Update (12/1/23): Coming off a cold snap, Allegheny County officials said they will open an emergency shelter if the temperature this season drops below 26 degrees. The shelter has been identified as the City of Pittsburgh’s Ammon Recreation Center in the Bedford Dwellings section of the Hill District.

The county’s Department of Human Services [ACDHS] announced on Nov. 30 that it has worked with the City of Pittsburgh and enacted a “Code Blue Action Plan” when temperatures drop below 26 between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m. The announcement came a day after the county’s Homeless Advisory Board recommended to ACDHS Director Erin Dalton and Chief Operating and Administrative Officer Lisa Frank that a threshold of 32 degrees be set and asked that they find more beds for the area’s overtaxed shelter system. 

Dalton previously declined to define the severe weather conditions that would spur the county to open an emergency facility. 

This is the first winter season in decades that the county declined to open the longtime Emergency Winter Shelter at the Smithfield United Church of Christ, Downtown.

This week, temperatures dropped to 19 degrees on Wednesday, according to NWS, and 21 degrees on Tuesday. Meanwhile, most shelters in the area reported at-capacity, according to the county’s Administrator of Homeless Services Andy Halfhill. But with no code blue in place, no extra measures were taken. 

ACDHS now recommends people in need of shelter during code blue events first go to Second Avenue Commons, where 40 beds are provided in an overflow area. When those spaces fill the county will transport people to the Ammon Rec Center.

Reported 11/15/23:

Winter shelter beds open tonight, but severe weather plan details still scant

The winter overflow shelter at Second Avenue Commons opens this evening, providing 40 beds to unhoused adults, according to the Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS]. 

The temporary overflow space will operate daily from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. until March 15, 2024. Admission is first-come, first-serve and each guest will receive a mat, blanket, hot dinner and breakfast, and a locker to store their belongings, according to Pittsburgh Mercy, which operates the shelter. 

The county had closed the overflow shelter at Second Avenue Commons in September, but is bringing it back as part of a “severe weather action plan.”

ACDHS Director Erin Dalton told reporters the county was “really working hard on the shelter capacity” and that it would work with street outreach teams and law enforcement to “make sure people who are really staying outside know where to go for assistance.”

The county is partnering with the City of Pittsburgh to secure an additional emergency overflow facility in a location it would not disclose. It will open the facility if there is a utility problem at an existing shelter — such as a burst pipe or lack of heating — or if the countywide shelter system reaches capacity during extreme weather. 

Olga George, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s press secretary, declined to comment because the city is still “working out some details” in the severe weather plan. 

In the event of an emergency, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership will shuttle unhoused people who arrive at Second Avenue Commons to the emergency facility. 

“We will get Port Authority buses to help run people to that place” if necessary, Dalton told PublicSource after a press conference this morning. “We will make sure people get there.” 

The county wants unhoused people to show up at Second Avenue Commons first so that it can fill overflow beds in the system before transporting people to the emergency space, according to ACDHS spokesperson Mark Bertolet. 

Dalton said the county will directly operate the emergency facility, but won’t hire additional full-time staff to do so. She said the county isn’t planning for emergency situations to be “so common as to need a full-time staff.” 

Dalton also could not define the severe weather conditions that would spur the county to open the emergency facility. She said ACDHS will “take our cues” from city and county emergency services, which set up a command center during extreme weather events. 

“It’s tricky, right?” she said of setting a threshold at which the emergency facility would open. “What if the low was 33, but there [was] two feet of snow on the ground?” 

In a press release issued last week, the county touted a 65% increase in year-round shelter capacity from two years ago, putting the county-wide bed count at 370. Bertolet said in an email that the increase reflects the addition of year-round beds at Second Avenue Commons in Uptown, CommUNITY Place in Homewood, FamilyLinks Downtown Outreach Center and Shelter [DOCS], and McKeesport Low Barrier Shelter. “Two years ago, McKeesport was winter-only, DOCS had fewer beds, and Second Ave and CommUNITY didn’t exist,” he added.

Bertolet confirmed that the county would not be reopening the emergency overflow shelter in the basement of Smithfield United Church of Christ in downtown Pittsburgh, which regularly hosted more than 100 people nightly. This marks the first winter in 25 years that the church will not open as a winter emergency shelter. 

The decision not to reopen Smithfield comes at a time when a variety of factors are contributing to housing instability in the county — including a lack of affordable housing, domestic violence, mental illness and substance use and addiction. During the week of Nov. 15, the number of people in emergency shelter programs in Allegheny County was up 84%, and the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness was up 89%, versus the same week two years ago, according to a county dashboard. It now shows 723 people in emergency shelters and 197 known to be unsheltered.

“There’s just nowhere to live,” said Annie Cairns, senior marketing and communications manager at Light of Life Rescue Mission, describing the affordable housing shortage in Pittsburgh. The North Shore-based nonprofit provides about 20 overflow beds, which are at capacity on most nights. 

It’s not always addiction or mental illness that brings people to Light of Life’s Voeghtly Street Shelter, she said, adding that other forces such as evictions, domestic violence and the rising cost of food are driving homelessness in the region. 

“We recently had an 88-year-old veteran come through our doors, and this is a person that holds four master’s degrees,” she said. “So, it’s very scary.”

Dalton said the county “will never have enough shelter” space unless it works to provide transitional housing and permanent affordable housing for people who are currently in the shelter system. She said ACDHS recently put out a request for proposals to create a supportive housing program for families and individuals experiencing homelessness.   

The county has not received additional federal or state funding to address the problem, Dalton said. That’s why it’s “balancing its investments” among temporary shelter and more permanent affordable housing options. 

“What should the pie chart look like?” she asked about that process, inviting the public to weigh in. 

Shelter locations and contact information can be found at connect.alleghenycounty.us.

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @venuris.

Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org, on Instagram @stephaniestrasburg or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @stephstrasburg.

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

The post Updated: County, city will activate Ammon Rec backup shelter if temps drop to 26 appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

On the day before Thanksgiving, a 34-year-old man in a high school letterman’s jacket entered District Judge Oscar Petite’s courtroom, looking weary. “I don’t sleep very well,” he told the judge, attributing it to a traumatic brain injury.

A year prior, he had signed a lease to stay in a single room occupancy [SRO] unit at the county’s then-brand-new Second Avenue Commons. 

Even as he walked into court to defend himself against eviction from Second Avenue Commons, that facility’s board showed members of the media around its $22 million building, touting what its management called in a press release “one year of service to adults who are experiencing homelessness, their partners, and their pets.”

The tenant — who is not being named because publicity might make it harder to find new lodging — was $388 behind on his rent for the room. He was also accused of having visitors in his room after formal visiting hours, which are 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Renee Brown, an assistant property manager at Second Avenue Commons, told the judge that the tenant kept a “cluttered” room, had tried to enter the facility with an unspecified tool and had argued with building security.

Asked by the judge whether the facility might give the tenant another chance, Brown, an employee of NDC Asset Management LLC, said, “It’s not possible.”

The man is among 69 people, currently or recently living in three centrally located SRO facilities, who have been subjects of landlord-tenant complaints — which initiate eviction proceedings — this year. Of those, 19 were filed from Oct. 31 through Nov. 2. Eight of those 19 apply to Second Avenue Commons tenants.

The evictions were filed by NDC, a firm based in Bradenton, Florida, with a Strip District office. That company handles the day-to-day management of the SROs at Second Avenue Commons; Wood Street Commons, Downtown; and Centre Avenue Housing in the Hill District.

NDC officials did not respond to an email or voicemail messages seeking comment. NDC works in partnership with nonprofit developer and manager ACTION Housing at all three facilities.

“I’ve had conversations with NDC about evictions,” Kyle Webster, ACTION’s vice president of housing and general counsel, told PublicSource. “We expect them to ensure that they have exhausted options before they file for evictions. We do know that threatening eviction is one of the options you have to exhaust” in some cases to get the tenant’s attention, he added.

Simply filing a landlord/tenant complaint, even if it does not end in an eviction, can poison the person’s prospects of finding alternative housing, said Eileen Yacknin, an attorney with Neighborhood Legal Services who has previously defended an SRO resident.

“It’s becoming increasingly hard and devastating to poor people to find adequate, affordable, safe and secure housing in Pittsburgh and all over,” she said.

The 19 autumn evictions come as the Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS] and the City of Pittsburgh worked on plans — still not fully detailed — to address the needs of the unhoused this winter. ACDHS has said it has 450 shelter beds available and a plan for more beds in severe weather situations, but the agency’s online dashboard counts nearly 900 people either in shelters or receiving outreach services while living outside.

The department funds some beds or tenants in each of the three SRO facilities, and in some cases tenants must participate in program requirements in order to receive rent benefits, according to Mark Bertolet, the ADCHS spokesperson. In an email response to questions, he did not address whether the county has guidelines regarding evictions from those units.

For some of those in SROs, the alternatives are bleaker than the weather.

Asked by Petite about his income, the young man said, “I don’t have one right now.” The judge asked whether he has a substance abuse problem. “No.” How does he eat? “I get by.”

SROs part of ‘homelessness prevention’

SROs are an important link near the bottom of the continuum of housing options, said Webster. The rooms are small, some with their own bathrooms, and typically connected to communal kitchens and other shared spaces.

“They’re kind of a lower-barrier housing option,” he said, much as YMCAs were for single men in decades past. “A primary reason [for their existence] would be homelessness prevention,” he added, and some people thrive in them because of their communal nature.

Financing their creation and operation is a complex task, Webster said, often involving a mix of public housing funding streams, investor contributions, other contracts and tenant rents. Rents for Second Avenue Commons SROs, disclosed on landlord/tenant complaints, appear to range from $525 to $646 a month. Tenants, though, don’t usually pay full freight.

Tenants with Housing Choice (Section 8) Vouchers can pay just 30% of their income in rent, Webster noted, and that can push their obligations below $100 a month, or even to zero.

The tenant in Petite’s courtroom on Wednesday had been receiving rent help through a program administered by Pittsburgh Mercy, which runs the emergency shelter at Second Avenue Commons. According to Brown, the man failed to attend required counseling, so the rent aid stopped.

‘Nothing offered’

Second Avenue Commons includes 43 SROs, 95 year-round shelter beds and 40 overflow beds available for the winter months.

Down the block from his SRO unit at Second Avenue Commons, Brody Tuckfelt passed Tuesday at Allegheny County Jail, where he was being held on a nonviolent offense. On a phone call, he said he found out he was evicted from Second Avenue from his girlfriend, who lives in the neighboring SRO unit in the facility. 

“My girlfriend told me they put a sign on the door saying you got evicted and you owe two thousand-some dollars,” said Tuckfelt, who said a housing program through Pittsburgh Mercy had previously picked up the rent. 

“There was nothing offered like, ‘Hey, you can go to another shelter,’ nothing,” he said of his eviction notice from NDC.

The notice came about a year after the controversial closure of the Stockton Avenue encampment where Tuckfelt had been tenting. He was on the local news as one of the first enthusiastic residents of Second Avenue Commons on the heels of the camp closure, excited for his own room, a microwave and brand new facilities.

