Legislation before Pittsburgh City Council would create a committee to address what it calls an affordable housing crisis in the city.
“We have to make sure that everybody in our city has access to clean, decent, affordable housing (that is) affordable to their income level,” said Councilman Ricky Burgess, who sponsored the legislation.
Much of Pittsburgh’s housing stock is older and in need of repair, though many homeowners and would-be homeowners can’t afford to make the necessary upgrades, according to the legislation. Repairing existing homes could help stabilize neighborhoods by maintaining property values and cutting back on blight and the number of vacant homes, while also decreasing the need for city-funded demolitions, the legislation said.
The legislation also points to “very low rates of home ownership and high rates of absentee-owned properties” in some neighborhoods, arguing that resident home ownership leads to more stable neighborhoods.
And with regard to affordability, more than 23,000 Pittsburgh households pay more than half of their income on housing costs, leaving them more likely to experience eviction, foreclosure and utility termination, the legislation said.
“The shortage of housing that is affordable to extremely low-income families forces them to pay more for housing than they can afford, which reduces the supply of housing that would otherwise be available for families and individuals at other income levels and creates a ripple effect of unaffordability,” the legislation said.
If approved, the committee would explore financial tools to bolster private and public investment in affordable housing, host public meetings on the issue and provide quarterly reports on their findings and recommendations to the mayor and City Council.
Burgess said the idea is to find funding to “jump-start affordable housing” and increase the number of affordable housing units throughout the city.
He said he’d like to find ways to provide incentives for private developers to include affordable housing in their market-rate developments, creating mixed-income communities.
“If every developer was using 10% to 20% of their units for affordable housing, this (problem) gets reduced very, very quickly. Right now, that’s not happening,” Burgess said.
He also advocated for both a public-private and a public, city-run fund to provide additional cash for affordable housing initiatives and predevelopment loans. He said he would ultimately like to see between $200 million and $500 million in a public fund that would be dedicated to creating more affordable housing units in the city.
The committee would include the mayor, the city’s chief economic development officer, up to four members of City Council, the director of the Department of City Planning, the executive director of the city’s Housing Authority, the executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the executive director of the Pittsburgh Land Bank.
The legislation could be ready for a preliminary vote next week, with a final vote as early as the following week.
