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On a late-September day, 10 tenants of Hi View Gardens in McKeesport clustered around a patio, smashing spotted lanternflies and planning next steps in their ongoing efforts to improve their subsidized apartment complex.

“You’ve got to voice your opinions,” urged Tanya Brown, a great-grandmother and leader of the Hi View Gardens Tenant Council, at its Sept. 26 meeting, which attracted residents and a handful of kids. “You can’t just watch the whole place fall apart and not say anything.”

It had been a long road for the tenants at the five-building complex, and just when they thought it might turn a corner, it seemed to hit a dead end.

Complex owner PNC Bank’s effort to sell its affordable housing complexes in McKeesport have stalled. As a result, pledged payments to careworn tenants — tentatively negotiated a year ago but tied to the proposed sale — have not materialized.

While much has improved at Hi View since PublicSource and WESA exposed conditions there and at nearby Midtown Plaza in 2021, residents continue to have serious concerns about maintenance and pests. For the second time in two years, a management company is being dismissed, meaning the residents will soon meet yet another new team of office personnel and maintenance workers.

“When the hell is our maintenance going to fix this shit up?” asked Brown. “It’s terrible, especially for women with kids.”

“And dads with kids,” added resident Devonte Doss, who said it’s difficult to decide whether to let his four children play outside in the complex.

PNC spokesperson Olivia Lammel wrote in response to questions that the bank is “fully committed to residents receiving appropriate service from those that operate the properties.”

Not sliding back

PNC bought Hi View and 11-story Midtown, totaling around 200 units, in 2018. They became part of a nationwide portfolio of a few dozen affordable properties the bank has purchased in an effort both to make money and to preserve housing for low-income households.

By 2021, when tenants first organized the council, health code violations and 911 calls across the two properties had soared, according to a PublicSource and WESA investigation.

In the wake of those findings, PNC pledged investments. It met with Hi View tenants. It made improvements to Hi View’s heating system, improved door locks, replaced roofs and fixed up a vacant structure that had been damaged by a May 2020 fire.

“Tenant council input was valuable because they showed the owners where money needed to be spent on improvements,” said Dan Vitek, an attorney for the tenant council from the nonprofit Community Justice Project. “The collaborative effort between the owner and the tenant council has kept the focus on improving the quality of life and not letting things slide back to the way they were before Public Source and [WESA] first shined a light on the troubles there.”

The bank said last year that it planned to sell the properties.

A recent sale attempt fell through, PNC’s Lammel confirmed, and “the property is actively being marketed for sale.” Any sale would have to have approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Guns, glass and ‘extra protein’

Where tenant concerns in 2021 focused on balky heating, leaky roofs and slow response to broken windows and appliances, complaints this season skew more toward public safety and pests.

During the September meeting, Vitek showed a police report indicating a raid a few days before netted seven arrests, nine seized firearms, heroin, cocaine and marijuana.

“It is scary at night to go to sleep,” one resident piped up during the meeting.

“I’m a father first. So my kids’ safety is everything,” said Doss. “So if I feel that my kids aren’t safe to be able to go outside on the playground and play without getting cut by a piece of glass, I don’t want to send my kids outside. But then I have a problem with my kids asking me why they can’t go outside and why they can’t do this, that and the third. I just feel like the property management could do better with keeping up on the grounds.”

Preparing a meal is likewise fraught, said resident Liddie Rutherford, a retiree who lives with her husband in the complex.

“When I’m cooking dinner, I have to keep a can of spray beside the stove,” she said. “I use the can of spray, spray the bug, wash my hands and go back to cooking whatever I’m cooking. … As a matter of fact today when I was cooking, there was a roach above the stove and it almost went into what I was cooking, my meat. I don’t need no extra protein in my meat.”

After WESA and PublicSource first reported on conditions in Hi View and Midtown, PNC in 2021 replaced the properties’ management company, Maine-based Preservation Management Inc. The bank assigned oversight to the nonprofit, New York City-based NHP Foundation, which owns and manages affordable housing in 16 states. NHP in turn hired Strip District-based NDC Asset Management to perform maintenance.

Going forward, NDC “will no longer be involved with Hi View,” wrote Fred Mitchell, a senior vice president at NHP, in response to questions from PublicSource and WESA. He said it was too early to name a replacement maintenance company, but said NHP remains “fully committed to residents receiving appropriate service from those that operate the properties.”

NDC did not respond to email and calls requesting comment. PNC declined to provide more information about the change in contractors.

Paying up 

Vitek told tenants that PNC’s promised six-figure payment to be divided among them, made in light of years of subpar maintenance, was originally to be tied to the planned sale of the property. With no sale on the horizon, the bank and the tenant council would renegotiate the terms, he said, in hopes of getting payment of some tenant appreciation funds this year.

He asked WESA and PublicSource not to publish details of the tenant council’s discussion of the proposed fund, out of concern that disclosures could affect negotiations.

Lammel confirmed the bank’s “intent is to fund the tenant appreciation fund on terms and conditions to be determined” by the parties.

At their council meeting, tenants focused largely on their desire for a cleaner, safer community, rather than any settlement or sale. But the issues are linked, according to Brown, the tenant council leader.

“If they want to sell this property and everything,” she said, “they’d better fix it up way better than what they got it.”

Read all of Tenant Cities and the initial PublicSource/WESA investigation of PNC’s McKeesport Housing.

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

Kate Giammarise is a reporter covering social services and affordable housing for WESA and can be reached at kgiammarise@wesa.fm or 412-697-2953.

This story was fact-checked by Sarah Liez.

The post Fighting for improvements, Hi View Gardens residents wait for PNC to sell or pay appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Explore the series.

“I didn’t expect it to go this far,” Tanya Brown said as she stood outside of the Eat’n Park in McKeesport, wearing a black T-shirt with the words, “Treat yourself like a queen and you’ll attract a king.”

The restaurant is down the hill from Hi View Gardens, where residents last year elected Brown — a full-time babysitter for her great-granddaughter — as the leader of a new tenant council. She didn’t know it at the time, but that election put her across the table from PNC Bank, the nation’s sixth-largest commercial financial institution and — via a holding company — her landlord. 

The Hi View Gardens Tenant Council began because tenants grew tired of winters without heat, pest infestations and disorder. They took their concerns to county and local officials, a nonprofit law firm and the media before getting to the table with the half-trillion-dollar bank.

This September evening, she was preparing for the council’s monthly meeting with the complex’s management. Those gatherings can be contentious — but Brown was smiling.

Days earlier, PNC told the tenants’ attorney that it would compensate them via what the bank is calling “a tenant appreciation fund.”

The catch: The payment will come from the proceeds of the bank’s intended sale of the five-building Hi View complex to an as-yet-undetermined buyer. The residents had benefited — at least since publication of stories about their plight last year by PublicSource and WESA — from the goodwill and deep resources of the Pittsburgh-based bank that owns their complex. Now that relationship appears to be approaching its end.

As cars whizzed down Lysle Boulevard, Brown said the tenants just hope that “whoever comes to manage this property and takes over this property, I want them to be a good management; don’t come in with no bullcrap.

“By it coming this far,” she said, “we’ve got to finish it.”

Under new management

PNC’s vast portfolio includes a few dozen properties nationwide that it has purchased in an effort to preserve affordable housing. 

In 2018, the bank bought two limited liability companies, McKeesport Urban Holdings 1 and McKeesport Urban Holdings 2, which own, respectively, 11-story Midtown Plaza and 117-unit Hi View Gardens. The properties are a few blocks apart and just south of Lysle, and just a half-hour drive from the bank’s Downtown headquarters.

PNC thus became ultimately responsible for sheltering nearly 200 low-income households. It left day-to-day operations, though, to Maine-based Preservation Management Inc. [PMI].

Things went downhill. In 2019 and 2020, health code violations and 911 calls at the properties jumped nearly 50% compared to the prior two years, a PublicSource and WESA investigation revealed. Resident complaints resulted in 89 Allegheny County Health Department inspection reports noting one or more housing health code violations, plus a McKeesport Fire Department finding that Hi View’s fire alarm system had been turned off.

In May 2021, tenants gathered in Hi View’s courtyard with attorney Dan Vitek of the Community Justice Project and formed a council. Later that summer, they learned of PNC’s ownership from WESA and PublicSource. Following publication of stories about conditions at the properties, PNC Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer Richard Bynum promised improvements. Repair began later that year, though supply chain slowdowns hampered progress.

In October, PNC replaced management firm PMI with the New York-based nonprofit NHP Foundation, which hired Strip District-based NDC Asset Management to handle day-to-day operations. NHP assigned Senior Vice President Fred Mitchell, a veteran of Chicago’s public housing landscape, to improve Hi View and Midtown.