With no job or Social Security income, Tuckfelt is counting on his contacts at Community Care & Resistance In Pittsburgh [CCRIP], an aid group serving those recently released from jail, to help him secure an alternative to living, again, on the street.

On Wednesday, Russell Beyer, a guest on Second Avenue Commons’ shelter floor, walked through the rain to the bus to accompany an SRO resident to an eviction hearing, wondering why his friend had to go to court to stay sheltered. 

“The whole point of these SROs is you’re housing homeless people, so if you’re not going to elect to renew the lease for the term then you should have some plan for them so they’re not homeless again,” said Beyer.  

SRO eviction reasons? Mostly, failure to pay

Pennsylvania law allows evictions when the rent isn’t paid, when the lease expires and when a term of the lease is violated. Landlords must state at least one reason on the landlord/tenant complaint, though they are allowed to add more at the time of the hearing.

Judge Petite’s office provided PublicSource with complaints in the most recent 32 cases filed by NDC against tenants of Second Avenue Commons, Wood Street Commons and Centre Avenue Housing. Of those:

• All 32 alleged that the tenant was behind on rent
• None alleged that the lease had expired
• 12 indicated there had been other lease violations — mostly untidiness or abandoning the unit — but did not suggest violence
• 3 claimed the tenant was violent or threatening.

Petite said that when someone is behind on rent, he can refer them to rent relief specialists or Neighborhood Legal Services attorneys, who are often right in his courtroom. Sometimes he tells them to go immediately to the Housing Stabilization Center on Seventh Avenue, Downtown. That center guides tenants to a variety of available housing funding sources.

Webster added that the tenant must be involved in the rent help application process, and some “are completely unresponsive until they get that court date.”

“I hate evicting people for failure to pay,” Webster added. “I think it’s a stupid reason to make somebody potentially be unhoused.” But sometimes program requirements or investment contracts require that every tenant pay rent.

Webster said some SRO tenants have behavioral health problems, and managers should be understanding, but there are limits. 

“If one tenant’s behavior and activities are adversely affecting the enjoyment of the premises by other tenants,” he said, an eviction filing may be unavoidable. “It is unfortunate that in our current system the primary leverage a landlord has is the threat of eviction, but that is the system we exist in.”

Housed for Thanksgiving?

Yacknin said landlords often scrutinize the rental histories of prospective tenants, and can access limited information on eviction cases via publicly available dockets. 

“They are able to see on a court docket that an eviction case has been filed against prospective tenants, regardless of the outcome of that, regardless of the merits,” she said. “What has been happening is that the landlord will adamantly refuse to lease to anybody with a record regardless of anything that [the tenant may say that] doesn’t appear on the record itself.”

Some states seal some eviction records, so they don’t become barriers to housing, but Pennsylvania has not taken any such measure, she said.

Back in the courtroom, Petite weighed his options. “The condition of your unit is enough for them to put you out,” he told the Second Avenue Commons tenant. “It’s very cluttered.”

The tenant said the room was a mess because he “was getting ready to sell a bunch of stuff in there.”

After Brown, of NDC, said the company would not consider extending the tenant’s lease, Petite noted that it doesn’t expire until Nov. 30. He postponed consideration of eviction until Dec. 5.

Said the judge to the tenant: “You can stay over Thanksgiving.”

Are you facing possible eviction?

Call the Allegheny Link at 1-866-730-2368.

If you’ve received notice of an impending eviction and have a landlord open to mediation, contact Just Mediation Pittsburgh at 412-228-0730.

If there has been an eviction action filed, contact Neighborhood Legal Services at 412-255-6700.

Need in-person help? The Housing Stabilization Center at 415 Seventh Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh has drop-in hours Monday through Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Check out eviction process information and resources from Eviction Lab.

The Allegheny County DHS Housing Navigator has a downloadable step-by-step guide to the eviction process and has a unit that works with renters and their landlords to help keep people in safe, affordable housing.

Correction: This year 69 landlord/tenant complaints have been filed against tenants of Second Avenue Commons, Wood Street Commons and Centre Avenue Housing. An earlier version of the story included a lower number. This story has also been updated to reflect comment from the Allegheny County Department of Human Services received after initial publication.

Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org, on Instagram @stephaniestrasburg or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @stephstrasburg.

Rich Lord is the managing editor at PublicSource and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org.

Venuri Siriwardane contributed.

The post ‘Lower barrier’ SRO housing facilities ramp up eviction filings appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Update (11/9/23): Allegheny County announced that it has partnered with the City of Pittsburgh on a severe weather action plan for winter’s “harshest nights,” which the county later described as “extreme temperatures or dangerous precipitation.” If the roughly 370 year-round shelter beds and 80 overflow beds reach capacity, or if a shelter must be closed due to a utilities issue, “an emergency facility will be activated, and individuals showing up at Second Avenue Commons will be transported to the emergency location,” according to a county press release.

The release did not specify the location of the emergency facility, but the county later indicated that it would not be the Smithfield United Church of Christ.

“Our work is not done, but I’m really pleased that our work with partners to open Second Avenue Commons, and our collaboration with other providers to increase year-long and overflow capacity has allowed us to serve even more people,” county Department of Human Services Director Erin Dalton said in a press release. “No one should stay outside when the weather is extremely dangerous.”

“Because of these efforts, we expect to be able to accommodate over 450 individuals by the start of winter, should we need that capacity.” 

Shelter locations and contact information are here connect.alleghenycounty.us.

As Pittsburgh moves to clear tents, county opts not to reopen Downtown winter shelter

Reported 11/9/23: A Downtown church that usually shelters hundreds of people  will no longer be used as an emergency winter shelter, and no alternative has been identified, an internal county memo confirms. The lack of new shelter options from Allegheny County comes as Pittsburgh moves to evict an encampment of around 12 people. 

The Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS] announced to providers on Monday that the annual Emergency Winter Shelter will not be opening at the Smithfield United Church of Christ, ending a decades-long arrangement. 

The message outlines that the county is looking for an all-year shelter with 24/7 access “but we aren’t there yet.” The message also claims that the county has increased the number of year-round shelter beds from 232 in 2021 to 377 beds currently. 

Since Oct. 4 PublicSource has repeatedly asked ACDHS to detail plans for a winter shelter, which the county usually opens on Nov. 15. ACDHS has not provided details.

The rise in beds accompanies a rise in the number of homeless people living in the county. According to the Allegheny County Analytics dashboard, the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness doubled from 2021 to 2022 and then plateaued.

During the week of Nov. 5, there were 223 people counted experiencing unsheltered homelessness, up from 104 at the same time two years ago, according to an online dashboard provided by ACDHS.

The county’s decision comes nearly a year after the  $22 million dollar Second Avenue Commons shelter opened, initially to replace the Smithfield shelter. But due to unexpectedly high need for shelter services, the county opted to open the Smithfield shelter last year, and it was operated by Team PSBG until ACDHS closed it on June 21, well past its traditional operating timeframe. 

“There has been radio silence from [ACDHS Director] Erin [Dalton] and DHS for the last two months,” said Jon Colburn, the parish’s administrator. “I’ve asked, ‘Will the shelter open at Smithfield [Street] Church?’ Crickets and chirps, all I got.”

Colburn said that last year when the county chose the church to host the shelter they gave Colburn a 72-hour notice.

“We’re not opposed to housing the shelter,” Colburn said. “There is nothing I’ve seen or heard that says there is a place for the 140 people who were at the Smithfield shelter nightly last season. We have the space, so we would listen to a request, but we can’t do it ourselves.”

Closing of legacy shelter limits Downtown access

“For at least the past 25 years we’ve had what started out as the Cold Winter Emergency Shelter,” Colburn said, noting that initially the cold weather initiative opened only on nights that dropped below 25 degrees between Nov. 15 and March 15. 

Colburn said that about 10 years ago the county expanded shelter services to every night within that time frame. Earlier this year that period expanded, at first indefinitely, and then until June 21.

As the shelter operated into the summer, Downtown stakeholders urged closure.

The county’s decision not to open the Smithfield shelter severs one Downtown connection in the Continuum of Care –  a federal requirement intended to provide people with care in various stages of need. Locally, many services are available Downtown, and the advocates have said the absence of the Smithfield shelter could compromise access for some unhoused people.

Policy meets reality 

At the same time, the city is using its new encampment eviction policy to remove a number of people who have been sleeping in tents hugging a cement berm on First Avenue off the Boulevard of the Allies.

Under city policy, people staying at encampment sites targeted for removal will be given at least seven days’ notice before they have to pack up, except in emergencies. In this case, posts went up on Nov. 1 with a clearance date of Nov. 7, according to media reports.

“The city has made the decision to decommission this encampment for a variety of factors, most notably the ability to make offers of housing for the estimated seven to nine individuals who live there, as well as over safety concerns for the residents of the encampment,” Olga George, Mayor Ed Gainey’s press secretary, told PublicSource. 

“Staff from the Office of Community Health and Safety, Social Workers, ROOTS [Reaching Out on the Streets] team members, and community partners have been meeting regularly with the residents of the First Avenue encampment over the past three to four months, and nearly every day over the past couple of weeks.” 

Scenes from the shutdown of the First Avenue encampment in downtown Pittsburgh. At top right, City of Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt talks with community organizers from the Thomas Merton Center and Food Not Bombs, and Ben Talik, program manager with ROOTS [Reaching Out on the Streets] at the site of an encampment along First Avenue by Boulevard of the Allies on Nov. 7. The city planned to close the encampment by 5 p.m. that day, but pushed back 24 hours to buy more time to place people in alternative shelter. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

George also said the city’s actions “are not a law enforcement activity, and our first and foremost responsibility is to care for some of the most vulnerable residents in our city with compassion.”

“This narrative of we’re closing this encampment because it’s violent – c’mon, being unhoused is violent,” said Bethany Hallam, Allegheny County councilperson at-large. “Displacing people, and putting them out in the cold and the rain, is violent. When we get reports of the first person sleeping outside dying of exposure to the elements, that blood will be on all those folks’ hands who facilitated removing these people from and closing the only shelter that they had.”

On Tuesday, workers from the city’s ROOTS program began the process of finding alternative shelter for people at the encampment.  

On Wednesday morning, residents continued to pack their belongings and decide on their next steps. An arrest of one of the people who had been staying at the camp that morning slowed progress as tension flared. 

Muhammad Ali Nasir, also known by his emcee name MAN-E, spoke at the targeted encampment where his organization was passing out food and offering transportation. Nasir is a cofounder of mutual aid and street outreach group Community Care & Resistance In Pittsburgh and the advocacy, policy and civic engagement coordinator for 1Hood.

“I think it’s a serious mistake not to open Smithfield,” said Nasir. “They’re trying to get folks outside of Downtown. That presents an issue for us outreach workers who can better serve people when they’re consolidated. These folks form communities and they look out for each other, especially people who use opioids. There’s safety in communities. Right now communities are actively being disrupted.”

As rain fell on what remained of the camp on Thursday morning, activists and outreach teams started to arrive in anticipation of the arrival of DPW trucks for clean up.  A former camp member sifted through the collected bags of garbage for food. ROOTS program manager Ben Talik checked the last standing tent for people.

