While Gainey and City Council work at cross-purposes, the homeless are suffering
Following a mild but deadly winter on Pittsburgh’s streets, it’s crucial to explore both immediate and future strategies to address homelessness in the city. In places like Houston and Boston, success has only been reached through widely-adopted partnerships between the public and private sectors, guided by local governments, but this kind of thoughtful coordination is particularly difficult to foster in Pittsburgh.
It is difficult mostly because of the perplexing dynamics between the city and Allegheny County, compounded by a maze of state and federal regulations and their assorted funding streams. Governing is ultimately the art of coordinating stakeholders and resources to achieve shared goals. This, unfortunately, has proved a signal weakness of the Gainey administration, most egregiously in the administration’s care for the homeless.
As a result, the city, the county and even different branches within city government are working at cross-purposes. The result is paralysis and confusion in the face of a major social crisis — one that can’t be “solved” like a mathematical equation, but one that can be significantly mitigated with coordinated short- and long-term strategies.
Hidden plans
There’s no better example of the city’s coordination problems than the ongoing saga of “temporary managed communities” like the “tiny house villages” proposed by odd-couple City Council team Anthony Coghill and Deborah Gross. The tiny house bid was first introduced in council last November as a zoning code adjustment that would permit TMCs in certain locations around the city.
But the Post-Gazette Editorial Board has obtained proposal documents from Ross Township-based Sota Construction that show that the Mayor’s Office has been entertaining an alternative TMC plan, involving a single temporary structure with dozens of small rooms for unhoused people, since last fall — without ever informing City Council.
In an email viewed by the board, Ernie Sota, the company’s owner, indicates that he met with Zoning Administrator Corey Layman and Chief Operating and Administrative Officer Lisa Frank, who had expressed approval of the plan.
In multiple meetings between Ms. Frank and members of council on this very issue, she never brought up the other plan.
In other words, rather than coordinating its approach with Council’s, the Gainey administration let Ms. Gross and Mr. Coghill spend months developing a sophisticated short-term solution for homelessness — while at the same time pursuing its own identical strategy. This may explain the chilly response the councilors’ plan received — and why it’s still bogged down in the Planning Commission.
City Hall’s territorialism
This kind of go-it-alone territorialism — unusual even by municipal government standards — has paralyzed City Hall, with heavy consequences for the region’s unhoused, and for the city as a whole. Meanwhile, in cities with successful homeless relief programs, one theme remains constant: cooperation.
In Boston, only 3.3% of all homeless individuals are unsheltered each night, compared to a nationwide average of around 40%. The city’s unsheltered homeless count peaked in 2007, and dipped to a 30-year low in 2022, succeeding just as other cities nationwide were struggling with a massive increase in unsheltered homelessness.
This didn’t happen because of one person or policy. Only the commitment of three mayoral administrations, the cooperation of nonprofits, and the support of federal funding allowed the creation of such a robust safety net.
But a pivot towards radical cooperation over the course of decades, like in Boston, can also occur in a matter of years. Houston managed to cut its number of unsheltered homeless people by 60% since 2011, by quickly building housing and directing nonprofits and service providers to work in tandem rather than competing.
The only way to serve the homeless
The conception, planning and execution of Second Avenue Commons — which included the city, the county and several corporate sponsors — shows public-private collaboration is possible in Pittsburgh. Here are some blueprints for what a collaborative approach might achieve.
In the short term, plans for temporary managed communities — whether from City Council or the Mayor’s Office — can be a way to move some unhoused people to more independent living while freeing up shelter space.
It can be an effective strategy considering that most of the people in encampments are often already on housing waitlists, and that these tiny homes can be built much faster than traditional housing. Providing highquality wraparound services — social work, mental health and so on — will be essential to success.
Meanwhile, longer-term housing offered at Second Avenue Commons has been a success. But the facility was already too small by the time the doors opened, and has continued operating at capacity since day one. As the hub for most shelter service coordination, it also serves as a congregation point for unsheltered homelessness Downtown, and across the region.
That points to a longer-term solution: more SAC-type facilities — low barrier with multiple kinds of housing, from bunk-bed shelters to singleroom occupancy transitional housing — on a smaller scale but with the same commitment to robust services, spread around the city and beyond. While Pittsburgh Mercy won the SAC contract, there are other service providers in the region who could operate these satellite shelters.
Unfortunately, the collaborative energy that fueled SAC has dissipated. That means it’s up to the region’s two main elected executives — Mr. Gainey and County Executive Sara Innamorato — to again begin the process of convening new partnerships to expand homeless services.
But that can only happen with a commitment to candid collaboration — not every-man-for-himself territorialism. That can and should start with an honest conversation between the Mayor’s Office and City Council about temporary managed communities: with the purpose of helping Pittsburgh, and particularly Pittsburgh’s homeless.
Because right now, as usual, it is the homeless who are suffering most from our city and region’s dysfunctional politics.