‘Yes, ma’am’

By early summer, Hi View tenants were impatient.

On a hot July day, Mitchell, NDC managers and officers of the McKeesport Police Department met 14 tenant council members under the trees in Hi View’s courtyard, on folding chairs near a table laden with sandwiches and iced tea. The conversation veered from spotty security, broken key fob readers and slow maintenance response to ongoing bug infestations, drug problems and the need for a full revamp of the complex.

“We got security and stuff. We got this, we got that,” Brown railed, mockingly. She wasn’t seeing improvements on the half of the complex that’s east of Coursin Street, where she lives. “We ain’t got shit over there. Nothing.”

All eyes were on Mitchell. After a pause, he said, “Yes, ma’am.”

Later in the meeting, Brown acknowledged that the problems weren’t of Mitchell’s making.

“PMI left them with nothing, y’all,” she said, amid shouted complaints and cross-talk.

After the meeting, Mitchell walked wearily across the courtyard. He knew progress toward improving the 117 units was slow — and it was only partly an issue of cost. Another challenge, he said, was “contractors not wanting to work.” 

As for a total revamp, it was similarly challenging to bring all of the involved parties and funding sources to the table. His firm was working on it, he said, “but I can’t tell you that it’s imminent at all.”

Wires hanging

Bianca Dobbs dragged her 11-year-old daughter to that sweaty meeting and complained of finding an apparently intoxicated man laying in her building’s hallway.

She signed a lease for a Hi View unit last year, she said later, because she needed an affordable place close to the senior care facility where she works as a nurse’s aide. She’d intended to move there, from a family member’s home elsewhere in McKeesport, with her daughter.

“And I wasn’t able to move in for the first three months because the roach situation was so bad,” Dobbs said in an interview. When she finally did move in, she kept her belongings in clear plastic containers so she could see inside, hung clothes up so she could easily shake them out, and counter-attacked with Raid and bleach. 

On a late July day, there was a dead roach in her kitchen. But compared to last year? “It’s nowhere near as bad,” she said.

Still, her daughter didn’t stay in Hi View often because of the security situation, she said.

Management had installed key fob readers at all entrances to Hi View’s five buildings in an effort to keep non-residents from coming and going at will. It didn’t work.

Dobbs walked out one of the doors and pointed to a smashed key fob reader.

“This is what, most times, they end up looking like,” she said. Some tenants don’t like the inconvenience of walking to the doors to open them for visitors. “So of course one way to avoid that is to destroy that. And then, as you see, all open wires hanging on that.”

When the fob readers are destroyed, residents have little choice but to leave the doors propped open, allowing anyone to enter the buildings. The end result for Dobbs: “I can’t leave my daughter here.”

McKeesport police and 911 calls

In the 12 months ending in July, Hi View generated 399 calls to 911 — roughly four per occupied unit. They included 37 domestic incidents, 32 disturbances, 10 involving guns or other weapons, four gunshots and assorted thefts, trespassing and harassment incidents.

As bad as that may sound, that was a good year for Hi View. The total number of 911 calls and the tallies for some of the most serious categories were low compared to the rest of PNC’s tenure.

Mitchell said that in addition to the constant efforts to replace smashed key fob readers, NHP had added security cameras, hired a private security guard and contracted with McKeesport to provide added police patrols.

The arrangement with the police was not meeting his expectations, he told the tenants in August at a meeting at Eat’n Park.

“I think they were there one night a week,” he said. “If they’re there two hours one night a week, that’s not going to get it done.”

McKeesport Assistant Police Chief Mark Steele — who asked that WESA and PublicSource refrain from revealing precise details of the extra policing the city is providing — said the department is meeting its contractual obligations. Sometimes, he added, manpower shortages compel the department to postpone a planned special patrol for a day or two.

“They’ve made drug arrests, gun arrests, and they have the people that don’t belong up there on their toes,” he said. 

Better — but for how long?

One of Hi View’s five buildings has been empty since a May 2020 fire. Under PMI, it sat unrepaired for more than a year. 

According to Mitchell, that building should be fixed by year’s end. The tenant council is already mulling who should get dibs on the refurbished units.

Tenant Daysha Hooper wants in. Last year, she told WESA and PublicSource that she endured roaches and a faulty stove in the unit she shares with her cat, Simone.

“I don’t need more space,” she said at the council’s meeting with management in September. “I just want a fresh start.”

The entire complex may be heading for a new chapter.

At the September meeting, Mitchell said he’d recently learned from the tenants’ attorney Vitek that PNC intends to sell Hi View.

“I’m outside of that loop,” Mitchell said.

“It doesn’t change any of this,” he added, referring to the efforts to work with the tenants to improve the complex.

PNC will sell to “a reputable firm” and not “a slumlord,” he said, noting that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development would have to approve any sale. “We’re continuing business as normal.”

Vitek added that PNC had agreed to a “final act of compensation to the residents,” though details are still being worked out, because the bank realized that “the property was not maintained to the standard that they would expect, and that they believe residents of McKeesport should have to live in.”

In response to questions from WESA and PublicSource, a PNC spokesperson wrote that the bank confirmed plans to compensate residents and “work to find a buyer who is similarly committed to continuing to preserve affordable housing and the needs of the McKeesport community.” The bank declined to discuss specifics but noted that it’s pleased with progress at Hi View.

The spokesperson said it was premature to discuss any plans for nearby Midtown Plaza.

Outside of Eat’n Park, Brown said she was thankful for the progress of the last year, from fresh paint to pest control. 

“I’m not saying I’m satisfied, but I’m content right now,” she said.

It shouldn’t have been so hard, she added, to get to this point.

“We shouldn’t have to be forced into going out of our way, going to the Health Department, getting the chief of police and the firemen and everybody else to help us fight this,” she said.

She and her fellow tenants and their attorney had gained the attention of high-ups at a bank with vast resources, and that was paying off. Now the bank was waving goodbye.

Brown’s message to owners, current and future: “I don’t mean for you to stop doing what you’re doing.

“We’re seeing improvement and stuff, but how long?”

Read all of Tenant Cities and the initial PublicSource/WESA investigation of PNC’s McKeesport Housing.

Kate Giammarise is a reporter covering social services and affordable housing for WESA and can be reached at kgiammarise@wesa.fm or 412-697-2953.

Rich Lord is PublicSource’s managing editor and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org or on Twitter @richelord.

This story was fact-checked by Ladimir Garcia and Jack Troy.

The post With PNC preparing to sell, a McKeesport housing complex’s residents hope hard-won improvements continue appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

The whir of a power drill and stacks of materials wrapped in white plastic suggest change at Hi View Gardens, a half-century-old hillside complex in McKeesport in which roughly 100 households have endured years of faulty heating, leaking roofs and lax security.

In 2018, PNC Bank bought the five-building, 117-apartment Hi View Gardens and nearby, 11-story Midtown Plaza. They are among dozens of investments the bank has made nationally in affordable housing in a bid to prevent such assets from converting to market-rate rentals. 

The McKeesport properties subsequently became scenes of rising numbers of violations of Allegheny County housing health regulations, for lack of utilities, pests, mold, fire or electricity hazards, damaged walls and ceilings and more. Calls to 911 also surged, and a core group of tenants organized and engaged a Community Justice Project attorney.

In recent months, the bank has begun renovating a fire-damaged Hi View building, replaced property managers at both properties and installed security doors. A maintenance contractor has inspected every unit and started working through a long maintenance backlog.

“I think we’ve done a lot of work,” said Richard Bynum, PNC’s chief corporate responsibility officer, in a December interview with PublicSource and WESA. “I think it’s been in concert with listening to the residents and their concerns and trying to alleviate those concerns where absolutely within our control and possible. But we have a lot to do in front of us, there’s no doubt.”

Shortcomings in Allegheny County’s rental housing market aren’t limited to older, subsidized communities like Hi View. In this year’s Tenant Cities series, WESA and PublicSource have explored the stability and quality of the rental market, as well as government efforts to curb evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic and limited enforcement of housing health rules.

Around 37% of households countywide rent, including a majority of Pittsburgh households and half of those in McKeesport. Civic response to tenant concerns has been uneven, but Pittsburgh leaders are now pledging a repeat effort to register and inspect all rentals, and the Allegheny County Health Department is planning to pursue new housing enforcement measures.

If Hi View Gardens is any indication, concrete change won’t come easily or quickly, even where it’s backed by a bank with hundreds of billions of dollars in assets.

Tenants who lived through winters without working boilers and summers of infestation and leaks aren’t happy with the pace.