If not here, where? Shelter space limited

ACDHS identified at least three alternative shelter spaces to accommodate the closure of Smithfield shelter but the majority reported at or near full capacity. 

Light of Life Rescue Mission, on the North Shore, provides 20 overflow beds to accommodate the county’s decision to close the Smithfield Street shelter earlier this year. Those beds are at or near capacity most nights.

“Every night is different — sometimes we have 17 beds (out of the 20 overflow) filled and other nights we have 18, 19 or are completely maxing out at the 20 overflow beds. It just varies each day depending on how many walk through our doors,” said Annie Cairns, Light of Life’s senior marketing and communications manager, in September. 

Similarly, East End Cooperative Ministries in East Liberty provides 20 overflow beds and since the middle of September those beds have been filled every night.

Second Avenue Commons’ shelter operator Pittsburgh Mercy declined twice to share any information regarding their overflow shelter plans. An Allegheny Links operator told PublicSource that Second Avenue Commons didn’t report any vacancies on Wednesday.

The 95-bed shelter operates year-round but there is also overflow capacity for an additional 40 beds. In September, the county opted to shut down the 40-bed overflow space after about three months of operation, during which it accommodated unhoused people who had been staying at the Smithfield shelter. 

Second Avenue Commons also has a single room occupancy section that is operated by a contractor, rather than by Pittsburgh Mercy.  

Another shelter, Wood Street Commons, Downtown, includes a 32-bed shelter run by Community Human Services. An Allegheny Links operator said people can only stay at Wood Street Commons if they’re there referred by a street outreach team. 

Cairns said Light of Life has seen “changes in our homeless community” that include “a significant increase of the women and children and seniors that are walking through our doors.” 

She attributed those changes to evictions, food insecurity, domestic violence and a deficit in available housing in the city of Pittsburgh. 

She predicted that many shelters will be “completely full for the winter” due to the closure of the Smithfield shelter. “So we’ve got to come up with something,” she added. 

“What already felt like a bad situation feels so much worse with the back and forth on the deadline for these guys to be gone,” said Russell Beyer, 44, on Wednesday, while taking a break from serving pizza and coffee to people at the targeted camp. Beyer said he is currently staying at Second Avenue Commons. 

“First it was yesterday, then they moved it to today – graciously or not,” he said of the camp’s impending decommissioning. “And while most of the people have been offered opportunities of a place to go, you know, it’s still the unknown.”

Beyer said that moving people from one place to another doesn’t address the underlying problems that many people are dealing with. 

“You want to see movement and you want to see these people obtaining their own living situation, but they’re not,” he said. “And now you’re telling them they can’t tent here. . . . It’s just this shuffling. You’re moving them from here to here to here to here. 

“Are we addressing the root of the issues? Are we really making their lives better or are we just continuing to move the pieces around the board in this game of musical chairs?”

Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org, on Instagram @stephaniestrasburg or on Twitter @stephstrasburg.

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.

Venuri Siriwardane contributed.

The post Updated: County touts, but does not detail, ‘severe weather’ plan for unhoused amid camp clearance appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

An impending $400 million investment in the Hill District aims not only to replace the city’s oldest public housing complex, but also to change the trajectories of families in the neighborhood, according to the official who has championed it for more than seven years.

“Sometimes ZIP code has an influence on the outcome of your life,” said Caster Binion, the executive director of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh, whose push to redo the Bedford Dwellings community got a huge boost last week with the announcement of $50 million in federal funding. “We want to interrupt that by providing a better environment and ecosystem for the next generation.”

Binion said the $50 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s [HUD] Choice Neighborhoods program will allow the construction of 823 new housing units as well as changes in services and amenities in the area.

In a decade, the neighborhood will have a different feel, he said, predicting that a pedestrian walking Bedford will see that “people have more jobs. Income went up. Kids did better at school. … You will see a nice place, but you will also see the difference in uplifting people’s lives.”

The authority has been publicly pursuing a Choice Neighborhoods grant since 2016, and the process has included conversations with the community. Binion said communication will continue on Aug. 3, when officials from the authority and HUD will attend Bedford’s Community Day celebration and present more details.

Residents of the existing 411 Bedford Dwellings apartments interviewed this week continued to have questions about how impending moves would affect everything from children’s schools to transit access.

“They don’t tell us nothing,” said resident Tamika Martin, 53. Martin grew up in the Hill District and has spent the past six years in Bedford Dwellings.

Although Martin fondly remembers the family cookouts and watching her grandchildren play in the complex’s courtyards, she said she is ready for the community’s next phase. 

“It’s going to excite me when I see it,” she said of the community’s transformation. “Take it down, just let me have one brick. I just want one brick, and I want everyone to sign it.”

Martin’s son, Josh Moore, 32, feels similarly. He has lived in Bedford Dwellings his entire life. 

Moore said he feels that the housing authority explained its plan well, but gave “no real update” in regards to their move-out timeline.

Moore’s three children all attend local schools. He worries about the impacts that a move may have on their transportation, and hopes that the move will happen before the school year starts.

“It can’t be that you’re paying rent one week in August, and then the next week you’re moved out,” he said.

Authority pledges to build first, demolish later

The construction of Bedford Dwellings began in 1938, and the 411 units around Somers Drive and Chauncey Drive date from that period.

Martin said a motivation behind her desire to enter new housing is the condition of the apartments themselves. Oftentimes, she said, it takes weeks for her reports of leaks and broken pipes in the apartment to be addressed by Bedford’s maintenance crews.

“These apartments are falling apart,” Martin said. “They’re old. They’re done.”

In contrast to some of the authority’s past redevelopment efforts, which involved demolition and then reconstruction, the plan for Bedford involves:

• Building 123 new apartments along Colwell Street, known as the Reed Roberts site
• Building another 110 units at the nearby City’s Edge development site
• Moving Bedford residents in late 2024 and 2025
• Razing Bedford, then rebuilding on the Somers and Chauncey sites
• Ending up with 411 low-income public housing units, 210 other affordable units and 202 market-rate units, or perhaps more.

The authority has said current residents will also have the option of taking Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8), moving into other public housing communities or, if eligible, entering into homeownership programs.

Binion said the authority’s goal is to compel Bedford residents to move just once, and to honor the rights of nearly all current community members to remain in the community.

“The language of Choice Neighborhoods is that you have the right to return,” he said. One caveat: “You come back with some criminal stuff, it might be a little different.”

Passion, partners and millions of dollars

Pittsburgh has used a Choice Neighborhoods grant to rebuild parts of East Liberty and Larimer, and is also exploring that program to redo the Allegheny Dwellings public housing community in Fineview.

In seeking a grant for Bedford Dwellings, the authority competed with around 40 of its peers from other cities, from which eight awardees were selected. 

Binion said Pittsburgh prevailed based on a mix of partnerships, passion and funding.

For instance, the authority brought with it, as community service providers, the Macedonia Family and Community Enrichment Center and the Neighborhood Reliance Project. Also at the table is the Allegheny County Department of Human Services.

It also came to the table with a commitment by Mayor Ed Gainey and Pittsburgh City Council to kick in $30 million in city funds over time. Other chunks of the overall $400 million investment will come from the authority; its nonprofit arm, Allies & Ross Management and Development Corp.; and from low-income housing tax credits pursued via private development partners. TREK Development is handling the Reed Roberts site and Midpoint Group is building City’s Edge. The Urban Redevelopment Authority has also been involved in securing financing.

The passion of the authority’s board and staff to rebuild Bedford also “made a difference,” Binion said. HUD “could smell it and feel that this was not about $400 million. This was about building a community, changing people’s lives and achieving transformation.”

‘Under attack’ from gentrification?

Two neighborhood organizations, the Hill Community Development Corp. [CDC] and the Hill Consensus Group, have been at the table with the authority in planning the rebirth of Bedford, and both welcomed the grant this week while pledging to monitor its implementation.

“The people in Bedford Dwellings will be assured improved living conditions and quality housing and long-term affordability,” said Marimba Milliones, president and CEO of the Hill CDC. “That is extraordinarily important considering what’s going on in the market,” which is seeing studio apartments rent for $1,900 a month, she said.

“It will bring additional and new development, but it also prevents displacement,” she said.

Bedford residents aren’t uniformly convinced that their place in the Hill is secure. On Tuesday, many of the community’s doors were adorned with anonymous notices advertising a “tenant-only meeting” with no authority management allowed, warning of “a new era of dealing with gentrification.”

“We are under attack, and we need to band together for sake of our loved ones, children and the community,” the notice continued.

The Hill CDC and Hill Consensus Group have pledged to work to ensure that residents are well informed and involved in discussions as the community’s transformation spools out in a construction process that could last until 2030. Binion said the authority will follow the Community Day announcement with more formal meetings and one-on-one conversations.

The Hill CDC will be urging the authority to maximize the homeownership opportunities available as part of the development, notably including for current Bedford residents. “There needs to be more public support directed toward homeownership,” Milliones said.

“For once, they’re building more housing than they’re tearing down, so that’s progress,” said Randall Taylor, the equitable development representative for the Hill Consensus Group. 

He was concerned, though, that some of the human services traditionally provided in public housing communities would erode in a redeveloped, mixed-income environment. “We really need to start leaning into programs that support families and support young people.”

Both Taylor and Milliones said they view Bedford’s impending transformation as part of a dramatic time for the Hill District, including redevelopment along Centre Avenue and in the Lower Hill District.

Bedford will be “an anchoring development with regard to ensuring that some of the most vulnerable residents are protected, as well as the development of mixed-income housing,” said Milliones.

Transportation questions ‘a strike against them’

Resident Carl Swindell, 67, said he feels like those planning the redevelopment didn’t consider the concerns that elderly residents voiced at the community meetings leading up to the grant announcement.

The location of the Reed Roberts apartments may negatively impact older residents, he said, noting that they won’t have the ability to easily access bus stops like they did in the past.

“If I was 40 years younger, I could walk up and down to town, but now I can’t,” said Swindell. “That’s a strike against them, if you ask me.” 

Although Swindell left Pittsburgh in 1980, he returned to Bedford Dwellings in 2002 because he “knew nothing else.” He said that his apartment’s location in the Hill — its proximity to Downtown via public transit — is something that he will miss.

“It’s close to town. Everything is connected,” he said. 

Binion said Pittsburgh Regional Transit is part of the planning process, and that he would work to ensure that transit lines accommodate the new housing. 

“All the partners will work together to revitalize the community, and try to keep the history of the community intact at the same time,” he said.

Lucas Dufalla is an editorial intern with PublicSource and can be reached at lucas@publicsource.org.

Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org or on Twitter @stephstrasburg.

Rich Lord is PublicSource’s managing editor, and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org.

The post On the Hill: ‘Take it down, just let me have one brick.’ appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

“There was a blessing the other day,” Dee said, sitting by the gray stone steps of the Smithfield United Church of Christ shelter.

Shelter Stakes
As homelessness surged, Allegheny County and Pittsburgh scrambled, and those without shelter tried to adapt.

Explore our investigative series.

As she sat among plastic bags of other people’s belongings, she’d watched money float through the air outside the shelter, where she’d stayed on the sidewalk for about three months.

