Gainey, Council look to clear final hurdles to Land Bank success
Legislation to expand the Pittsburgh Land Bank Board and to finalize an agreement freeing up thousands of parcels from their tax burdens, introduced in City Council last week, would clear the final hurdle to the agency’s long-term success. It’s an encouraging continuation of the PLB’s recent wins, and a hopeful step toward building a housing market that better reflects the city’s needs.
Making it easier for blighted properties to move from city ownership into the hands of potential residents should be a primary focus for Pittsburgh. While the city lags many metro areas with outrageous housing costs, the local housing market is still expensive and limited, offering the wrong kinds of housing in a hyper-competitive marketplace. The PLB, as the city’s most effective way of returning blighted properties to the housing market, is one of the best tools to bring coveted starter and family homes back to the market.
But many city-owned parcels are still caught in bureaucratic purgatory, owing taxes to the city’s three property tax collectors: the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County and Pittsburgh Public Schools. Right now, PLB must pay those back taxes before bringing properties to market, a financial drag and a waste of time. An agreement between these three taxing bodies to allow PLB to wipe those liens away and use the sheriff’s sale process would significantly speed up the pace at which these properties can be returned to the marketplace — and to the tax rolls.
Simultaneously, City Council will consider expanding the PLB Board from nine to 11 members, adding a seat for a County representative and
one for a PPS representative — long considered the cost the county and PPS demanded for the tax agreement. As the Editorial Board stated last November in arguing for exactly this outcome, it’s a matter of fairness: The agreement will require the county and PPS to forgive taxes now in order to collect more taxes in the future. They deserve a seat at the table.
The three council members behind these efforts, Council President Daniel Lavelle, Bobby Wilson, and Khari Mosley, all sit on the Land Bank Board and represent districts with the most blight. Their efforts, along with those of wildly competent land bank manager Sally Stadelman, have brought the PLB back from the brink. The agency went from processing just a single property in 2023 to a projected 100 properties by the end of 2024.
While these new developments are still in early stages — the agreement itself still hasn’t been drafted, and the new members of the PLB Board haven’t yet been named or seated — it’s hugely encouraging progress for a government agency that was paralyzed for nearly a decade and, until recently, seemed on a path to remain that way.