“They’re putting Band-Aids on it. My granddaughter can do that!” said Tanya Brown, leader of the seven-month-old Hi View Gardens Tenant Council, as she stood with two other tenants near the complex’s freshly asphalted parking lot. “The main important things they need to do, they’re not doing. We need roofs fixed. We need bathroom toilets fixed.”

“Are there delays? Yes,” said Bynum. The bank and its contractors needed federal Department of Housing and Urban Development approval for managerial changes, and City of McKeesport permits for some capital fixes. “There have been delays in receiving materials because of shortages and because of the supply chain,” which has resulted in slow delivery of roofing and air conditioning materials, he said.

Those factors won’t be used as excuses, he said. “We want to make sure that the properties get into the condition that they need to be in to provide those residents a great place to live, and then we’ll work out the rest of the issues from there.”

When mice played in the stove

Built from 1969 through 1975, Hi View and Midtown long have been havens for low-income families who pay 30% of their incomes in rent, with the federal government picking up the balance. PNC’s purchase of the properties in 2018 was followed by an unsuccessful bid for federal low-income housing tax credits to renovate Hi View, then a period of maintenance decline leading to the formation of the tenant council.

Even as tenants report an uptick in maintenance activity, the effects of years of neglect are evident.

From late 2019 through early 2020, Candace Washington didn’t have reliable heat in her apartment, she said as she stood on a Hi View sidewalk with her 4-year-old son. 

“I used to have to use the stove for heat, and it being open, the mice would go up and play in it,” she said. Though new management has reduced the mouse problem, she doesn’t feel comfortable using the once-infested stove and has asked for a new one, she said. In the meantime, she’s eating out a lot or paying others to cook for her.

To protest conditions, she stopped paying rent, prompting an eviction filing by former property manager Preservation Management Inc. The eviction was granted by a district judge but is now under appeal.

After learning of the extent of the problems in Hi View and Midtown, PNC this fall got HUD’s OK and then replaced Maine-based Preservation Management and Evergreen Partners, which had been the bank’s partner in plans to redevelop the properties. Now the bank entrusts management to the nonprofit NHP Foundation, which in turn has hired Strip District-based NDC Asset Management to perform maintenance.

Bynum said PNC’s partners hired four people to inspect every apartment in Hi View and Midtown and to start repair work. They are still trying to hire one more maintenance person for each property, he added. Some repairs are being deferred until the roofs are fixed, which can’t occur until permits are finalized and materials arrive, he said.

The new team has moved quickly to improve security, he said. Locked doors requiring key fob swipes for entry, improvements to surveillance camera systems and an arrangement for more patrols by McKeesport police are meant to improve residents’ sense of safety, he said.

The team has an architect working on plans for a Hi View building that has been empty since a fire in May 2020. Bynum said work there is expected to start in earnest early next year. 

In hopes of large-scale rehabilitation of Hi View and Midtown, NHP is working on applications for tax credits, which it would submit to the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency [PHFA] in early 2022.  Competition for tax credits is intense, and PHFA typically announces awards in autumn.

“We’ve spent a significant amount of money, but it’s not about money,” Bynum said. “It’s about getting the issues at both Hi View and Midtown corrected and fixed, based on what the residents have shared with us.”

Renting trend not likely to reverse

Hi View and Midtown are part of a county rental housing market that spans high-rent North Hills buildings, high-turnover South Hills complexes, small-time owners struggling to maintain duplexes and single-family houses.

A region long known for affordable for-sale homes is shifting due to forces largely outside of local control.

The manufacturing economy encouraged people to reside near their workplaces. We’re now in “a global economy in which stability and being in one place like you used to be is not as needed,” said Roberto Quercia, a professor at the University of North Carolina Department of City and Regional Planning who focuses on housing. Households anticipating future moves might prefer to rent, he said.

Quercia added that increasing purchases of single-family homes by national investors, who then rent them out, can crowd out first-time homebuyers and keep them in the ranks of renters.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which made homeownership more attractive to many, may also lock households of modest means into the rental market, added Mark McArdle, assistant director of the Office of Mortgage Markets within the federal government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

“What we’ve been going through during the pandemic is this almost historic rise in [home] prices based on incredibly low supply,” he said, speaking as a housing expert rather than a voice for the bureau.

Renting is “not necessarily bad,” McArdle added. “Renting and homeownership are choices that you make depending on your stage of life and your needs and how long you’re planning to stay” in a place. But for most American families, he added, homeownership has been a path toward accumulating, retaining and passing on wealth.

Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority has programs that help to make homeownership affordable to families of modest means. Allegheny County also has programs for first-time homebuyers below certain income levels.

The rise in renting “does take more enforcement action from local government to make sure that the physical quality of housing is being maintained, that landlords are being responsive to tenant concerns,” said Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro studying urban economics and housing.

That process may be underway. Pittsburgh Mayor-elect Ed Gainey has said he will pursue the registration and inspection of rental properties in the city. The county Health Department has said it expects to consider new penalties for property owners who don’t fix housing violations, and potentially the public listing of landlords that incur high fines.

Traditionally, elected officials have catered to homeowners, Quercia noted. 

“We have done some work that shows that homeowners are more likely to vote in local elections than renters,” he said. “So moving more to a community of renters will have a big impact for local politics.”

‘The No. 1 issue in every single market’

Barbara Brown (no relation to Tanya) lived, until recently, in a Hi View apartment with a leaky roof. When it rained outside, steady streams of water entered her kitchen and bathroom.

Following the formation of the tenant council and the reporting on her situation and others by PublicSource and WESA, Hi View management moved her to another building.

“I don’t have any more rain or anything like that,” Brown said.

Instead? 

“I have a toilet that you flush, and the handle goes all the way around, and unless I turn it back around it’ll just keep running and running and running.” She said her drains also back up. Maintenance workers keep coming back, but the problems persist, she said. 

“The heat’s working pretty good,” said Tanya Brown, but other fixes seem slow, and even the secure doors and cameras haven’t stopped unwanted visitors, drug use and misbehaving kids, she said. Some residents would like to leave, but they face a rental market with fewer affordable options, she said. Told that PNC is talking about large-scale improvements, she was skeptical. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Bynum said PNC is serious about its commitments to Hi View and Midtown, and about promoting affordable housing nationwide. The bank’s four-year, $88 billion community benefits plan, announced in April and set to start Jan. 1, includes affordable housing components, as well as mortgage lending and business finance geared especially toward minority communities.

Bynum said that reflects the input he’s received as he has visited PNC markets nationwide. 

“The No. 1 issue in every single market that I’ve talked to people in has been the need for affordable housing, period, end of sentence.”

Rich Lord is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org or on Twitter @richelord.

Kate Giammarise is a reporter for WESA focusing on poverty, social services and affordable housing, and can be reached at kgiammarise@wesa.fm or 412-697-2953.

This content was produced with support from the Doris O’Donnell Innovations in Investigative Journalism Fellowship, awarded by the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA.

The post In McKeesport and throughout Allegheny County, no quick fixes for rental housing woes appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Patricia LaChoppa fears this winter will be much like the last one. She, her husband and their adult children spent the bulk of their time in the living room and dining room, with two space heaters running and a blanket hung in the entryway to keep the warmth in.

That’s where things stand 14 months after LaChoppa called the Allegheny County Health Department to complain about what was then a lack of heat and water, plumbing and electrical problems, holes in walls and an unsecured awning in her side of a McKeesport duplex.

“It scares me because I love my kids and my husband very much,” LaChoppa said on a November day, as she sniffled away tears. “And to live another year like this?”

The county’s Housing and Community Environment regulations require that dwellings have heating systems sufficient to keep the indoor temperature above 60 degrees.

In LaChoppa’s case, the Health Department has inspected five times and employed one of its most potent enforcement tools — penalty fines — to the tune of $15,500.

Her landlord, though, struggles to manage his properties from a nursing home. He would happily sell the duplex, under certain conditions.

It’s a difficult situation, and the Health Department’s current process hasn’t remedied it. LaChoppa’s rusted-out furnace remains cold as December unfolds.

It started with an act of mercy

In 2017, LaChoppa needed to find a place to stay, and fast, when her effort to buy a house on a rent-to-own basis went south. LaChoppa is disabled due to the circulatory condition avascular necrosis. She lives on Supplemental Security Income, and her options were few.

Her ex-husband was living in a duplex. The other half was empty, the utilities turned off.

The landlord, David Messinger, let her family move in. “I asked her, ‘How much can you afford?’” he recounted in a November interview. In the end, he agreed to let her live there, temporarily, rent-free. “You can’t expect somebody to pay rent for a place that’s not livable.”