“A random person stood right there, had a bunch of money. He just threw it up in the air,” she remembered. 

Her bad knees wouldn’t allow her to get up. Dee could only watch others scramble as the person threw bills above the hot June sidewalk. 

That day, as most days, she was hungry, and it was well before 7 p.m., when the shelter at 620 Smithfield St. would open and someone might bring her a meal.

Dee recalled the feeling of stability she’d felt a few years before, when she lived in a house and had a job in Georgia, before moving back up north to reconnect with her children.

But after a week in the Pittsburgh area, her daughter kicked her out. A friend offered to put her up once she got some kind of income. But her deteriorating knees ruled out the kind of work she’d done before at 7-Eleven, Popeye’s and Wendy’s. She was hoping for a seated job like telemarketing or to figure out Social Security.

For now, though, she had Smithfield.

Sam

Sam checked himself into UPMC Mercy’s emergency room a little before 5 a.m. on a Thursday in late May. His out-of-state health insurance wasn’t accepted locally, and he’d been unable to balance his medications for bipolar disorder, instead developing his own dosage plan. It wasn’t working.

The 57-year-old arrived in Pittsburgh in April, from Atlantic City, with boxes full of documents and a plan: He’d attend the University of Pittsburgh’s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business for the doctorate that would bump his tech consulting business to the next level.

Instead, a contentious roommate situation pushed him to spend roughly a week at the Light of Life Rescue Mission.

Sam’s 2 a.m. pacing between the bunks there, talking out loud and making business calls, made him few friends. As his conflicts with staff and fellow guests heightened, he was admitted to resolve Crisis Services for help in tweaking his medication. After two days there, he was back on the street. Repeated calls to 911 landed him in the ER at UPMC Presbyterian, and soon after, Mercy’s ER at sunrise.

Later that May day, Sam left the ER without a new medication plan or a new doctor.

Back out on the streets, Sam continued to call 911 in hopes of connecting to a place to stay. The police gave him a list of area shelters. He called them all. The only place that would accept him, he said, was the shelter at 620 Smithfield.

The Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS] said in its May 22 press release that the Smithfield shelter was “not equipped to handle a population during the warm or hot weather months.” It cited the “lack of a central cooling system.”

On that same date, Jon Colburn, the church’s parish administrator, was carrying air conditioning units to be installed in the gymnasium space.

Shelter guests found out about the closure from local reporters who showed up on the church’s bustling “front lawn” to get their reaction. TV cameras pointed from a distance at people smoking cigarettes, sleeping and eating dinner on the church steps. 

ACDHS Director Erin Dalton promised to work to find “other options” for some 125 regulars who sought shelter there. (A week after the closure, she cited a larger number: 213.)

ACDHS offered beds at Light of Life, Second Avenue Commons, East End Cooperative Ministry and a new single-room-occupancy accommodation called CommUNITY Place in Homewood.

Dee’s immobility and her motherly disposition prompted other Smithfield shelter guests to store their things with her during the day, when the shelter was closed, as they set out for places she couldn’t get to, like the Red Door for 10:30 a.m. sandwiches or the Allegheny Health Network engagement center a block away.

By day, she could catch a midday nap, camouflaged by the bags she guarded. Nights along Smithfield Street were loud, as the shelter’s guests oscillated between socializing and arguing. Dee worried at night that someone might steal her stuff. 

On an early June afternoon, a baby-faced man ran up and yelled at the people hanging out at the church steps beyond Dee. “Yo, you got shoes, bro? What size do you wear?” Frantic, his eyes darted between the people, sizing up their footwear.

“Best friend, what size do you need?” Dee called. He began untying the blue sneakers of a person waking up on the steps. He slipped them on, apologized for waking the person up and ran around the corner.

“That’s something I won’t miss,” Dee said.

Dee noted the slow pace at which other Smithfield denizens were being relocated to other shelters. She wanted to leave, but believed she would be hard to place.

“I need a bottom bunk,” she said. “Everybody that they put up somewhere is a top bunk.”

Chris, 28, originally of Pittsburgh’s now-demolished St. Clair Village, and a young woman cuddled in the afternoon sun on an early June day. She looked up at him from under her tousled bun while cradled between his legs, on the Smithfield steps.

He’d spent several winters at Smithfield, and finally the shelter operators offered him a job. “So I just started working. I make $17.50 an hour. Yes. It’s a blessing. Like I scrub walls and mop the floor. And I wake up in the morning, mop the floor again.” He also collected blankets for the laundry.

He was in the midst of his first Smithfield romance. He and the young lady planned to find another living situation that would allow them to move on together once the shelter closed, but choices for couples are slim. 

So they secured a little tent, pitched not far from Smithfield.

Sam stood in a line that wrapped past the Smithfield steps to the front windows of the library, his green windbreaker tied around his shoulders like a cape over his suit coat. The bouncy notes of “Cupid Shuffle” echoed and combined with the thank you’s and chatter of the crowd gathered to feast. Behind Sam, the crowd parted for a second as someone searched the ground for a dropped crack rock. 

The line waited for the covers to be taken off pans of ham, turkey, macaroni and cheese, green beans, corn bread, stuffing, rice, pasta salad, candy bars and Twinkies.

Lorenzo Rulli weaved between the volunteers he’d gathered and the shelter guests. The Smithfield crowd “thought I hit the lottery,” he said of the feast he assembled from donated funds he used to cover Thursday dinners at the shelter. “I said no, this is from the community.”

“The most important thing for me doing the meals was to provide hope to people who have become hopeless,” said Rulli. Almost as important was showing volunteers and social media followers the importance of keeping the Smithfield shelter open.

“It is an ecosystem where people are supporting, loving, hugging one another in a system where no one else is doing that for them.”

As the line moved, members of Allegheny County Council and the Alliance for Police Accountability passed out flyers announcing a June 15 special hearing on the shelter’s closure. “You should not lose your community, nor should you be penalized for being unhoused,” the bottom of the flyer read.

Someone brought a heaping plate to Dee’s concrete seat against the library windows.

The Downtown Neighbors Alliance, comprised of businesses and residents, sent out a newsletter encouraging attendance at the council hearing on the closure, too. “The building’s facilities are inadequate, inaccessible and no longer best serving the needs of the people accessing the shelter or the neighborhood that it resides in,” it read.

Pittsburgh police, meanwhile, continued to serve their uneasy dual role as part of the Smithfield ecosystem and the arm of law and order.

An officer walked across Smithfield carrying a case of water, smiling as people gave him a hard time. He handed the waters to Rulli, who was hosting the “community love-in.”

An hour later, bike officers surrounded a man on Strawberry Way across from the shelter. Rulli filmed on his phone as the police handcuffed the man and talked to him as people watched from the shelter steps.

Commander Matthew Lackner of Pittsburgh Police’s Zone 2 was excited about the new substation by Market Square, and a pilot program through the city Office of Community Health and Safety that teams officers with social workers to respond to emergency calls. He recounted the first arrest he made, 28 years earlier, of an individual whose alcohol dependency contributed to frequent disorderly incidents. That person is causing the same kinds of incidents now.

“Should we lock him up forever? No. I mean, he has a significant problem,” the commander said. “But he’s pretty impactful on the people that live Downtown.”

–

Fueled by his pink “Paradise” drink from Starbucks, Sam waited to cross the busy road in front of Second Avenue Commons in hopes of setting up a way to get his mail. He felt a path forward after his trip to see the apartment in the South Hills and was trying to set up the financial infrastructure he needed to make it a reality. 

Sam came out of the Commons’ double doors victorious. He got a code to retrieve mail, the ability to use the shelter address on applications, and a next-day appointment at the engagement center’s health clinic to get set up with a primary care physician and a psychiatrist. 

Looking to raise some rent money, he set off for his next stop – to sell his laptop.

“Oh, there are keys missing,” said the shop attendant at Trader Electronics, a pawn shop two blocks from the Smithfield shelter.  

As the machine slowly booted up, Sam reached in his briefcase and gifted the attendant one of the Hindu statues that had sat atop his mother’s altar during his childhood in India. “I’ve had these for 40 years,” he said. “It’s time to start distributing them, spread the luck and generate more.” 

He walked out with $55 for his old HP.

On the steps, as closing day loomed, emotions ran high, fights broke out. Sometime-Smithfield guest Lonzo Green, an actor and director from the Hill specializing in the work of August Wilson, sat by himself, writing a poem about the scene.

“The city glitters.

Neon lights shine.

While me, my brothers and my sisters are caught up in a past time.

We love one another. We think twice or two times, 

twice.

But it’s always something different. And it’s never nothin’ nice.”

The cool of his gravelly voice was cut by someone bashing another person with a tupperware container at the shelter steps.

“Does anyone want a space at Light of Life or East End Cooperative Ministry or Bethlehem Haven for females?” Amanda Fry, a member of Team PSBG, yelled as she balanced a clipboard, a phone and the pressure of finding the Smithfield guests congregating on the steps a new place to lay their heads. The sidewalk swirled around her – Smithfield guests hauling their bags, volunteers handing out pizza, media covering the day’s story and the regular evening traffic all competed for space. She worked like a switchboard operator, piecing together peoples’ needs with what was available.

With one night left for the shelter’s operation, a shuttle run by Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership pulled up and outreach worker John Holzer rocketed out the side with a pen and loose piece of paper. For a week, Holzer had been trying to connect people with meals, doctor’s appointments and rides between shelters for those holding the golden ticket of referrals to other shelter beds. 

Scenes from the last nights of Smithfield shelter.

“There’s really not a lot of options,” said Holzer, once homeless himself. “Thank God for Amanda here because without the referrals, we can’t take them”

“I’ve got two guys to go to the East End, they’re getting ready right now,” Fry said to Holzer. 

Another shuttle pulled up and two PSBG team members stepped into the chaos. They held Fry as she wept, still clutching her clipboard.

For the last time, the Smithfield shelter doors opened at 7 p.m. and people shuffled in. 

Outside on the steps, Andre Wright sat in his folding chair in a red Jurassic Park jacket and rolled a cigarette. He’s seen this before, when the city started pushing people out of encampments last year. “So now you gotta put all the tents back.”

Back at 620 Smithfield, when the shuttered shelter doors would normally open for the evening, former Smithfield guests and a sudden Who’s Who of outreach and county services hit the steps in a wave. With the shelter unavailable for the first time since mid-November, Plesh and Fry made calls negotiating new placements as the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership shuttle whisked people to new beds. “Lonzo, you’re going to Second Avenue and you’re going to sleep!” Fry joked as he was helped onto the shuttle.

Come 7:45 p.m., the steps were clear, swept and doused with water. Even Dee was absent, relocated to Second Avenue Commons.

The street was quiet.

An hour later, a street medicine team showed up with wagons of supplies, but few people to give them to. The police looked back and forth and walked away. The shuttles between shelters stopped coming.

Then, as the clock pushed 10 p.m., Plesh looked up from her phone. A woman stood in front of her, wondering if it was too late to find a shelter bed. “It must have been a rough day, right?” Plesh smiled as she dialed Bethlehem Haven. “Yeah I’m having a rough day, too.” Beside her, Fry started arranging Uber rides as the steps began to fill again.

