Bill would mandate affordable housing
Celeste Scott left her Natrona Way apartment in Upper Lawrenceville when her son was 13. That’s when her landlord told her the rent was going to nearly triple. Today her son is 21, and after several moves, Ms. Scott is living in Homestead and advocating for measures to expand affordable housing, including a proposal introduced Tuesday.
“Trying to find affordable housing is just ridiculous in this city,” said the single mother and housing organizer for Pittsburgh United. “If I could have stayed and been close
to amenities, it would have been better for me.”
Ms. Scott was among a dozen people holding signs Tuesday morning that read “Keep Pittsburgh Home” as Councilwoman Deb Gross announced a proposal called inclusionary zoning, which would aim to spur affordable housing in hot markets like Lawrenceville.
Ms. Gross’ proposal, supported by the mayor, calls on developers to make 10 percent of units affordable in any new projects that include 20 units or more.
“As you know, in Lawrenceville, there are many buildings going up that are entirely luxury market rate rents,” Ms. Gross said at a news conference outside of council chambers.
The median home value in the Lawrenceville area has risen from $96,400 in January 2015 to $214,000 in January 2019, according to data drawn from the website Zillow by her office.
The inclusionary zoning measure would be implemented in Upper, Central and Lower Lawrenceville as an “overlay” on top of already established zoning laws.
The proposal has been years in the making.
A city-convened Affordable Housing Task Force in 2016 recommended using inclusionary policies as one of several tools to tackle the city’s affordable housing challenges. Ms. Gross’ proposal stems from the task force’s work but isn’t as broad.
The task force suggested affordable housing requirements for all developments throughout the city with 25 or more units that receive public benefits such as tax abatements. It also called for overlay zones in the strongest markets that would require that marketrate developments also be built with affordable units. These policies have not been adopted.
Affordability is defined in Ms. Gross’ proposal by the area median income set by the federal government.
The bill proposes that rent payments for affordable units should not exceed 30 percent of the monthly earnings of a person or family making 50 percent of the area median income.
For a two-person household in Pittsburgh, $30,400 is 50 percent of the area median income, according to federal guidelines.
“And we’re saying if you’re at 50 percent of that median income, you should be able to afford one of those affordable units,” Ms. Gross said.
Former and current residents of Lawrenceville lament that the face of the neighborhood has changed as housing prices have climbed.
David Breingan, executive director of Lawrenceville United who spoke at the news conference, cited the displacement over the past five years of 120 low-income families who qualified for Section 8 housing as well as the displacement of 300 Somali Bantu refugees and “a third” of the neighborhood’s black population.
At the same time, he said, the neighborhood is seeing its “biggest housing boom in decades.”
One man who got in before the boom supported Ms. Gross’ proposal on Tuesday.
Location and access to transportation and a bustling business district brought Jesse Perkins to Upper Lawrenceville, where he bought and remodeled a house in 2013.
“Places were still available for $50,000 or less,” said Mr. Perkins, a contractor who stood alongside other supporters. “If you look at the houses for sale now, even shells cost over $100,000. The barriers to do what I did are a lot higher now.”
Ms. Gross called inclusionary zoning a “critically important piece of the puzzle” to combat “runaway development.”
Both city council and the planning commission must approve the legislation.
Mayor Bill Peduto said he supports the policy only for neighborhoods that have seen rapid development, namely Lawrenceville, East Liberty and their neighbors.
“Lawrenceville is just the one that pulled together the neighborhood first,” he said. “They’ve been able to get neighborhood support behind it and the councilwoman was ready to move on it.”
“I do not support citywide inclusionary zoning,” he added.
However, he said, if neighborhood organizers decide it’s a policy they want to implement, the city is open to discussions. Residents in Oakland and East Liberty have engaged the city on the idea.
“It’s not one tool that fits all,” Mr. Peduto said. “It wouldn’t work in areas like Sheraden or in Knoxville or Beltzhoover.”
In neighborhoods like those, he highlighted tax abatement programs available through the Urban Redevelopment Authority for both residential and commercial developments.
“There are still very cold markets that haven’t seen any development in 50 years. Zero development,” he said. “In those markets, we want to incentivize developers to move in.”