LaChoppa said the understanding was that the landlord would make the fixes, and then she’d pay rent.

“And he’s never done anything,” she said.

There was a time when Messinger would personally remodel and maintain his five properties, all in McKeesport. 

By the time LaChoppa arrived on Franklin Street, Messinger was 85. He was just about ready to make repairs, he said, when age caught up with him.

“I thought I was just going to go to the hospital and get my legs straightened out a little bit,” he said. Instead, he’s been in a nursing home in McKeesport for two years. When he tried to hire someone to make repairs, they took a down payment but did nothing, he said.

So for three years LaChoppa lived, rent-free, with her second husband and her son and daughter, now in their 20s. For water, they relied until recently on her ex, who has running water in his half of the duplex. For warmth, they used two space heaters — all the 119-year-old duplex’s electrical system could handle.

Why stay in a dilapidated property without heat and water?

Due to her limited income, LaChoppa said, she doesn’t think she can afford anything else in the tight COVID-era rental market. “Even living in a house that is run down as this one, as much work as it needs, it’s better than living on the streets,” she said. “I have nowhere to go with my family.”

Last year, LaChoppa’s visiting nurses said they didn’t feel safe coming into a home with no utilities and with pest problems. “They said, ‘You need to get a hold of the Health Department and see what they can do,’” she recounted.

400 days later …

LaChoppa made that call on Oct. 6, 2020, and the department’s reaction was swift. That day, a manager called Messinger and told him to get the heat and water back on within 24 hours.

Fourteen months later, that hadn’t happened.

The department inspected LaChoppa’s unit five times between October 2020 and Nov. 18, 2021. It waited until February to assess a fine, of $2,500, and then until June to add another penalty, of $13,000, when repairs still weren’t made.

Messinger, meanwhile, filed to evict LaChoppa and her husband in July. The landlord didn’t allege any overdue rent, but he noted that their lease term was over and that he had asked them to leave. 

Messinger said he thought the eviction would supersede the Health Department action. In years past, the department had a policy of suspending enforcement while evictions were pending, so it didn’t devote limited manpower to landlord-tenant disputes that were already in court. Now, though, the department inspects and enforces even if the landlord is trying to evict.

LaChoppa said she showed District Judge Eugene Riazzi receipts for purchases she’d made in hopes of improving the bathroom. The judge dismissed the case.

Messinger appealed the Health Department fines against him and got a hearing. The department’s administrative hearing officer, though, ruled against him on Nov. 9. He can appeal to the Court of Common Pleas. For now, though, the fines stand.

They remain unpaid. 

Messinger said he’s getting no rent from most of his tenants. He can’t even afford to pay property taxes. How is he going to pay thousands of dollars in fines?

In an email response to questions, Health Department spokesman Christopher Togneri wrote that the department does not anticipate further enforcement against Messinger.

A potential solution

LaChoppa believes she could tap a variety of programs that help pay for repairs if she was the property owner. And Messinger isn’t opposed to selling, for $30,000 minus agreed-upon repair costs — though he might want to live in one half of the duplex as part of the deal.

The $15,500 in fines, though, could become an impediment to any sale.

The department seeks to collect unpaid fines by filing judgments in court. If the property owner doesn’t pay, the judgment typically must be paid off at the time of any sale of the real estate.

“You tack on a whole bunch of fines, now there’s no way to even sell the property, because there’s all these fines on it,” said Robert Moncavage, a landlord who is president of the Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh. He has no involvement in LaChoppa’s situation.

Is there another approach?

Togneri, in an email response to questions, wrote that inspectors can refer tenants to potentially helpful agencies, “and they are trained to do so.”

A new nonprofit organization mediates disputes between landlords and tenants, while longstanding programs in Allegheny County help to repair properties.

LaChoppa and Messinger, though, both said the department never directed them to resources.

“No, nothing, nothing,” said LaChoppa. “They came in, they did their report, they left.”

“I think we need the emergency programs to step in, do the emergency work that’s necessary to get people help and up to code,” said Elizabeth Marx, executive director of the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project. She is not involved in this case, but she spoke generally about challenges of landlord-tenant situations where utility problems leave tenants in the cold or the dark.

“I think we need strong policies and programs that step in when a landlord isn’t fixing an emergency situation and then figure out ways to go after that landlord to recover those costs,” Marx added.

Federal stimulus checks and loans from relatives recently enabled LaChoppa’s family to get the plumbing fixed and the water turned on. And her husband recently got a job, which will allow the family to catch up on bills and then put some money into repairs.

“But I’m still going to go all winter without a furnace,” she said.

There’s no heat upstairs. The bathroom is cold. “I don’t know how else to explain it, but we just do what we got to do to survive.”

Rich Lord is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org or on Twitter @richelord.

Kate Giammarise is a reporter for WESA focusing on poverty, social services and affordable housing, and can be reached at kgiammarise@wesa.fm or 412-697-2953.

This story was fact-checked by Linden Markley.

The post ‘I have nowhere to go with my family.’ appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Unhealthy housing rarely results in penalties from the Allegheny County Health Department, and even when it does, it collects just one in five fines.

Records obtained from the department by PublicSource and WESA show that since 2017, an annual average of 1,900 complaints of unhealthy housing typically result in roughly 3,000 inspections, some of which are repeat examinations when fixes aren’t made promptly. Landlords and other property owners who still don’t address serious health violations after repeat inspections ultimately face only fines that they can ignore with relative impunity.

Besides levying fines, the department can bring summary or misdemeanor charges against housing health scofflaws, but it has not done  so in recent years. It invites some tenants to put rent payments in escrow until health violations are fixed, but few pursue that option. In a county in which nearly two out of five households now rent, that practice leaves some tenants with little recourse as they face winter with inadequate heat, contend with water or sewage problems, or seek to rid their dwellings of lead or rat infestations.

“If the enforcement provisions are lacking or not being adhered to, it’s frankly sending a message to landlords that they can skirt the system and not invest in a way that is necessary to protect public health,” said Michelle Naccarati-Chapkis, executive director of Women for a Healthy Environment. Elected last month to Allegheny County Council as a representative for eastern suburbs from Plum to Swissvale, she advocates a full review of the county’s housing health rules.

The department’s fines most often target landlords, though homeowners and owners of vacant property are sometimes penalized when the conditions of their buildings threaten the health of neighbors.

“The question becomes: Is the system inherently broken?” asked Robert Moncavage, a landlord who is also president of the Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, when presented with the enforcement data. “A fine doesn’t fix anything. … Given the 20% collection rate, is it even effective? Clearly, it’s not disincentivizing the bad actors.”

Health department spokesman Christopher Togneri responded that the department anticipates new penalty procedures next year and may publicize information on landlords with high fines, so that renters can be better informed and egregious offenders can be effectively targeted.

A few of the officials who oversee the department pledged to push for change.

“Obviously there’s so much more that can be done that’s not being done,” said Liv Bennett, who sits on Allegheny County Council’s Health and Human Services Committee. “And who is suffering? The tenants.”

Case 1: A Wilkinsburg duplex

The case above isn’t typical, but it’s far from unique.

From 2017 through early Aug. 11 of this year, the department logged 8,765 housing-related health complaints. The most serious complaints involved:

• no heat — 723 complaints
• no water — 327
• other utility terminations — 24
• sewage problems — 526
• rats — 120.

The vast majority of cases resolve without any punitive action. “Inspectors seek to fix problems and ensure safe and comfortable living conditions for tenants,” wrote Togneri.

Data provided by the department on 1,660 housing complaints from March 2020 to March 2021 indicates that most resolved without an inspection, either because the owner corrected the problem or the tenant wasn’t responsive to follow-up or moved out. 

Case 2: A Carrick rental house

The department’s powers to punish come from the county’s 25-year-old Houses and Community Environment regulation, known as Article VI of the Health Department rules and regulations, plus the state’s 1960s-era City Rent Withholding Act. They create four enforcement options.

Criminal charges

The county can bring summary or misdemeanor charges that can result in fines or even imprisonment. It has not exercised that option in recent years.

Asked why the department isn’t using this option, Togneri wrote that the department has “a record of securing compliance, which is only achievable via cooperation with tenants and landlords.”

Order tenants to vacate

The department can also issue an order to vacate a premises. “For instance, in a case where, say, somebody is in their own home and they don't have water and they don't have heat, we actually used to padlock those homes and have those people removed,” said Lori Horowitz, manager of the department’s Housing and Community Environment Program, in a May interview. “But it wasn't doing anybody any good,” she added, and that option hasn’t been used in years.