Photos by Stephanie Strasburg.

Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org, on Instagram @stephaniestrasburg or on Twitter @stephstrasburg.

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.

Lucas Dufalla contributed.

This story was fact-checked by Rich Lord.

The post Smithfield homeless shelter in downtown Pittsburgh exposed frayed safety net and tested county compassion appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

A shelter for displaced people on Smithfield Street, once described as resembling a FEMA camp and regularly hosting more than 100 people nightly, will be closing at the end of June, according to Allegheny County.

The shelter is within the gymnasium of the Smithfield United Church of Christ and typically served as a winter shelter in years past, normally closing by the middle of March. But this year the county Department of Human Services [DHS], which funds the shelter, had extended the operations of the shelter “indefinitely,” according to the county’s website. 

DHS said in a prepared statement that they are working with their “partners” in identifying “naturally occurring vacancies within the shelter system, expanding capacity at existing facilities, identifying new shelter locations, and may also utilize overflow in other facilities where appropriate.”

The statement also noted the presence of Second Avenue Commons, which opened in November, where occupancy rates have also regularly hit maximum capacity. 

The shelter at the Smithfield Unified Church of Christ shelter on the early morning of Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023, in Downtown. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

The DHS statement said the county has made additional housing available through their work with landlords, “which means more people can exit the homelessness system to permanent housing.”

DHS also noted in its statement the temporary nature of the Smithfield shelter and that it was not equipped to handle people during the hot weather and they also cited a lack of a central cooling system. 

Just hours before the closure announcement, Jon Colburn, the church’s parish administrator, was in the process of hauling air conditioning units into the shelter to cool the space. 

“This shelter is filling a need,” he said. “If people are here by choice then it’s gotta be pretty bleak for their other options.” 

Colburn said that if the shelter closes, he hopes the shelter seekers would have adequate accommodations elsewhere. 

“These are real people that need our care, and attention and our compassion,” Colburn said.  

The shelter’s operator previously expressed willingness to keep it open.

“Team PSBG stands ready and able to continue operation of Smithfield United Church of Christ as long as the community needs it,” said Aubrey Plesh, the founder of Team PSBG, which has operated the low-barrier shelter since it reopened in November. Plesh made the comment prior to DHS’ announcement. 

Plesh could not be immediately reached for comment following the county’s announcement.

Plesh has said previously that the shelter allowed couples to stay together in side-by-side cots whenever possible, and followed a harm reduction model that didn’t require shelter seekers to maintain sobriety. 

That low-barrier approach led to high occupancy on a nightly basis, according to Colburn.

Hours before the closure announcement, activist Tanisha Long took to social media foreshadowing the closure and calling the move a “stunning act of cruelty.” 

“This is a pattern of move-fast-and-break-things-and-figure-it-out-later and trying to frame it as ‘we’re doing what’s best for the community,’” said Long, a community organizer for the Abolitionist Law Center and CEO and founder of the diversity advocacy group RE Visions, in an interview with PublicSource.

Long said she was concerned that there are still not enough housing options for people staying at the shelter.

“We have to operate in the reality that yes, this was never meant to be a permanent shelter, but people are relying on this for overnight shelter,” Long said. “When we’re talking about making Downtown safer, we need to talk about making Downtown safer for everyone,”

She questioned the timing of the decision: “Why the urgency?”

As he carried air conditioning units, Colburn said the church’s work of helping those in need of shelter is a calling from what the group believes Jesus instructs them to do.

“Whether it’s for just another week or the rest of the summer, we’ll have these units in there for the people,” he said. 

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.

Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org or on Twitter @stephstrasburg.

The post Allegheny County closing Downtown shelter on Smithfield Street appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Polls for Pennsylvania’s primary election are closed.

Executive Decision
For the first time in 12 years, Allegheny County voters will elect a new county chief executive.

Headlining Tuesday’s contests locally was the crowded and contentious Democratic primary for Allegheny County executive, which has no incumbent in the running for the first time since 2011 with current Executive Rich Fitzgerald hitting a term limit. Six Democrats stepped forward to seek the nomination to replace Fitzgerald, presenting differing governing styles and views on key issues like pollution control, juvenile detention, the Allegheny County Jail, property tax assessments and more. 

Republican voters had one option, former banker Joe Rockey.

Read about all of the county executive candidates in PublicSource’s voter guide. 

Reports from the polls

Kristen Kerns, 42, of Mount Washington, said she has voted at her polling place on Merrimac Street for 20 years, and John Weinstein’s candidacy for county executive motivated her to come out this time.

“He’s the most credible candidate. His work with dogs really made me like him,” she said. “He also helps seniors raise money.” She also cited Weinstein’s experience as county treasurer.

Jameel Bey, 45, of Mount Washington said he voted for John Weinstein for county executive and Stephen A. Zappala Jr. for district attorney because, he said, “I want to see change and bring programming and services for our youth.”

Larissa Russo, a 32-year-old small business owner, showed up to the polls Downtown to support Dave Fawcett’s bid for county executive. She said she values his experience outside of politics — Fawcett is an attorney — and appreciates his focus on environmental issues. She’d like the county to have cleaner, safer and better-connected parks. 

“I'm a regular voter, but because of the county executive seat being open specifically, I made sure I had it on my calendar, ready to go,” Russo said.

Linda King, a 62-year-old lawyer voting in Squirrel Hill, said she votes in every election. It’s crucial, she said, “even if the only person on the ticket is the dog catcher.” This year, King came out to the polls to support her friends Jill Beck and Pat Sweeney in judicial races. Beck is vying for a spot on Superior Court, while Sweeney takes aim at the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. King also came out to cast her vote for Innamorato as the next county executive.

“I vacillated for a while but, you know, it seemed like just the same old white men running,” King said. “I can't imagine that things could get any worse with a bright young woman in the room.”

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey showed up to the Ascension Roman Catholic Church in Windgap to talk with voters. “If you are an elected official, you still need to show up at polls,” he said.

Allegheny County executive candidate Dave Fawcett greeted voters at Burchfield Primary School in Allison Park as the after-work voters filed in. “With all the recent political infighting, people are looking for a change,” Fawcett said. “I think there’s going to be a surprise tonight.” (Photos by Quinn Glabicki/PublicSource)

Jordan Corcoran arrived to vote at Shaler Elementary, pushing a stroller with her two kids, Griffin and Ruby.

The stakes of this election, she said, include “us being more united as a city. We don’t need to agree on everything, but we need to be able to coexist and work together” on important issues. 

She listed education, women’s rights and mental health as priorities. She left having cast a vote for Sara Innamorato for county executive. She said her vote came down to “not only experience in the job, but [the candidate’s] open mindedness and ability to handle intense environments with calmness and open-mindedness.”

She looked down at her kids. “I want to be teaching them: This is what we do,” she said.

“Vote for who makes the rules,” said her young son, Griffin.

Freeman Pamplin voted at New Light Temple Baptist Church on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, in his lifelong neighborhood of the Hill District.

Pamplin, who is a Democratic committeeman and works as a maintenance technician, said coming out to the polls is a social event for him. He said people are concerned about the development of the Hill, displacement and promises that have been made to the neighborhood by business and political leaders that they feel have not been met.

“There’s a lot of money moving but we’re not seeing much development,” he said. “I’d like to get new blood in there, a different spin. That might wake the politicians up so they stop lying to the people.”

Raymond Robinson lost his election for Democratic committeeman by one vote in 2018. He ran again in 2022 and won, hoping to do more to encourage voter participation than his predecessor, who he said was usually absent from the polls. On Tuesday evening, Robinson greeted voters with voter guides and bags of chips at a Brighton Heights polling place.

Robinson voted for Michael Lamb for executive, though he said he was torn between him and Innamorato. He ultimately went with Lamb because he thinks Innamorato is a strong legislator and she could continue in that post.

He wore a shirt and pin for district attorney candidate Matt Dugan, who is challenging Zappala. He said he backed Zappala’s unsuccessful opponent in 2019, too, and he’s hoping a “reinvigorated grassroots” Democratic committee will translate to a win for Dugan tonight.

Emily Kochanski, a 23-year-old nursing student at Pittsburgh Technical College, said some of her friends in Pittsburgh didn’t even know there was an election today — but in her eyes, these local elections aren’t any less impactful than national contests. She said she especially paid attention to issues in the Allegheny County Jail as she headed to the polls. 

“Local politics is the place to start if you actually want change, and especially if you want the place you live to reflect the values you have,” said Kochanski. “You have to actually put effort into that, and that means voting in smaller elections that don't get as much media coverage.”

What else was on the ballot?

County executive candidates have aired the most television ads, but there are other important offices on the ballot today.

Longtime District Attorney Zappala faced the political fight of his life, trying to defend his record against progressive challenger Dugan. Dugan’s campaign has been backed by more than $700,000 in advertising from a political action committee that has funded progressive prosecutor campaigns throughout the country. There is nobody on the Republican ballot running for DA, and some in the GOP have suggested writing in Zappala’s name, which could set up a Dugan-Zappala rematch in the general election if Dugan prevails today.

There’s been a spirited campaign for county controller, an office that will be tasked with holding accountable the next executive. Corey O’Connor, current controller and former Pittsburgh councilman, is trying to win a full term in the position after being appointed to fill a vacancy last year. Challenging him is Darwin Leuba, a first-time candidate who has been involved in local progressive campaigns for several years. 

Voters will also choose city and borough councilors, elections that could impact the trajectory of the rest of Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s first term in office, as well as county council members, who will influence the new county executive’s leadership.

When will we know the winners?

Compared to some statewide or national races, Tuesday’s county results should be known relatively quickly. The count of all mail-in ballot results will be published just after 8 p.m., and precinct results will be added gradually between 8:30 p.m. and midnight. While it could take days to learn the outcome of any exceptionally close race, most outcomes should be known before the calendar turns to Wednesday.

Find results as they are posted by the county here.

Check PublicSource.org for updates as winners are declared, and follow @publicsourcepa and @chwolfson on Twitter for updates throughout the evening. 

More resources

Find out where the millions of dollars funding executive candidates came from.

Read about the county executive debate hosted by PublicSource and NEXTpittsburgh in April, featuring all seven candidates. 

Learn candidates’ views on government transparency and ethics reform. 

See where candidates stand on property tax reassessment. 

Explore the role crime and public safety have taken in this election cycle.

Read about how the next executive will influence the county’s sprawling unelected power structure.

Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org or on Twitter @chwolfson.

The post Primary Election Day: Polls closed after campaign that could redirect Allegheny County appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Wilkinsburg’s spirit and resourcefulness shone in a season spent chronicling — in pictures, stories and a resource map — Pittsburgh’s eastern neighbor.

By Quinn Glabicki, Stephanie Strasburg & Rich Lord

Deola Herbert’s family greeted one another as they trickled into the main ballroom at Hosanna House along Wallace Avenue in Wilkinsburg. It was her birthday, and family had traveled from far and wide to celebrate her 90th orbit of the sun. 

