it did everything it could to run the zoo out of town. LARRY STECKEL
McCandless
As a longtime reader, I enjoy the tradition of the annual “Find Nellie & Friends” (Dec. 24 Magazine). This year, the gaping difference between women and men struck me — 13 women compared with 47 men!
Jeffrey Romoff, head of UPMC, is included, but not Karen Wolk Feinstein, who leads the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, which spearheaded an effort to decrease area hospital-acquired infections.
What about Dr. Karen Hacker, director of the Allegheny County Health Department, who is tackling the area’s opioid crisis, pushed for a lead task force and mandatory child lead testing and drove the process of ACHD’s recent first-time national public healthaccreditation?
Certainly, Fred Rogers is lovingly remembered, but so is Sophie Masloff, our first female mayor. Another political figure with long tenure in this town is
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Valerie McDonald Roberts. There’s Betty Cruz, who served in Mayor Bill Peduto’s administration and left to found the Change Agency.
All the university presidents listed are men. What about Suzanne Mellon, president of Carlow University, and Sister Candace Introcaso, who leads La Roche College?
For the arts, there is Janera Solomon, head of the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, who championed keeping the August Wilson Center open. Vanessa German, a Homewood-based citizen artist who is gaining a national reputation for her unique melding of activism and provocative art, meritsa place in “Find Nellie.”
For having an impact on thousands of low-income residents, there is Lisa Scales, CEO of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. There are so many more women I could name, but I will stop here. Come on, Post-Gazette,you can do better in making “Find Nellie” much more representative of the people who make thisregion special. LORRAINE STARSKY
Swisshelm Park