Pittsburgh City Councilman Khari Mosley is invoking the city’s eminent domain powers in an effort to preserve a 100-unit apartment complex in Homewood as affordable housing.
“We’re really trying to do three things: prevent displacement, preserve affordable housing and prevent the property from going into the hands of another bad actor,” Mosley, D-Point Breeze, told TribLive Monday.
The Homewood House apartment building is one of several privately owned, publicly subsidized properties New Jersey-based NB Affordable purchased and left in deplorable condition in recent years, officials and advocates have said.
NB Affordable properties throughout the region have been reported to suffer from bedbug infestations, holes in the floors, security concerns, rodents and mold.
NB Affordable’ s leaders last year pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud, leaving the future of apartments like Homewood House in jeopardy.
Mosley is looking to ensure the people living in Homewood House now aren’t forced out or subject to another “bad actor” landlord by using eminent domain to take control of the property and turn it over to the city’s housing authority.
Had the city not stepped in, the apartment building would go to sheriff’s sale early next year, where it would be sold to the highest bidder, Mosley said. That could be a developer looking to raze the building and replace the affordable apartments with market-rate ones or a slumlord who would leave tenants in subpar conditions.
City Council on Monday took a step to avoid that, unanimously voting to use eminent domain to seize ownership of the site.
Mosley said this starts the ball rolling on a process that will need to wind its way through the courts and could face a challenge from the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, which holds the mortgage on the property.
Allegheny County Common Pleas Court records show Fannie Mae is seeking over $7 million in damages in a lawsuit over the property.
Mosley said the city will need to pay Fannie Mae for the site. He estimated the price could be around $5 million.
“My hope is that we would have some sense of where we’re at in the first half of 2026,” Mosley said. “But being that once it gets into the courts, it’s out of our hands, there’s a certain uncertainty about how long things will take.”
In the meantime, Mosley said, residents told him during a meeting last week that they were pleased with the management company currently overseeing the property.
But they still want to see major upgrades, Mosley added.
Officials, he said, are “still wrapping our heads around” the work that may need to be done to improve the building. He said there will likely be a “significant cost to rehab the building and modernize it” with new HVAC systems, electrical upgrades and improvements to make the structure more energy efficient.
“I think there’s a general consensus that as we go down this path, it’s going to be worth it to maintain this housing as public housing, affordable housing, and not causing any abrupt changes in the lives of the folks who live there, many of whom have lived there a number of years and have a deep connection,” Mosley said.
NB Affordable in 2023 bought about 1,300 housing units in the region, including in Pittsburgh’s Homewood and Hill District neighborhoods and in nearby West Mifflin and Rankin.
A limited liability company associated with NB Affordable faced felony charges from the Allegheny County district attorney’s office amid allegations of failing water systems, rodent and insect infestations and a child falling through the floor at a West Mifflin housing complex.
Earlier this month, tenants living in an NB Affordable apartment building in the city’s Hill District held a protest, raising concerns about a lack of heat, black mold, flooding, rodents and claims that tenants owe “outrageous sums in overdue rent, often with little to no documentation to justify those claims.”
“It’s inconceivable that at any time, but especially in the dead of winter, that we would have people living in absolutely deplorable conditions in privately owned yet publicly subsidized units in our region,” U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, said in a January meeting with City Council members.
During that meeting, officials and housing advocates said conditions at an East Hills apartment owned by NB Affordable had deteriorated to the point where residents were leaving stovetops on in an effort to warm apartments with broken heating systems. At least 10 apartments were condemned.