Points of Pride Wilkinsburg
PublicSource maps and chronicles the strengths of diverse communities

A line of Deola’s granddaughters and great-granddaughters, adorned with peacock feathers and gilded-age ornament, spooned heaping plates of mac and cheese, green beans and chicken onto the plates of similarly fancy diners. Later, seated atop a throne, Deola sang “Searchin’ for the kingdom of God!” a tune she perfected through a lifetime singing with her church choir and a family ensemble, The Gandy Singers, that toured many a church in the Pittsburgh area. 

Back in the Roaring ‘20s — the era recalled by Deola Herbert’s party — Wilkinsburg had around 25,000 residents and was viewed as one of Pittsburgh’s up-and-coming suburbs. The borough’s official history puts its population peak in the 1950s. 

“It was beautiful!” recalled Deola, who arrived with her late husband, a steel mill worker, in 1968. They bought a house on Glenn Avenue, where she raised her three children. “I really love Wilkinsburg.” 

Now it’s a borough of 14,492 residents, per the Census Bureau. But if its population has diminished, its faith has not.

Ethel Mills, a longtime resident, has been praying to see her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren walk through the doors of Mulberry Community Church on Sunday mornings, and her prayer was answered. 

“It’s exciting that I lived to see it in my time. These are things we pray for and we hope happen, but I’m actually seeing it,” she said. “Children won’t listen to you, but they will mark you. So I try to do what I think they’ll follow me doing.”

In February, PublicSource announced plans to deepen our commitment to meaningful, in-depth journalism, showing the richness, fullness and interwoven nature of our communities.

“Kids are coming from all over Wilkinsburg, Homewood, North Side, East Liberty, so hopefully they’ll get to know each other so they can interact with each other, so they can walk around freely,” said trainer Johnny Spell, of Penn Hills, who encourages young boxers as they spar at Weightmasters Gym in Wilkinsburg.

He strives to use boxing as a way to bridge rival neighborhoods and bring youth together. “They know who each other are.”

As one step toward enhancing our reporting, with guidance from the American Press Institute, PublicSource’s entire team is participating in efforts to reach out to diverse communities, learn about neighborhood assets, establish or deepen relationships — and, of course, inform our readers.

Wilkinsburg is a majority-Black neighborhood, but some 35% of residents are white, and there are meaningful Asian, Hispanic, multiracial and foreign-born populations.

When Tahar Ben Chaabani immigrated to the United States from Tunisia 30 years ago, he said, “I didn’t even speak English.”

“I come here, I went to community college and learned, I left the school, and I come down and create my own self,” he said. He has owned various businesses, including several pawn shops, in Wilkinsburg, and now runs Cash Flow Shop LLC, where he specializes in tire replacement.

“Living the American dream, it’s true for me.”

Just under one-quarter of Wilkinsburg residents live in poverty, but an estimated 43% of the borough’s children are in households experiencing poverty. They move through a landscape in which around 20% of buildings are vacant, as a result of population loss and systemic problems that discourage reuse of abandoned property.

While the borough continues to struggle with the problems created by abandonment, its people have seeded some of the vacant lots with community gardens, skate parks and urban farms.

Wherever they occur, population loss, disinvestment and poverty create problems that government often struggles to address. A recent Wilkinsburg Borough Council meeting included citizen complaints about a “terrible” field used by the Steel City Kickers kickball team, pothole-plagued streets, weed-choked lots and high taxes. PublicSource’s reporting this week will touch on the borough’s challenges.

Conversation in Wilkinsburg often turns to public safety, and the borough has seen tragedy, including a 2016 mass shooting at a backyard cookout. Even in the wake of that bloodshed, though, residents maintained that any perception of lawlessness was overblown.

“This ain’t really bad here,” said Karlos Street, a barber at Christyles Barber Shop in Wilkinsburg. “It’s bad if you walk with badness. If you put yourself into the badness, then the badness will surround you.”

Diverse communities are too often portrayed, in media, largely through the lenses of their tragedies. Not news: The longstanding sense in diverse communities, and especially Black communities, that the media does not cover their neighborhoods well, thoroughly or accurately.

PublicSource’s Points of Pride coverage, which launches with this package, takes a different approach.

Since February, PublicSource team members have been:

• Assembling information on Wilkinsburg’s many community assets — a process that will only continue. (If you are involved with a Wilkinsburg asset that isn’t yet on our map or see something that needs to be updated, please let us know via this email.)
• Calling, emailing and visiting community resources.
• Getting to know people, and not just as “newsmakers,” but as entrepreneurs, educators, athletes, activists, family members and residents.
• Writing about, and photographing, some of the people we’ve come to know.

This week at PublicSource.org, you’ll read about, hear from and see Wilkinsburg residents who are:

• Turning an abandoned and arson-plagued building into a training ground for baking entrepreneurs
• Transforming a school that saw its student body dwindle into a growing “village”
• Drawing on the experience of hunger to address the needs of low-income families in inflationary times
• Creating community around fun, sport and sisterhood.

Faith and practicality weave seamlessly through many conversations in Wilkinsburg.

“Don’t give up hope that we can be restored,” said Autumn Butler, of the Covenant Fellowship congregation and Wilkinsburg Christian Housing, one of several small-scale efforts to rekindle homeownership in a community where 70% of households currently rent. “There’s a need for revival, and it’s hard because there is a lot of abandonment and vacancy in the borough, but we need to strive and encourage and provide homes to those who are here.”

This week’s coverage is just a beginning. We hope and expect that the relationships we’ve established will deepen, and that the result will be even better, richer journalism.

And this effort will not stop at the Wilkinsburg Borough borders. 

PublicSource is beginning outreach to other communities. We’ll build more bridges, establish more relationships and lean on them — not only to produce content like this week’s zoom-in on Wilkinsburg, but to infuse perspectives into our regular coverage of government, health, the environment, education, development and other issues of interest to communities.

Communities thrive on information, understanding and voice — a quality that’s prized in the borough.

“Every year that I’ve been here, particularly for the speaking parts, it has literally shocked me who steps up and suddenly is a performer,” said Christy Wauzzinski, education director since 2014 with the Pittsburgh Urban Christian School in Wilkinsburg. “It’s often the most shy kids in the class. They find a voice, they find themselves being able to perform.” 

For a region that has struggled to hold on to its people, communities like Wilkinsburg could hold the keys to growth. 

“Wilkinsburg’s greatest asset is its people,” according to Pastor Lawrence Smith of Mulberry Community Church. “That is why I chose to stay through the challenges, hurts and pains. … If I have anything to give, I hope that God allows me to be effective in the community of Wilkinsburg.”

We welcome your feedback, ideas or questions on this ongoing project. Write to Rich Lord, managing editor of PublicSource, via rich@publicsource.org.

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on Twitter and Instagram @quinnglabicki.

Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org or on Instagram @stephaniestrasburg.

The post In Wilkinsburg, ‘Once we break those curses, they turn into a strength.’ appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Jamar plopped a chessboard atop his red charcoal grill on a March morning as he sat across the street from Smithfield United Church of Christ, just minutes after ambulances sped down the street. He spent the previous night at the church’s shelter, and as people trickled out of the building that morning, another shelter client lay in a nearby intersection with his face bleeding and shoes strewn behind him. 

In the aftermath of chaos, he focused on the board in front of him, daring an opponent to challenge him to a match.  

“Chess is the game of life,” he said. “Your wit is the only weapon that will never fail you.”

PublicSource is withholding Jamar’s legal name, and those of other people experiencing homelessness, where identification could likely result in negative consequences.

Jamar frequently stays at Smithfield, alongside his friends. In the mornings, he cleans a nearby alley, picking up garbage and pouring bleach on the spots where people urinate. In the afternoons, he heads to the North Side, where he cooks his own skillet recipes and throws hot dogs on the grill for anyone who stops by. 

Staying at Smithfield, he said, is a “blessing.”

“They don’t care about your cigarettes or anything like that,” he said. “They don’t care what you’re doing. They will save you regardless. They will treat you right.”

The venerable Smithfield winter shelter is one of two “low-barrier” facilities — now joined by Second Avenue Commons — that opened in Pittsburgh this winter to provide people experiencing homelessness with warm spaces to sleep without cumbersome entry requirements, like sobriety or identification. 

Both facilities reflect an unprecedented effort to address the results of the housing crisis, but the county’s first winter with two low-barrier shelters revealed important differences in the shelter operators’ models and approaches. For those who rely on them, the new array of choices — Smithfield and Second Avenue Commons — spurred discussion of values and tradeoffs compared to tent encampments: autonomy versus safety, warmth against possessions, communities of choice or the social conflicts inherent in congregate settings.

Second Avenue Commons added both shelter capacity and new concerns.

Emails from several Allegheny County Department of Human Services [DHS] employees — who were paid to fill in at Second Avenue Commons during a cold snap in late December — illustrate the challenges of low-barrier housing and county concerns with operator Pittsburgh Mercy’s approach. The emails describe security issues, including lack of leadership and bedbugs, among other problems about a month into the shelter’s operations.

“DHS staff were left feeling really concerned about what they observed: Mercy staff preparedness and competency, staff feeling burned out, and safety,” wrote Andy Halfhill, administrator of Homeless Services for DHS, in an email to Pittsburgh Mercy leadership staff, summarizing experiences of about eight DHS staff members.

How Pittsburgh ended up with two low-barrier shelters

Housing stakeholders say the “low-barrier” philosophy exists on a spectrum, along which providers seek to reduce or — in some advocates’ views — entirely remove requirements for entry. 

One man who spent time at the Smithfield shelter before moving to another low-barrier shelter at McKeesport Downtown Housing welcomed the availability of a haven with few hurdles.

“At the end of the day, the more barriers you put up is really just a barrier between potentially life-saving access and death,” said Colt. 

If there had been barriers to entering the Smithfield or McKeesport shelters — like providing identification he didn’t then have or filling out a questionnaire — then “I’d just be a guy with less of a nose now because of frostbite.”

The human services system is set up to serve people with significant problems, from physical or mental disabilities and substance use disorders to criminal histories, notes Christina Farmartino, director of housing for Community Human Services Corp., a Strip District-based nonprofit that serves some clients in shelters. But Farmartino, who operated a shelter for eight years, said that when it comes to housing, the same behaviors that make someone eligible can get them barred.

“We’re welcoming these people in based on those qualifications and then we’re evicting them for the manifestation of what that looks like,” she said.

The idea for creating a year-round, low-barrier shelter in Allegheny County originated within a strategic plan crafted by the county’s Homeless Advisory Board [HAB] in 2017. Such a shelter, HAB envisioned, would serve all people — including people using alcohol or other substances — as long as they aren’t endangering themselves or others. 

In the years since the release of HAB’s plan, the need for housing services has reached dire levels, said Aubrey Plesh, the founder and lead advocate of Team PSBG, which operates low-barrier shelters at the Smithfield church and McKeesport Downtown Housing. 

“Nobody predicted a pandemic, nobody predicted loads of money for eviction prevention,” Plesh said, listing factors that altered the availability of housing. These unpredictable factors, she added, “put us in a position to have an increase in what meets the federal definition of homeless, even just displacement.” 

That unforeseen need set the stage for the emergence of two shelters, both of which committed to exploring the low-barrier philosophy even with the challenges of its application.

