Speakers lament city’s loss of Black population
Criticize mayor, council in hearing
Dozens of activists and former city residents on Wednesday told emotional stories of displacement and asked that the city address the loss of Black residents and use forthcoming federal relief dollars to remedy the lack of affordable housing.
Nearly 40 speakers testified before Pittsburgh City Council at an afternoon public hearing about population trends that reveal a 9% decrease in the city’s Black population over a decade, a “forced mass displacement” that advocates say is caused by rising rents, gentrification and institutional racism embedded in policies.
“I’ve seen our neighborhoods’ parents and kids lose possessions on the curb when they had no place to bring them. I’ve watched displaced neighbors [move] away from friends, away from relatives, away from public transit, and further from
jobs and educational opportunities,” said Randy Sargent, a researcher who runs a South Oakland afterschool technology and arts program that serves a majority of Black students.
From 2009 to 2018, the city’s Black population decreased by 6,945, while in other areas of Allegheny County the Black population increased by 5,086, according to Census Bureau data analyzed by the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research.
Leading the way in loss of Black residents are East Liberty and its surrounding neighborhoods, Lawrenceville, Hazelwood and some of the city’s southern hilltop and North Side communities.
Fred Smith, a real estate agent and co-chair of the housing working group for the Perry Hilltop and Fineview Citizens Council, said the lower North Side area “was once diverse” and lamented rowhouses that now sell for up to a half-million dollars.
“People who moved out of there could not get back in there if they tried,” he said.
Another concerned community leader, David Breingan, executive director of Lawrenceville United, said that neighborhood’s “stark” statistics make it “ground zero for Black displacement.”
A 2017 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette analysis found that between 2011 and 2016 the upper, central and lower Lawrenceville neighborhoods lost half of the low-income housing voucher units — about 120 units — which are disproportionately held by Black residents.
“Many of these residents faced multiple cycles of displacement,” Mr. Breingan said. “For example, much of our Black population that was displaced originally migrated to Lawrenceville after public housing projects were disbanded in other neighborhoods, like East Liberty.”
The city’s task force on affordable housing found in 2016 that the city had a shortage of about 17,000 affordable rental units for households at or below about 50% of the area median income.
Speakers at the two-hour hearing blamed the city for not taking swifter action on the recommendations published by the task force “that the city set up and then ignored,” according to Carl Redwood, chair of the Hill District Consensus Group’s board of directors.
The mayor’s office denies that accusation.
“In the past several years the Peduto administration has taken ongoing actions to preserve housing and opportunities for all Pittsburghers,” said Timothy McNulty, mayoral spokesman, “including putting $10 million annually into the Housing Assistance Fund, adopting the Avenues of Hope program for historically Black business districts, creating the city’s first Office of Equity, working with the URA to assist hundreds of residents with rental and for-sale housing programs, implementing the Choice Neighborhoods development in Larimer, and piloting the city’s first inclusionary zoning district in Lawrenceville.
“The list could go on and on.”
The topic of affordable housing has been a big one in the run-up to the May 18 Democratic primary for mayor, in which Mayor Bill Peduto faces three challengers. Mr. Peduto maintains that investment is needed in both market-rate and affordably priced options.
Mayoral candidate and state Rep. Ed Gainey, D-LincolnLemington- Belmar, wants to make it a prerequisite for residential developers to carve out room for affordable units. Challenger and retired police Officer Tony Moreno, of Mount Washington, said he wants to create a workforce program to tear down or rehab thousands of the city’s vacant and abandoned properties.
Some at Wednesday’s hearing criticized the city’s land bank — which in seven years has acquired only one vacant lot — for not acquiring and renovating abandoned homes and putting them back on the market at affordable prices.
Mr. Redwood, and several other advocates, told council members that the city should fund a “right to return” policy for residents who have been displaced and that a large portion of the estimated $355 million allocated to Pittsburgh under the American Rescue Plan should be spent on solving the city’s affordability crisis.
“We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with COVID relief dollars,” said Randall Taylor, one of the 200 residents who had to move from the East Liberty Penn Plaza apartment complex five years ago — a situation that became a lightning rod for concerns over the loss of reasonably priced rentals.
“Let’s make no doubt about it that the use of the COVID relief dollars in the city of Pittsburgh should prioritize housing and to bring our people back,” said Mr. Taylor, of the Penn Plaza Support and Action Coalition, who petitioned for the public hearing.
The city is forming a task force of representatives from the mayor’s office and City Council to decide how to spend the funds that are not already earmarked for salaries and the general fund. The administration is awaiting guidance from the U.S. Treasury on the usage of the remaining funds, Mr. McNulty said.
Councilman Ricky Burgess, who represents East Liberty and several surrounding neighborhoods, said he sees “the consequences of hundreds of years of systematic racism” but disagreed with those who spoke at the hearing on the cause of Black displacement. Although there is some gentrification going on in places like Lawrenceville and East Liberty, he said, “In places like Homewood, LincolnLemington, Larimer and the Hill District and parts of North Side ... [Black residents] have left for better housing and left for better opportunities.”