Potential cuts worry housing advocates

URA affected in mayor’s ‘19 budget

A number of housing and neighborhood advocates are asking city council to reverse proposed budget cuts to Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority that they say would hurt affordable housing and neighborhood investment, if implemented.

Advocates say the URA stands to lose more than $5 million between personnel and programs cuts in the mayor’s proposed 2019 capital budget.

The proposed reductions “will negatively impact equitable development efforts, and is contrary to the City’s priority of addressing racial inequities, and advancing equity in our City,” a group of nonprofits, housing and neighborhood advocacy groups, and foundations wrote in a letter to city council this week.

“We would like to see those proposed cuts restored,” said Celeste Scott, housing justice organizer for Pittsburgh United, and one of the signatories of the letter.

“When you start to remove this money from the URA, you diminish the potential leveraging of investment in our neighborhoods,” said Rick Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp.

Mayor Bill Peduto has proposed a $586.1 million operating budget, with a $132.9 million capital budget. Council has until Dec. 31 to finalize the budget.

Housing advocates say they are especially concerned because the city’s newly established $10 million annual Housing Opportunity Fund was supposed to provide additional support for affordable housing — not to replace other funds.

The fund’s advisory board has approved an allocation plan for 2018, the first year it will distribute money.

“The [Housing Opportunity Fund] was created to provide a new funding source above and beyond sources that already existed at [the] City, therefore these funds are NOT a viable solution to replace other reductions in housing funding,” advocates state in their letter to the city.

That’s also stated in the legislation council passed in 2016 approving the creation of the fund — that the fund “provide net new resources for affordable housing in the City of Pittsburgh, and that the Fund not be used to substitute or supplant existing resources.”

The point was also emphasized by URA executive director Robert Rubinstein at a budget hearing last month.

The fund, he said, was “created to be above and beyond what we’re currently doing in housing investment. I think in this budget that’s before us today, the Housing Opportunity Fund is in place of our traditional housing development.”

In an emailed statement Thursday, he said the funding provided from the city enables the URA “to provide capital, technical assistance, and staffing for a variety of programs that benefit lowincome neighborhoods and residents directly. These programs range from property maintenance, homeowner assistance and affordable housing to microlending and entrepreneurial support.”

City Councilman R. Daniel Lavelle, who is also a URA board member, said he has heard from concerned community groups and is working on an amendment to restore the funds.

“I share those concerns,” he said Wednesday.

Timothy McNulty, a spokesman for Mr. Peduto, emphasized the 2019 budget is not final and said the administration is in discussions on potential revisions.

He said the biggest reason for a proposed cut in the housing line item is the $1.5 million committed to the Hill District’s Bedford Dwellings Choice Neighborhoods application, a competitive federal grant that remakes older public housing as a mixed-income community.

“It is still money going to affordable housing,” Mr. McNulty emphasized, as is another $1.5 million budgeted for a similar project in Larimer.

Additionally, next year’s budget will have fewer “paygo” dollars, which is money left over from past projects, Mr. McNulty said. The capital budget also increases spending neighborhood assets, Mr. McNulty said, “such as improvements to playgrounds and senior centers, and increases in demolition of abandoned and condemned properties. If council, community groups and others would rather move those monies into URA or to housing the Mayor’s Office is willing to have that discussion.”