The City of Pittsburgh in 2020 announced plans for creating Second Avenue Commons, branding it as a “first-of-its-kind” shelter for adults — and their pets — seeking housing. The facility would offer 95 beds year-round, along with 43 single-room occupancy units [SROs], an overflow shelter during the winter and wrap-around services including a health clinic.

“The idea was really that the agencies would provide this continuum of care, so someone who was experiencing homelessness would be able to get most of what they need in one facility,”  said Linda Metropulos, the president of Second Avenue Commons’ board.

Second Avenue Commons subscribes to the “Housing First” model, which posits that people must have housing and other basic necessities before they can begin working through the circumstances perpetuating chronic homelessness. Pittsburgh Mercy offers to connect clients with wrap-around services for finding employment opportunities, healthcare providers and permanent housing options.

Second Avenue Commons was originally slated to open in January 2022, but experienced delays attributed to supply chain issues. When the shelter still hadn’t opened by Nov. 15, DHS opened a seasonal low-barrier shelter at Smithfield, a longtime winter accommodation for people experiencing homelessness that had been slated for phaseout in light of the opening of Second Avenue Commons. 

“I think DHS is taking big strides in attempting to give truly low-barrier service in Allegheny County, and we’re the example of that,” Plesh said. 

Second Avenue Commons officially opened on Nov. 22, but the county opted to continue operating the Smithfield shelter because demand for its services remained high. 

The main area at the Smithfield Unified Church of Christ shelter on the early morning of Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023, in Downtown. This main room (photo 1) is intended for male-identified people, with a few spots reserved for couples if there’s room to accommodate. Yoga mats and cots in an adjacent annex serve as overflow for the main room (photo 2), and rooms to the left and up the stairs are held for female-identified guests (photo 3). (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

Where Second Avenue Commons was designed to be a housing nexus, Plesh said Smithfield more resembles a “FEMA camp.” 

She continued, “Everybody is offered the same thing as a hurricane survivor: cot, lukewarm water for a shower and a TV dinner. I’ve been saying that since the day we opened.”

Plesh said that Team PSBG doesn’t subscribe to the Housing First model. “This is heads in beds,” she continued. “This is overflow so people don’t freeze to death.”

Although Smithfield was originally slated to close on March 15, Plesh said it will remain open indefinitely.

Update (3/15/23): In a press release Wednesday afternoon, Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services announced it is working with Pittsburgh Mercy to reduce the number of clients at Second Avenue Commons’ overflow shelter and “expects the overflow capacity to close this week.

Second Avenue Commons: from amnesty lockers to 911 calls

Listening to music with a single earbud, Thor waited outside the entrance of Second Avenue Commons in Pittsburgh’s Uptown, motorcycle engines booming from the Crosstown Boulevard above. PublicSource is withholding Thor’s legal name. 

On that late-February afternoon, he had just completed the shelter’s intake form in an effort to find permanent housing, a decision he’d been mulling for some time. 

“Wherever I roam is home,” he said. “So am I really homeless?”

Thor shows the inside of a tent where he stashed a rose for a potential romantic interest of his, on Friday, Feb. 17, 2023, in Downtown. His decision on where to stay a particular night is often driven by his romantic and platonic relationships with the people in his street community. In the other photos, he walks to take in some of his favorite views on the city’s rivers. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

Thor prefers living mostly in his tent facing the water, spending occasional nights at other shelters with his “street family.”

His street family spent the last few nights at the Smithfield shelter. But another guest slammed his head into a pole as he left Smithfield earlier that morning, sending his signature viking hat flying toward the street.

After that encounter, Thor felt ready to fill out the form at Second Avenue Commons.

When Pittsburgh Mercy applied to run Second Avenue Commons’ low-barrier shelter and daytime engagement center in June 2021, the nonprofit agency envisioned creating a space where “everyone is welcome.”

“We want people to be comfortable in this setting, feel valued, be seen and heard,” Pittsburgh Mercy’s team wrote in their proposal. “Our goal is to create a space in which individuals can easily access support and services on their own terms.”

At Second Avenue Commons, couples are permitted to stay together. Clients with substance use disorders are not required to be in recovery. Amnesty lockers are provided just past the facility’s front desk for clients to store any belongings — including weapons and substances — not permitted inside. 

Over the past three months of operations, Pittsburgh Mercy’s vision for Second Avenue Commons hasn’t always panned out as imagined, especially in the early weeks of operation. 

Metropulos said the facility’s opening “wasn’t perfect” and the building had “growing pains” to work through. Due to the acute need for housing and the city’s planned eviction of a North Side encampment — which occurred in December — the facility opened without a chance for her team to test out the building. 

“We did it because people were outside, and it was freezing weather, and we were working to be collaborative with the city and county,” she said.

In internal emails sent in late December and early January, DHS employees noted several concerns about the lack of safety policies in place as they helped to shore up Pittsburgh Mercy’s staffing at Second Avenue Commons. DHS employees wrote that there were no protocols for addressing theft inside the building, complained of unexpected absences of security guards and said they were asked to confiscate clients’ weapons themselves. 

One observed that residents of the SRO units were not searched upon entrance or required to use amnesty lockers, so some would meet shelter residents in the facility’s elevators — where there were no cameras — to give them contraband items.

Another DHS employee wrote that a security guard gave them a “wand” to search clients as they entered Second Avenue Commons, then left. “We called her to come back [down] once, we didn’t see her the rest of the evening.”

A DHS employee wrote that a social worker at Second Avenue Commons told them that the shelter “doesn’t have enough security and it’s not a safe environment for the staff. There have been fights, she’s been chased out of the building by clients, etc. … It sounded pretty bad.”

Responding to these concerns internally, Allegheny Link Program Manager Andrea Bustos wrote, “This is deeply concerning. The shelter staffing and lack of process is out of control and sounds quite dangerous/unsafe.”

Halfhill wrote “there won’t be an easy fix” to improving safety at Second Avenue Commons. He added that “[Pittsburgh Mercy] has a LONG way to go. They asked for our help and for two police officers. We provided those resources but Mercy was not prepared to use these resources adequately.”

In response to PublicSource’s inquiries, DHS said that some of these issues “were attributed to the DHS staff not being familiar with the operations of the shelter” and not having previous experience at such facilities, resulting in a “misunderstanding.” 

Since then, the department indicated that it has held weekly meetings with Pittsburgh Mercy staff to work on the problems raised by DHS staff. 

DHS added that Pittsburgh Mercy has “essentially resolved” all building challenges, and is moving forward with hiring a senior manager for the facility and a second team supervisor. They also plan to have a police officer work on site overnight in the near future “while maintaining the low-barrier shelter model.”

Justin Kunie has stayed at Second Avenue Commons since January when he and his partner moved to Pittsburgh from Florida. He said that staying at the shelter has given him the stability to begin creating a new life for himself here, including starting a new retail job Downtown. 

“This isn’t a permanent place, it’s just a stepping stone to get back on your feet, and it’s up to you to make that step,” he said. “We were working with the staff to get the resources we needed, and then we took it from there.”

Kunie’s partner has especially enjoyed working on paintings at Second Avenue Commons.

Julia Lam, an occupational therapy doctoral student from the University of Pittsburgh, leads self-care and creative expression groups to positively engage shelter clients. 

Lam observed that tensions can rise in the facility’s daytime drop-in center, and lack of activity can lead to boredom or arguments.

“During the activities, we have valuable conversations about all areas of life such as their job search, coping skills and housing challenges,” said Lam. “On the surface level, it may look like we are just doing crafts, but they are opening up in a collaborative and meaningful way. These therapeutic activities positively change the atmosphere of the drop-in center.”

No barriers, but ‘no-fly list?’

While the term “low-barrier” includes an acceptance of behavioral health problems, Pittsburgh Mercy does not permit clients to use substances inside the facility. PublicSource asked Pittsburgh Mercy officials whether people who violate that rule are barred from Second Avenue Commons, but did not receive a response.

Farmartino said shelters typically have what she calls “the no-fly list” of people who aren’t allowed to return. “I just feel like ideally that list would be as small as possible,” she said. “What people don’t realize is the cost to the system multiplies significantly when people don’t have access to affordable housing.”

She added that when providers bar people from shelters “they face the difficult situation of one person losing their home versus potentially jeopardizing the health and safety of the entire program and its participants.” 

Drug use presents particularly thorny issues.

In August, prior to the opening of Second Avenue Commons, Pittsburgh Mercy Vice President Michael Turk said in an interview that clients “are at various stages of their own recovery. If that stuff makes it to the shelter floor, it not only impacts the individuals who might be using it, that affects everybody around them.”

From Second Avenue Commons’ opening through January, police responded to 13 incidents involving overdoses or intoxication at the facility. 

“That place is so totally inappropriate for people who want to get on their feet because it’s nothing but a threshold for drug use,” said Mike, who lives in one of Second Avenue Commons’ SRO units.

Intended to help people adjust to having their own space, Second Avenue Commons’ SROs are located on the building’s fourth and fifth floors, with clients signing for rooms that typically have around 125 square feet of space.

When Mike moved into his SRO unit last November he was among the first clients to enter Second Avenue Commons. Over the past three months, he said he’s experienced several assaults and death threats from shelter residents. 

He nearly tried to move out of his SRO in the middle of a drizzly mid-February night, but opted to stay after speaking with his case manager and receiving kind treatment from the facility’s staff. But there have still been problems.

“It’s one thing after another,” he added. “Someone overdoses. Someone lights a candle, which [sets] off the smoke detectors and the police have to come and clear the building out several times a day.”

County 911 logs show that firefighters responded to 17 fire alarms and 30 medical emergencies at Second Avenue Commons from when the low-barrier shelter opened on Nov. 22 through the end of January. Police responded to 103 incidents at Second Avenue Commons during this period, most often involving disorderly conduct, assault and welfare checks.  

Smithfield: lower barriers, high stress

Team PSBG took over operation of the Smithfield shelter on Nov. 22, given just four days to grab the reins from interim managers.

Plesh said Team PSBG’s understanding of what it means to be low-barrier revolves around the belief that all people are fundamentally entitled to receive shelter. 

“Anybody who shows up at Smithfield and says, ‘I want to come in,’ we have a job to keep them from being outside — at any cost,” Plesh said. Smithfield’s fire code enables them to accommodate 145 people per night. “If Team PSBG gets to a point where we don’t have space, it’s still my job to find a place for them to go.”

Team PSBG operates Smithfield using a set of community guidelines, rather than black-and-white rules. Couples stay together in side-by-side cots whenever possible.

Following a harm reduction model, Team PSBG doesn’t require its Smithfield clients to maintain sobriety. Harm reduction is an approach grounded in minimizing the negative consequences of using substances, seeking to connect people to resources for recovery and prevent outcomes like overdosing. 

“Harm reduction in terms of Smithfield is giving people a safe place to lay their head and providing the safety they need to live as they choose,” Plesh added. 

Demand for Smithfield has been high. “Higher than anyone expected,” Plesh said, and she isn’t entirely sure why.