Togneri declined a WESA and PublicSource request for another interview with Horowitz for this story.

Rent withholding

When tenants in any of the county’s four cities (Pittsburgh, McKeesport, Clairton and Duquesne) face particularly unhealthy conditions, inspectors can declare their units unfit for human habitation. The inspector then invites the tenant to pay rent into an escrow account administered by the department. From 2017 through 2020, the department sent out 312 letters to tenants advising them of the program. Just eight of those tenants opened accounts.

Tenants get word of the rent escrow option via a one-page letter with eight bullet points and an invitation to call the inspector. Bennett said that procedure may put too much onus on tenants who are already under stress. “When you’re in a place that is uninhabitable,” she said, “you already feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle.”

Civil penalties

The department can levy fines, usually of $2,500. In response to a Right-to-Know Act request from PublicSource and WESA, the department provided basic information on 122 fines that it pursued since 2017. 

Fines, Togneri wrote, are applied to “the most non-compliant of landlords.”

Not all fines targeted landlords. Sometimes the department went after businesses, vacant property owners or owner-occupants whose conditions vexed neighbors.

The department’s records and related court filings show penalties of $364,625 assessed on the 122 cases, but collections of just $51,560 on 25 of them. 

“At face value, it seems low,” said Dr. Donald Burke, a county Board of Health member who is also dean emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health. He wants the department to review what it’s doing now, get data on housing health enforcement in other jurisdictions and consider how it might better achieve the goal of safe and livable housing. 

“It’s an important function of the Health Department,” Burke said. “The environmental factors that are found in the housing inspections that deal with air quality, water quality [and] the social environment are all important determinants of health.”

Case 3: A Penn Hills rental house

The 122 penalty cases include eight in which payment was made without court action. In 94 of the other cases the department filed court judgments documenting the debts. When property owners don’t pay judgments, Pennsylvania law creates a multi-step collection process that can lead to garnishment of bank accounts and sheriff’s sale of confiscated real estate, but the department has not gone that route, according to Togneri.

Landlords paid judgments more often than other violators, but fewer than 1 in 5 judgments have been paid.

Togneri wrote that if the fine isn’t paid, the department can collect on the judgment if the owner attempts to sell the property, which it has done on two cases so far this year.

Case 4: A Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar rental house

The department has indicated since July that it may strengthen its enforcement tools. In response to questions from WESA and PublicSource, Togneri wrote last month that the department is looking at “new penalty procedures that we believe will allow the [county] to more effectively target the most egregious offenders” and considering “publicly listing landlords who incur the highest fine amounts, so tenants can research and inform themselves about a specific landlord before renting from them.”

PublicSource and WESA have reported since August on housing health enforcement practices used in other jurisdictions, including steadily rising fines, environmental courts, data-driven inspections, cooperative compliance and universal rental registration and inspection.

Bennett suggested an approach in which larger landlords who violate health rules would be hit harder than small ones. She added that the county should get input from housing experts and advocates before making changes.

Outgoing county Controller Chelsa Wagner, who has been elected to the county Court of Common Pleas, noted that the Health Department already publicizes the names of restaurants that fail inspection. The housing market, she suggested, could benefit from the same transparency. 

Longer-term, the county should consider electing a health commissioner who would be directly accountable to the public, she said. The department's leader is now confirmed by the nine-member Board of Health, which is appointed by the county executive and confirmed by county council.

Moncavage, the Realtor and landlord, noted that some local governments have the power to directly address problems on private property — mowing an overgrown yard, for example — and billing the owner. He suggested that approach might be applicable to housing health problems.

“If it’s that egregious, if it’s that big of an issue, fix the problem, charge the owner back for it, and maybe issue a fine up on top of that,” he said. If it went unpaid, he said, the department could at least put a lien on the property. Liens can be collected upon a property’s sale.

Naccarati-Chapkis said an enforcement fix could be part of a broader conversation about the county’s housing health rules. Written in 1996, the rules include outdated standards regarding lead exposure, she said. It does not even mention mold or radon, now known to be health hazards.

"We have, in effect, an antiquated code that is really not benefiting the community as a whole,” she said, “and so we are long overdue and past the time of talking about it and now have to put into action a plan for updating and revising the code.”

Rich Lord is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org or on Twitter @richelord.

Kate Giammarise is a reporter for WESA focusing on poverty, social services and affordable housing, and can be reached at kgiammarise@wesa.fm or 412-697-2953.

This story was fact-checked by Linden Markley.

The post Tenant Cities: Unpaid housing health fines leave some Allegheny County tenants cold appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Rafael Bullones knows firsthand the hardships immigrants can face when looking for a place to live. The 31-year-old, who moved to the United States from Venezuela in 2014, initially struggled and without some help, he said, it’s likely he could have ended up without a home at all.

Housing issues can abound for immigrants, he said. They may lack a credit score or could still be looking for employment while searching for housing. They can face discrimination and abusive landlords, he said. Language barriers can also make a difficult situation that much tougher.

Now Bullones is helping others overcome the obstacles. As a paralegal and outreach coordinator for the Community Justice Project, a nonprofit legal assistance firm, much of his job involves helping people navigate these complicated housing issues, connecting them to resources like rent relief, providing translation services and assisting in cases where residents may be living in substandard conditions. He also helps residents find resources and solutions regarding lead poisoning in homes.

Regardless of where they’re living, he said immigrants should know “they still have rights and they can demand to live in good conditions.”

The North Side resident plans to keep the Pittsburgh area his home, hoping to practice law and eventually own a farm. Bullones is an avid chess player and can often be found playing Downtown. He also practices ashtanga yoga and officiates the occasional wedding.

Ryan Loew is PublicSource’s visual storyteller/producer and can be reached at ryan@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ryanloew.

The post After finding a home in Pittsburgh, a paralegal helps others navigate housing difficulties appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

In one of Pennsylvania’s largest cities, landlords pay annual registration fees and inspectors aim to regularly check every apartment and rental house for health and safety risks.

It’s not Pittsburgh, where 13 years of city efforts to register and inspect rental housing have been thwarted by court actions, most recently a judge’s decision in July to bar the imposition of per-unit fees of $45 to $65.

In Allentown, the state’s third-most-populous city, all rental units have been subjected to semi-regular inspections since 2000. Some landlords say Allentown’s inspections are inconsistent, while tenant advocates counter that they’re not frequent enough. But the program survived a court challenge from landlords, and inspectors will soon be armed with computers even as officials weigh more targeted inspections of problem properties.

The program “still needs more improvement because they need more inspectors,” said Julian Kern, president of the Allentown Tenant Association. What would the city be like without rental inspections? “If they scrapped the program, the city will just become a disaster with blight,” he said.

In Allegheny County, including Pittsburgh, county inspectors examine rental housing for health concerns, while municipal building inspectors look for safety hazards — both typically in response to complaints. PublicSource and WESA reported in August that hundreds of violations detected by the Allegheny County Health Department at two McKeesport properties generated minimal fines.

Pittsburgh’s major-party mayoral contenders both say they want landlords to register their units with the city.

“We have to do something. You know how many landlords we’ve dealt with that haven’t kept up with their properties,” said Democratic nominee Ed Gainey, now a state representative from Lincoln-Lemington. “We want inspections. That’s the way you ensure that the property is in good standing.”

Gainey said that if elected, he’ll look at other cities’ rental registration and inspection programs; meet with housing advocates, real estate interests and building inspectors; crunch the data to calculate the cost of a program and the needed fees; and advance new legislation. He added that registration would also allow the city to better inform landlords of city programs that can benefit them.

Republican candidate Tony Moreno said in an interview that the city should not only register rental housing properties but regularly inspect units. He added, though, that Mayor Bill Peduto’s administration has botched its effort by trying to impose fees that amount to “a money grab.”

“Why can’t we go to these companies and these [rental property] owners and say, ‘Hey, look, this needs to be done,’” and work out a fair system and reasonable cost, thereby avoiding another court fight, Moreno said.

This year, WESA and PublicSource are exploring Allegheny County’s changing and growing rental housing market, especially the affordable sector, and examining the governmental and civic responses to the emergence of Tenant Cities. In August, the team traveled to Allentown to learn about its approach.

Allentown isn’t a housing utopia, but it is trying to protect tenants, its officials say.

“I believe the program is definitely beneficial to the city,” said Deputy Mayor Leonard Lightner, who is also Allentown’s director of community and economic development. “We are catching many of the properties that could fall into worse condition than they’re in.”

Carrying the ‘political football’

Modesto Medina takes a non-confrontational approach to his job as a housing inspector.

