City looks to bolster land bank with new arrangement on taxes
Mayor Ed Gainey and City Council unveiled sweeping legislation this week that would forge alliances between Pittsburgh’s newly revived land bank and local taxing authorities, allowing the blight- fighting agency to more easily and cheaply take hold of abandoned properties and sell them to responsible owners.
The first piece of legislation — introduced Tuesday at a City Council meeting — would expand the land bank board from nine to 11 members to bring on representatives from Pittsburgh Public Schools and Allegheny County, the two other bodies that collect property taxes in the city.
The second proposal would establish an agreement between the three taxing authorities that allows the land bank to waive back taxes on longabandoned homes, opening the door to hundreds of properties that were once cost prohibitive.
Taken together, the proposals could trigger a significant wave of progress for the agency that acquired only one property in its first nine years of operation. It now has close to 80 in its sales pipeline.
“We are interlinked — our efforts to combat blight and empower low-income families are shared responsibilities, ensuring the prosperity of our communities,” said Councilman Bobby Wilson, who’s also the land bank’s board chair. Council members Khari Mosley and R. Daniel Lavelle, also sponsored the legislation.
Officials did not offer a timeline for when they would establish the taxing agreement or appoint board members from the school district and county.
The agreement, once in place, would allow the land bank to unlock the sheriff’s sale, a mechanism that land banks across the country — including the neighboring Tri-COG, which covers more than 25 municipalities just outside of Pittsburgh — use to quickly turn over ailing homes.
The sheriff’s sale often takes only half as long as the city’s current process, because it automatically clears all tax liabilities. But for its decadelong tenure, the Pittsburgh land bank was largely unable to use the sheriff’s sale because it had to pay all back taxes on the properties when acquiring them. The taxing bodies agreement would remove that burden.
The mayor and City Council’s announcement comes after a string of recent victories for the land bank. Last August, council passed the longawaited tri-party agreement, which allows the agency to take in properties from the city’s thousands-strong inventory of abandoned homes.
Now, after failing to sell one home until last year, the land bank is projected to acquire 100 properties by the end of this year.
It’s a leap of progress that Mayor Gainey wants to continue, he said.
To fill existing vacancies on the agency’s board, the mayor this week introduced three nominees: Tammy Thompson, executive director of nonprofit Catapult Greater Pittsburgh; Tamara Dudukovich, an affordable housing specialist; and longtime attorney Kirk Burkley. Council must still interview and approve the candidates before they are formally appointed to the board — soon to be the largest in the agency’s decade-long history.
“When the Land Bank was introduced in 2014, it held the promise of addressing blight in our communities,” said Mayor Gainey. “These new agreements will allow us to fulfill that promise as we will be able to turn blighted properties across the city into affordable housing, urban agriculture, protected and maintained greenspaces, and increase development opportunities.”