Jamar has never stayed at Second Avenue Commons because he prefers the “freedom” of staying at Smithfield. “Why go up there [to Second Avenue Commons] where there’s more rules doing the same thing, when you can come down here [to Smithfield] where there’s less rules.”

Although Smithfield’s minimal rules draw people in, that also exacerbates security challenges at the shelter.

Plesh said staying at Smithfield is like going to the Kennywood amusement park in West Mifflin: “It’s at your own risk.”

When clients have property stolen, Team PSBG doesn’t intervene or call 911, unless the guest insists on involving police. Staff receives training in de-escalation techniques to help defuse conflicts before they erupt into physical fights. “Sometimes it’s as easy as just separating people,” Plesh added. “Sometimes it’s as easy as, ‘Go out and have a smoke, come back in and cool down.’ Extra meal. Anything.”

Each time Thor stays at Smithfield, his friends watch over each other’s belongings when they go to line up for the bathroom because, he said, “it could all be gone when you come back.” 

For Thor, the decision to seek permanent housing again is far from easy. He lived in an apartment up until last September, and it made him feel “bound” because his rent cost half his typical paycheck. 

“I felt like when I had a place I was merely existing,” he added. “I didn’t feel like I was truly living.”

As February closed, Thor bounced between his tent and Smithfield — alternately drawn to and driven from the facility by his relationships with the other residents there — with hopes to one day have a place of his own, even an SRO in Second Avenue Commons. He knows that neither his tent, nor Smithfield, are long-term solutions.

But they’ll suffice for now if it means he gets to be with his street family Downtown.

“One way or another,” he said, “we’re making it down here.” 

Correction (3/9/23): Comments about inadequate security and fights at Second Avenue Commons in December were attributed to a social worker. An earlier version of this story indicated that they were attributed to a member of a different profession.

Amelia Winger is PublicSource’s health reporter with a focus on mental health. She can be reached at amelia@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ameliawinger.

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.

Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org or on Twitter @stephstrasburg.

This story was fact-checked by Jack Troy.

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

The post Allegheny County’s first season with two ‘low-barrier’ shelters included wintry mix of problems and challenges, accounts and emails show appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

It’s a matter of minutes until the midnight start of the Lunar New Year, and Mimi Jong is in the tinsel-draped green room of Bloomfield’s Cobra Lounge, bedazzling her erhu as the snare of electronic music blasts through the opening and closing door. Buoyant partygoers jockey for position on the dance floor by DJ Formosa and squeeze in to get temporary “Year of the Rabbit” tattoos from the corner booth. 

Moments earlier, the same dance floor stood still in silence to hear Jong’s proto-Mongolic two-stringed instrument mix with the floating voice of Vietnamese singer Mai Khoi. This is the kind of contrast JADED events have become known for — a mix of energetic joy and pensive space, of tradition and new ways of identifying the AAPI experience. 

A swell of anti-Asian hate crimes boiled over in America in the early days of the COVID pandemic. The xenophobic conditions gave rise to JADED, an artist collective dedicated to the celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander [AAPI] art and culture in Pittsburgh.

After the brazen Atlanta massage parlor shootings in 2021 that left eight dead — six of them women of Asian descent — JADED collaborated with the Sex Workers Outreach Project PGH to create REST, a one-day experience built for Pittsburgh’s AAPI community to collectively express grief and care for one another.

PublicSource photojournalist Stephanie Strasburg sat down with JADED co-founder Caroline Yoo and two other new leaders, Bonnie Fan and Elina Zhang. The group untangled the success of their packed Moon Rabbit Rave event that rang in the Lunar New Year on Jan. 21 from the contrast of shootings targeting the AAPI community in California later that same weekend.

For the artist collective, the path forward is not without risk but the purpose is clear — to honor what’s come before them as they continue to evolve opportunities for connecting the AAPI community in Pittsburgh.

The conversation has been edited for brevity.

Bonnie Fan: It’s kind of eerie or interesting to talk right at this moment, in the context of when JADED was first founded with REST after the Atlanta shootings and then, you know, after our gathering on Saturday [Jan. 21], the Monterey Park shootings. 

Caroline Yoo: We started from a community need of gathering to grieve. 

Elina Zhang: It’s so ragtag because I truly was just like, I need a place. Let me get my friends and tell their friends. 

Clockwise from top left: Stephanie Tsong, who deejays as Formosa, collaborated with JADED to organize the Moon Rabbit Rave on the first night of both the Lunar New Year and her residency at Cobra Lounge. Tattoo artist Yang Zhen Lee applies original temporary rabbit tattoos to partygoers. Audrey Medrano’s glasses fog up in the deejay booth. JADED’s Elina Zhang, center, and Caroline Yoo, right, grab drinks at the bar. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

Bonnie Fan: We also saw a lot of other groups pop up, you know, just like in that time. There was that need to find community. I had a lot of Asian queer friends move away from Pittsburgh, a lot of really close friends, and I couldn’t fault them for leaving, obviously. I understand, it’s not a place where it’s easy to just naturally stumble into a big community, you know, friends, lovers, whatever. Like your people. But also it kind of felt, okay, how do we make a space where my friends want to stay? And who does that work? If we don’t do it, who will? Basically, no one is going to do it for us. 

Caroline Yoo: I love seeing young or even older Asian-Americans, who have never really had to sit with their identity, come and talk to us. I think that’s the most powerful thing. To come in and to be like, oh, I didn’t realize that other people were having these same responses: anger, sadness, joy, confusion about belonging. 

Conversation and collaboration across generations

Michael Nguyen (left), with the East Coast Asian American Student Union [ECAASU], stands before an altar honoring victims of the Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay shootings at a rally for solidarity with those communities, Feb. 4, 2023, at Global Wordsmiths in Larimer. JADED’s Bonnie Fan (bottom right) was among speakers at the event by ECAASU and the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance Pittsburgh Chapter. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

Elina Zhang: Even the limits of just talking to my parents about the events in Atlanta and Monterey, about any kinds of violence toward the Asian-American community. It feels like my parents’ generation, and they’re first gen, they don’t really have the language to know how to talk about it. They don’t really know how to talk about structural injustice and racism towards the Asian community. A lot of times they just kind of have a really hard time acknowledging it, they see it as just something that they just need to deal with. Whereas I feel like I’m part of a community of people who kind of are able to pinpoint the larger structural problems and organize around it.

Caroline Yoo: I think it’s just like the different generations deal with things differently. My parents are both Korean-American immigrants, came over in the 1990s. I was born and raised here. But I feel like there’s an immigrant culture of needing to survive here. They uprooted, you know. You grew up with your whole family trying to survive in a different country in ways like, yes, the racism is bad, but it’s also about putting food on the table. Yes, it’s about survival. And then everything else falls away. And their idea of surviving in the U.S. is a very different U.S. than it is now. You put your head down, you work, you make money for your kids for a better life. And I feel for us, we’re in a very different generation, we grew up here. We understand our parents, but we don’t want to live in fear. 

Bonnie Fan: It’s great because there’s such a trust and excitement for collaboration across generations to introduce new, interesting ways of celebrating things that we share, you know, an identity, but also having new twists on it, new takes. I think that’s a lot of where the artistic energy comes in. Like the folks that we bring in to perform or collaborate, they’ve been doing work for so long or like, they have their own stories of how they came to Pittsburgh.

Loudness as a political choice

Stephanie Strasburg: That reminded me of something that I read in your interview with City Paper. You mentioned that after REST the community was coming to you and sharing that there was a craving for spaces that were not just built around processing the trauma, but also built around joy. Joy. Celebration. And one word you said was “loudness.” 

Caroline Yoo: Yeah, I think loudness is definitely a ‘me’ word. [laughs] I hope it relates to everyone, but it’s definitely something I embody a lot. 

But I think with my own experiences of being Eastern Asian-American specifically in the U.S., I’ve been taught to be slow and to be quiet. Like when somebody says a racist comment at me or when somebody sexualizes me because I’m an Eastern Asian femme, for some it could be easier to not pick a fight or to not respond or to let things go. And I think I’ve been taught that a lot. My parents do it because they love me and they’re afraid. Every time an Asian incident happens, which is I think for a lot of our generation, I got a call from my mom that’s like, ‘Don’t wear loud clothes. You need to subdue yourself because the more attention you call to yourself, the more that means that you could be violently approached.’ 

She knows me, and she knows that when a white male throws a racist comment on me, usually if I’m in a public setting and not alone, I will fight back. And my mom, she’s like, ‘I don’t want you to be dead at 27.’ But it’s also like, I don’t want to be silent because of my safety. And could maybe the loudness be the thing that actually makes us more safe at the end of the day? The fact that we’re so, you know, proud about our culture and so open about it and wanting to gather people and wanting to connect with all of these other people who have these same experiences of having to silence themselves. Having to keep themselves smaller, having to for our own safety. Like, what does it mean for us to reclaim loudness or us to be loud about, ‘No, actually that was really disrespectful of you to say that. No, that was really racist of you to say that. No, stop sexualizing me.’ 

Elina Zhang: Basically, loudness is a choice, not just something as incidental, it’s very politically strategic.

‘Dispelling the myth of limited pie’

Bonnie Fan: As we were talking about the different Asian spaces that popped up more and more post-Atlanta, not just JADED, there’s a recognition that people are doing amazing things like just in their own orbit. A lot of the work was just connecting a lot of those folks and that connection created tenfold more connections. There aren’t a lot of spaces for AAPI folks that are not tied to a university space specifically. I think that a lot of folks come through Pittsburgh in the context of a lot of different stories, but it’s harder to imagine staying sometimes if you don’t have a community.

Elina Zhang: What JADED, as the co-founders made it, was to really materially improve the lives of Asian Americans. Yeah, we don’t f–k around with money. It’s about paying people a proper wage, the performers, and when we are looking for money, we are looking for ways to increase the value of Asian-American performance art. I think that is so concretely powerful. 

Caroline Yoo: That comes from all of our lived experiences because co-founder Lena Chen and I have been performers in different contexts as well as visual artists. In the creatives, we don’t really get paid. There are so many times in the performance world where we’re thought of as entertainment for the gallery opening. We’re fighting for space. 

Elina Zhang: And it’s also like it’s also falling into the values that the art world, the white art world is dictating. It’s kind of like, ‘Please, please let us just even be a token Asian in your show.’ That’s just so frustrating. And it kind of does feel like we really have to start bottom up rather than look to the institutions to carve out even a little bit of space. 

Bonnie Fan: I think about dispelling the myth of limited pie. We know there’s so much abundance and abundance flows in a certain way. JADED’s work is to unlock that and start momentum in terms of the lip service that institutions have paid to diversifying their spaces and so on. And believing in that abundance for a collective, for a community.

Caroline Yoo: If this was our parents’ generations, our grandparents’ generations, our ancestors would be rolling around in their graves. Because it’s the Lunar New Year. All these different events that are meant for ancestor worship, for giving thanks to your family, to the world, to bring in prosperity for the new year. And you wouldn’t do that at a club, right? 

It’s like, how do we create it? Traditions that are very much our own, that are the same ways of giving respect to our ancestors, giving respect to our community and bringing them prosperity. But they’re just in our own ways.

Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org or on Twitter @stephstrasburg.

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