“I don’t go in there kicking the door open like I’m an enforcer or enforcing things,” he said, as he waited outside of a litter-strewn townhouse in one of Allentown’s southern neighborhoods. “Rather, I’m there to help, to help them be safe in their own homes. And I work with people. I treat them as human beings because they are.”

On a hot August morning, Medina told the owner of a vacant house that he needed to replace a cracked window and a broken electrical outlet, and to shield the electrical service line with a conduit to keep kids from yanking on it. His schedule typically includes one inspection per hour — sometimes involving an occupied rental unit, sometimes a house that’s slated for sale — and on this day the back seat of his car was strewn with folders for a dozen properties.

Medina is among 14 housing inspectors charged with enforcing a rental housing quality control program that goes well beyond those in Pennsylvania’s larger cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

In Allentown:

• Landlords must register every housing unit with the city.

• The city must inspect each rental no more frequently than once every five years, unless there’s a complaint.
• Landlords must pay the city $75 per unit per year, or more if they repeatedly fail inspections.
• Tenants can face eviction if they repeatedly disturb the peace of neighbors.

The program emerged in the 1990s from an alliance of building inspectors and neighborhood advocates who were concerned that landlords were dividing single-family homes into multiple apartments.

That coalition pushed Allentown City Council to regulate rental housing. They found, though, that opposition from landlords made it “a political football that nobody really wanted to carry across the line,” said Eric Weiss, a former director of Allentown’s Bureau of Building Standards and Safety.

So inspectors and advocates teamed up, collecting signatures and forcing a ballot referendum. An overwhelming majority of voters backed it, ushering in a per-unit fee — initially as low as $11 per year — plus the inspections and tenant behavior standards.

Listen to the 90.5 WESA story:

Landlords didn’t challenge the ordinance in court until 2012, after Allentown raised the per-unit fee to $75. In 2017, Commonwealth Court ruled that the landlords had failed to prove that the city was charging more than reasonably necessary to cover the costs of the program.

“To have somebody go over, spend an hour, process it and everything, I guess $75 sounds OK,” said Jack Gross, whose firm Cassidon Property Management rents out properties in Allentown, and who is past president of the Greater Lehigh Valley Realtors.

Gross said he gets frustrated when different inspectors take varied approaches to enforcing the building code, or go beyond what he considers health and safety and tell him to restain a deck or put a downspout on a shed. But the overall concept? “I don’t know of anybody who is against health and safety inspections.”

But back in Pittsburgh …

In 2007, Pittsburgh tried to compel landlords to register rental units, charge $12 annually for each and, in limited circumstances, inspect them. Ten plaintiffs — including the Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh [RAMP] — sued to stop it. In 2009, all sides agreed to try to renegotiate the terms of the program, but they never reached agreement.

When the Peduto administration and Pittsburgh City Council again began to weigh rental registration in 2014, RAMP presented a proposal for a $10-per-unit fee, according to that association’s Executive Vice President John Petrack.

Council instead passed legislation to charge landlords $45 to $65 annually per unit and inspect each apartment or rental house every three to five years.

“We obviously understand and not necessarily completely disagree with the rental registration,” Petrack said in August. But the city’s legislation put too many burdens on property owners and charged too much, creating a de facto “renter’s tax,” he said.

RAMP and others went back to court, and the case climaxed in a multi-day hearing in February. The city argued that the fees lined up with the cost of administering the program. The landlords’ advocates said the fee was much too high, and therefore an unfair and illegal tax on rental housing. Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas Judge Joseph James found in favor of the landlords and barred the city from imposing the fee.

In August, the judge also swatted aside, in a two-line order, a city request for approval to charge around $11 per unit. The city is reviewing its legal options, according to a spokeswoman for Peduto’s office.

RAMP would like to be at the table with the next mayor should they consider rental regulation. “The concept of making sure we have safe and adequate housing is admirable, but when you go beyond that and kind of make things up as you go, that’s when you have problems,” said the association’s President Bob Moncavage. He suspected that the city’s real goal was to identify all tenants within its borders to “make sure that they’re being taxed.”

Like Pittsburgh, McKeesport has tried to impose rental registration, with fees and inspections. McKeesport also has been stymied by court decisions — most recently a series of 2018 rulings by Common Pleas Judge Paul F. Lutty barring enforcement of its ordinance. Mayor Michael Cherepko said in a July interview that he hopes to revive the effort.

Moncavage doubted that any regime of registration and inspection would catch the minority of units that are poorly maintained: “I think the bad actors that are out there are simply going to fly under the radar and ignore it.”

Catch it before it collapses

COVID-19 has made home safety more important than ever, said Talor Musil, health policy coordinator for Women for a Healthy Environment, a nonprofit organization based in East Liberty that focuses partly on housing. Homes are “supposed to be a place where we can be safe from the dangers of the pandemic,” she said. “Mechanisms to prompt ongoing maintenance are really critical right now.”

Inspection systems spurred largely by complaints “can actually worsen disparities and sort of leave properties behind,” said Amanda Reddy, executive director for the National Center for Healthy Housing.

While vocal tenants might get results, others might silently endure unsafe housing.

“You can imagine that vulnerable populations like undocumented residents or these low-income tenants can be fearful of repercussions like being evicted, or being subjected to increased rent” if they upset the landlord by complaining, Reddy said.

Musil added that if government inspects only when it receives a complaint, health and safety hazards — especially invisible ones such as lead or radon gas — won’t be noted until they’ve already caused irreparable harm. Periodic inspections, on the other hand, can catch those problems, as well as structural problems “before something has completely collapsed or completely fallen in.”

‘Hell on earth’

Since rowdy college students rented the house next to his in the 1990s, Scott Armstrong has been one of Allentown’s most vocal believers in rental inspection.

“When the landlords know, or the property owners know, that their building is going to be inspected every five years, they're not going to sneak in illegal units because they'll have to remove them when they get inspected,” said Armstrong, a board member of Allentown’s West Park Civic Association. “But if it's not systematic, they'll take chances”

Unfortunately, the program hasn’t been systematic for years, Armstrong said. “The only inspections going on that I’m aware of are either upon complaint, or what they feel like inspecting.”

Tenant leader Kern said his group has found properties that escaped inspection for 10 to 15 years. He added that the program improved recently, since the city added a few more inspectors.

Last year, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, inspections were largely curtailed. But in the first seven months of this year, the city inspected 1,968 units, according to Heidi Westerman, director of Allentown’s Bureau of Building Standards and Safety.

That pace would allow for check-ups of all of the city’s estimated 28,000 units in eight years.

“Eight years is way too long,” said Kern.

Westerman said the city is trying to catch up by having inspectors work overtime. The city also plans to replace paper folders with laptops to improve efficiency — and transparency.

Once the process is digitized, she said, the city plans to put the resulting data on its website. “So if you go into the website from any location, you can kind of look up and see: How many violations has this property had?” she said, adding that information on health factors such as lead remediation also might be available at a click.

She also plans to use the data for targeted inspections. City officials are working on a performance-based system, in which most landlords would remain on a five-year inspection cycle, while those with more violations would face inspection every year or every three years. That would potentially help to counteract a feared decline in housing quality resulting from reduced landlord investment during the pandemic, she said.

The goal, according to City Councilman Josh Siegel: “We want to make Allentown hell on earth for bad landlords and slumlords. … No one should live in a crappy property with a landlord that is indifferent to their circumstances, doesn't care about them.”

Rich Lord is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org or on Twitter @richelord.

Kate Giammarise is a reporter covering the impact of COVID-19 on the economy for WESA, and can be reached at kgiammarise@wesa.fm or 412-697-2953.

This story was fact-checked by Matt Maielli.

This content was produced with support from the Doris O'Donnell Innovations in Investigative Journalism Fellowship, awarded by the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA.

The post Expect the inspector: Unlike Pittsburgh, the state’s No. 3 city examines every rental home — eventually appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

The Allegheny County Health Department found 347 housing code violations across two troubled McKeesport properties over four years — but only collected one penalty, for $2,250.

The department levied another $5,000 in penalties but did not collect those, instead filing judgments against the owner entities, which are controlled by PNC Bank. Meanwhile, some tenants’ problems — including leaks, infestations and failed heating systems —  remained unaddressed for months, even after two or three inspections.

“Whoa,” said state Rep. Austin Davis, D-McKeesport, when informed of the numbers of inspections and the fines collected, as he stood outside of one of the properties, Hi View Gardens. “There’s no question that things were missed, for sure.”

The Health Department put considerable time into Hi View and Midtown Plaza, two affordable housing properties that PNC Bank bought in 2018. Since 2017, the department has conducted more than 90 inspections at the two properties, including 83 since PNC took over. The 800 department documents reviewed by PublicSource and WESA include 11 threats of penalties.

That effort, though, often failed to result in prompt improvements for residents. Tenants at Hi View became so fed up with maintenance problems that in May they formed a tenant council and demanded that owners hire a third-party inspector to catalog problems and verify repairs.

McKeesport Mayor Michael Cherepko called the low penalty, following the department’s extensive effort, “kind of ridiculous,” adding that he did not have detailed knowledge of the challenges of health code enforcement.

WESA and PublicSource reported in July that Hi View and Midtown saw a 49% increase in housing health code violations in 2019 and 2020 compared to the prior two years. PNC Bank subsequently pledged “immediate action” to address problems at the properties and plans to pursue federal tax credits to conduct full revamps.

That reporting prompted Allegheny County Councilman Bob Macey to mull potential additions to the current health enforcement toolbox. “I think it’s important for people to step up to the plate and do what we ask them to do,” said Macey, a Democrat whose district includes McKeesport. “If they don’t do it, they need to be held accountable.”

Other counties and cities have mechanisms for enforcing housing quality — from steadily rising fines and environmental courts to data-driven inspections and “cooperative compliance” regimes — that do not appear to exist here.

Allegheny County’s “current procedure is to treat each complaint individually and proceed through our normal procedure,” said Lori Horowitz, the department’s operations manager in charge of the Housing and Community Environment Program. That procedure is to inform the property owner of the complaint, inspect if it is not promptly addressed and then send notices of any violations before following up with potential further inspections and sanctions.

She added that the department has begun to research practices in other counties and is working on a “penalty matrix” that could result in different fines. She declined, though, to detail the measures under consideration or to estimate any timetable for implementation. Health Department Director Dr. Debra Bogen is not doing individual interviews during the pandemic, and County Executive Rich Fitzgerald’s spokeswoman did not respond to questions.

For the time being, Horowitz said, enforcement remains “on a case-by-case basis.”

‘We’re going to do something about this’

One of the department’s most involved cases at Hi View resulted in some improvements, a threat but no penalty — and an unsatisfied tenant.

Starting in January, the department inspected Octavia Owens’ apartment four times.

“I let him walk around in my unit, I told him all the problems, all the damages,” Owens, a mother of children ages 5 and 2, said of her interactions with a Health Department inspector. “And he was telling me that, ‘Oh, we’re going to do something about this. … I’m going to get this unit fixed for you, or I’m going to get you to transfer somewhere.'”

The initial inspection revealed nine violations against the owner, including that the apartment was unheated, compelling the tenant to commit her own violation by using a gas stove to keep warm. It took more than two months for the department and Hi View management to verify that the heat was working.

Other violations, including rot and failure to decontaminate a shared area in which there had been a sewer backup, persisted even then. Nonetheless, the department closed its file with an admission that violations remained but a promise of “no further action at this time.”

View Health Department actions regarding Owens’ apartment

In late July, Owens said she was still living with a sagging ceiling, bad flooring, a broken door and bugs. WESA and PublicSource were unable to inspect the apartment because property manager Preservation Management Inc. [PMI] ordered the reporting team to leave Hi View.

“I don’t feel satisfied” with the Health Department’s work, said Owens. “I’m trying to move out of here. I’m trying to get an apartment, but you know, it’s kind of hard.”

No call to PNC

Inspections of Hi View and Midtown represented around 13% of housing health inspections done in McKeesport from 2017 through 2020, according to Horowitz. The complexes, combined, make up around 5% of McKeesport’s rental housing.

Horowitz said she was aware of the concentrations of violations at Hi View and Midtown before PublicSource and WESA brought them to her attention, but declined to detail internal deliberations regarding enforcement.

One of the county’s go-to tools, though, was apparently not employed.

“One of the main things we do is try our best to get a hold of the actual ownership of the property, to speak to them and try and make sure that they’re fully aware of what is going on, what we’ve cited, and what the consequences will be if they don’t comply,” she said. She did not, however, know of any interaction between the department and PNC in regard to Hi View and Midtown. The department instead wrote letters to and called the property manager, PMI.

Horowitz said that in 48 out of 101 files she reviewed related to the properties, her staff closed its cases because the tenant opted not to pursue their complaint, said the complaint had already been addressed by the property management or failed to coordinate with the inspector. She said that is typical: Around half of the department’s cases resolve without an inspection, either because the tenant is unresponsive or the landlord is quick to fix the problem.

Other cases, though, lingered for months.

Of the 58 Health Department cases in Hi View and Midtown that PublicSource and WESA were able to track definitively from beginning to end, 21 were open for two months or more. The lengthiest lasted eight months from the initial report of roaches, leaks and rot until the department closed it when the tenant stopped communicating with the inspector.

A limited enforcement toolbox

The lone case for which the Health Department collected a penalty involved an apartment at Midtown Plaza that it inspected four times from Dec. 18, 2019 through Jan. 30, 2020, finding failed heat and indoor temperatures between 57 and 65 degrees. The department closed that case after it concluded that the tenant had moved out.

Under the county’s Houses and Community Environment rules, the department can charge penalties as low as $30 or as high as $1,000 per violation. When a landlord fails to promptly address failed heat during winter, the department sometimes threatens a $2,500 civil penalty plus $250 per additional day that it continues.

The department did not respond to a request for information on the amount of penalties collected countywide for housing health violations.

The department also can order tenants out of a housing unit, but will only use that power in “a pretty extreme situation” when harm to the community could result from continued occupancy, said Horowitz.

The department’s other enforcement tool is to allow tenants to pay rent into an escrow account until repairs are completed. Horowitz said that from 2016 through 2020, the department issued 393 letters allowing tenants in Allegheny County to pay into escrow accounts. Only 13 of the tenants actually set up accounts with the county, and none of those were in McKeesport.

Affordability or health ‘a false choice’

The enforcement options available in Allegheny County are common, but some jurisdictions have gone much further.

In Kansas City, Missouri, voters in a 2018 referendum demanded enhanced housing health enforcement. The resulting Healthy Homes Rental Inspection Program resulted in a well-defined flow chart of actions that includes $150 reinspection penalties and the nuclear option: revocation of a landlord’s right to rent.

The Kansas City Health Department doesn’t want to punish landlords, but it also doesn’t want taxpayers footing the bill for second, third and fourth inspections of the same properties, Deputy Director Naser Jouhari said. The department has collected around $86,500 in reinspection fees in three years, he said.

The department hasn’t yet revoked a landlord’s permit to rent. “That’s a good thing! That means we’re getting compliance,” said Jouhari.

The program hasn’t satisfied KC Tenants. “We have a list of about 93 tenants who have tried to get Healthy Homes to support their needs, with no success,” said Tara Raghuveer, founding director of that renters rights group. PublicSource and WESA interviewed two Kansas City renters who said that the program was slow to compel repairs to their units.

Some jurisdictions have created special courts to deal with health issues including housing-related problems. Marion County, Indiana (which includes Indianapolis) has had an Environmental Court since 1978.

Franklin County, Ohio (which includes Columbus) also has an Environmental Court, with a judge whose caseload consists entirely of quality of life cases. Using a streamlined process for addressing serious violations, the court can assess $1,000-per-day fines, according to Steve Dunbar, a section chief with the office of the City Attorney.

“Collecting money isn’t the priority. It’s a means to an end,” said Dunbar. “Getting the place fixed, and fixed right, is the priority.”

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Philadelphia’s Code Enforcement Inspections Unit handles many of the housing issues that fall under the Allegheny County Health Department’s purview. That unit is switching from a largely complaint-driven process to one in which a business intelligence unit mines data and drives targeted enforcement efforts. For instance, the unit might opt to inspect common areas in all of the city’s high rises if it sees problems there, said its Acting Director Michael Troise.

Another emerging model is called “cooperative compliance,” according to Amanda Reddy, executive director of the National Center for Healthy Housing [NCHH], a Maryland-based nonprofit focused on low-income communities.

Cooperative compliance involves transforming the “traditional us-versus-them dynamic” between enforcement agencies and landlords into a relationship of mutual interest in which inspectors may direct property owners to resources that can help them to finance improvements, she said.

When the cooperative approach doesn’t work, “progressive and meaningful” fines for persistent violations can be effective, Reddy said.

Health and safety problems in affordable communities are “not just solvable. I think it’s imperative that we solve them,” Reddy said. “Asking residents to choose between housing that is affordable and housing that is safe is a false choice. We know how to provide both, and we can and we must provide both.”

Into the matrix?

Horowitz said a forthcoming “penalty matrix” might bring fines based on the repetition of violations, their severity and the number of people affected.

She said the county is also researching other enforcement approaches, but declined to name any other counties that might serve as models. “Dr. Bogen is moving toward a more proactive health department,” she said.

Presented with information about enforcement in other jurisdictions, Allegheny County Council’s Macey said he liked the idea of charging owners when violations persist after the Health Department repeatedly inspects the same unit.

“If we’re sending people out there more than once and they’re not being listened to, there should be some obligation by the person who is not doing their job to pay for it,” Macey said. He said he has asked council’s chief of staff to look into the concept.

Any county legislation would likely have to go through one of two GOP-chaired committees.

Sam DeMarco, a Republican elected at-large who chairs the Economic Development and Housing Committee, said that “over-regulation and intervention has caused many of these problems” in the affordable housing market “and continued intervention isn’t necessarily going to solve it.”

He said loosening of land-use regulations might spur the creation of more affordable housing, while federal housing aid directed solely toward property improvements might help to shore up existing subsidized properties.

Cindy Kirk, a Republican who chairs council’s Health and Human Services Committee, was out of town and did not respond to questions.

Talor Musil, health policy coordinator for the East Liberty-based nonprofit group Women for a Healthy Environment, said the county’s 25-year-old housing health code is outdated. It doesn’t address concerns like mold and moisture, and could do more to prevent households from moving into buildings with lead contamination, she said.

“Updating that regulation,” said Musil, “would be incredibly helpful in equipping the Health Department to act more swiftly and perhaps introduce more progressive fines.”

Rich Lord is PublicSource’s economic development reporter and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org or on Twitter @richelord.

Kate Giammarise is a reporter covering the impact of COVID-19 on the economy for WESA and can be reached at kgiammarise@wesa.fm or 412-697-2953.

PublicSource intern Xiaohan Liu contributed to data analysis and visualization. Point Park University student Nick Tommarello contributed to document processing.

This story was fact-checked by Matt Maielli.

This content was produced with support from the Doris O’Donnell Innovations in Investigative Journalism Fellowship, awarded by the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA.

The post Hundreds of violations, few penalties: Allegheny County’s health enforcers frequently inspected — but rarely fined — two McKeesport properties appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

PNC Bank has pledged “immediate action” to address concerns of tenants at an affordable housing complex that it owns in McKeesport, after a PublicSource and WESA investigation revealed health and safety problems. That promise came as elected officials called for prompt improvements to two troubled bank-owned properties that house some 200 low-income households.

“PNC is responsible for ensuring that its tenants have decent living conditions,” Congressman Mike Doyle, a Democrat whose district includes McKeesport, said in a statement to WESA and PublicSource. “… And what has been described doesn’t seem to come close to meeting that standard.”

Doyle continued: “I expect this situation to be rectified immediately – and that PNC will move forward on their larger reinvestment plans rapidly.”

PublicSource and WESA reported that PNC in 2018 bought two limited liability companies that own the 11-story Midtown Plaza and the five-building Hi View Gardens. The properties are a few blocks apart and close to McKeesport’s Lysle Boulevard. Under PNC’s ownership, they have been managed by Maine-based Preservation Management Inc., which has not responded to requests for comment.

Richard Bynum, PNC’s chief corporate responsibility officer, told WESA and PublicSource that the bank had “made major investments over many years in Pittsburgh and across our footprint, specifically to improve low- and moderate-income communities, so this situation is especially disheartening and completely unacceptable.” He added that “the issues about which we have recently learned at Hi View Gardens are not reflective of this commitment or of PNC’s values.”

PublicSource and WESA reported that:

• In 2019, PNC and development partners applied for $11.4 million in low-income housing tax credits in a bid to improve Hi View, but the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency declined the application.
• 911 calls from Hi View and Midtown rose by 46% in 2019 and 2020 compared to the prior two years, including even steeper increases in calls for harassment or threats, drugs and gun or weapon incidents.
• At the same time, housing health code violations – which include lack of heat in winter, pest infestations, mold and leaks – at Hi View and Midtown rose by 49% compared to the prior years, to the point where last year they accounted for 42% of all such violations in McKeesport.

The 42% figure is “a huge number. I think that has to be corrected immediately,” said state Rep. Austin Davis, D-McKeesport, as he was interviewed in front of Hi View on Thursday. “Then we need to talk about, what’s the long-term plan for this housing complex, how do we maintain affordable housing here, how do we make sure these residents are living in a good quality environment but have the option to stay here.”

Davis added that he spoke with PNC officials shortly after reading the WESA and PublicSource stories, calling it “a very productive conversation.”

PNC was “deeply disappointed to learn of the issues tenants have been facing at Hi View Gardens,” Bynum indicated, in a written statement in response to the reporting by PublicSource and WESA. “The conditions as reported are unacceptable. While PNC doesn’t manage the property, we are taking immediate action to ensure that tenant concerns are addressed.”

PNC officials, including Bynum, plan to meet with members of the Hi View Gardens Tenant Council and an attorney at the nonprofit Community Justice Project [CJP] this week. CJP represents the council, which formed in May. “We potentially will arrange discussions with a broader group of residents as well,” Bynum said.

He reiterated PNC’s prior statement to PublicSource and WESA: that the bank is committed to buying affordable housing in numerous communities and preserving rent protections, rather than seeing others purchase it and raise rents to market rates.

PNC told WESA and PublicSource that the bank is seeking nonprofit development partners to put in new applications for tax credits to renovate both properties. PNC’s executive vice president in charge of tax credit solutions, Todd Crow, has said that the bank planned to seek that federal help for Hi View this year and for Midtown next year, though that timetable could be slowed because one of Hi View’s buildings is under repair for fire damage.

“I’m pleased that PNC has been working to preserve affordable housing in Allegheny County, but I am deeply concerned by the condition of the housing in Hi View Gardens and the length of time those conditions have been allowed to exist,” said Doyle, in his statement.

Bynum said the COVID-19 pandemic made it harder to maintain apartments by reducing maintenance staff’s access to apartments and disrupting the availability of materials and equipment, adding that “some things have improved” recently and PNC is “fully committed to accelerating the pace of improvements and enhancements to the service levels that residents receive.”

Allegheny County Councilman Bob Macey, a Democrat whose district includes McKeesport, said he was “tired of people using the pandemic as an excuse. It didn’t hurt Walmart. It didn’t hurt Amazon,” and it didn’t keep the councilman from improving his own house. “So I think those are poor excuses. And that’s what they are – excuses.”

Macey said he and other elected officials should “put PNC’s feet to the fire” if necessary. “I think it’s atrocious that a gazillion-dollar corporation should be allowing people to live in this kind of situation.”

PNC is the nation’s seventh largest commercial bank, and earlier this year it had $469 billion in assets, according to the Federal Reserve Board.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

McKeesport Mayor Michael Cherepko said that after PNC bought Hi View and Midtown, bank officials sat down with him, in his office, and pledged to improve the properties. He said he was optimistic because the bank “has the wherewithal, the money, to make these living conditions better for our residents. But that has not been the case.”

Earlier this year, the city ordered Hi View’s management to fix that complex’s malfunctioning fire alarm system. The mayor called the conditions described in the WESA and PublicSource stories “a disgrace.”

Cherepko said the city would be happy to meet with PNC officials, to lay out the problems at the properties and to help to implement solutions.

“I understand you’re not going to come in and fix everything immediately, but there’s things that need to be addressed,” he said. “And we’re not talking about little Band-Aids, but big Band-Aids.”

Davis said the reporting on Hi View and Midtown spurred him to ask House Urban Affairs Committee staff whether there are policy measures the state can consider to address quality problems in low-income housing. He added that he wondered if the Allegheny County Housing Authority could take over management of Hi View and Midtown.

The state representative added that he — like many others in McKeesport — didn’t know that PNC owned the properties until he learned about it from last week’s reporting. “I know for me, the ownership factor was huge,” he said, “and now actually being able to know who the owner is gives me somebody to hold accountable for what goes on here.”

Rich Lord is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org or on Twitter @richelord.

Kate Giammarise is a reporter covering the impact of COVID-19 on the economy for WESA, and can be reached at kgiammarise@wesa.fm or 412-697-2953.

This content was produced with support from the Doris O’Donnell Innovations in Investigative Journalism Fellowship, awarded by the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA.

The post PNC Bank pledges to address ‘completely unacceptable’ conditions as officials demand changes at its McKeesport properties appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

The post ‘We can’t sleep since then.’ How faulty heating and a bullet meant months of conflict and heartache for one of PNC Bank’s McKeesport tenants appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.