The Allegheny County Health Department intends to revise housing health rules for the first time in 25 years, and will soon open a 60-day period for members of the public to weigh in on its proposed revisions. Housing advocacy groups, though, are concerned about whether this will provide a sufficient platform for community members and experts to share their perspectives.

“If a revision to a code is being done but there’s no insights and perspective from those individuals who are most impacted, then you might be missing some really critical information to help guide decision-making,” said Michelle Naccarati-Chapkis, executive director of the nonprofit Women for a Healthy Environment. 

During the county Board of Health’s bimonthly meeting on May 3, Health Department officials presented a proposal for revisions to Article VI of the department’s Rules and Regulations. Article VI outlines the county’s housing and community environment policies, including establishing permit requirements, the “minimum standards” for property conditions and the responsibilities of owners and occupants.

The board voted to open the public comment period, set to run from May 10 through July 10, during which time the Health Department will conduct a July 6 public hearing and then compile written comments from community residents. At the end of the period, the department will incorporate the feedback it gathers into an updated version of the Article VI revisions, which the board will vote on in the fall.

Public comment periods are intended to help the Health Department collect input from affected residents. However, to ensure there’s “robust community engagement” in the Article VI revision process, advocates are calling on the board to convene a Housing Advisory Committee — despite the Health Department’s concerns about how time-consuming it would be to recruit such a committee.

“The broader public has an important role to play in advocating for policy and practice changes to improve the housing goals and objectives of the board and the department, and in monitoring progress toward goals and objectives,” said Kevin Quisenberry, litigation director for the legal assistance nonprofit Community Justice Project, during the public comment portion of the meeting. “At present, the Health Department has no structured mechanism for this sort of community engagement with regard to the housing program.”

A PublicSource and WESA investigation in 2021 raised questions about the effectiveness of Article VI. The two outlets looked at data on 8,765 housing health complaints — ranging from lack of heat and water to sewage backups to rodent infestations — received by the department from 2017 through mid-2021. The investigation showed that the department verified that the fixes were made in roughly two in every five cases, and assessed just nine penalties.

The department’s discussion of housing health standards comes months after the City of Pittsburgh’s efforts to regulate rental housing ran aground.

In March, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled against the city government in a case in which advocates for landlords challenged an ordinance that would have required registration and inspections of rental housing. The city last month appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court.

Balancing engagement and expediency 

Creating effective housing policies requires bringing together people who can provide “unique viewpoints, perspectives and lived experience” about community life, said Naccarati-Chapkis, who is also a member of Allegheny County Council. 

“That input helps to bring about all of the revisions in the code that could be necessary and should be necessary, as opposed to a public comment period, where you’re just reviewing and reacting to what’s being proposed,” she added.

If convened, Quisenberry said a Housing Advisory Committee should consist of subject-matter experts, advocates, housing providers and residents. He suggested modeling a Housing Advisory Committee on the Health Department’s existing advisory committees for food safety and air pollution control, whose members either live in affected neighborhoods or have backgrounds in industry, academia or business.

During the meeting, board members expressed interest in creating a Housing Advisory Committee irrespective of whether that committee will guide the Article VI revision process.

Otis Pitts, the Health Department’s deputy director for food safety, housing and policy, said the department will give all public comments — including the request to form an advisory committee — “proper consideration” and will respond in due time. He added that advisory committees “add value” to the policy revision process but was hesitant to create one for the housing code revisions. 

“It does take some time to recruit and appoint a diverse group of members,” he said. “Given the nature of this set of updates, I would not want to jeopardize this very basic and foundational set of standards.” 

A department spokesperson later told PublicSource that the department “will review and consider the recommendation [of an advisory committee] prior to submitting a final draft to the Board of Health.”

Pitts’ team hopes to implement the Article VI revisions by July 1, 2024; the code’s last update was in 1997. 

Naccarati-Chapkis said the department began meeting with stakeholders about updating the county’s housing code in 2019, but paused these discussions when the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a period of shifting priorities and staffing changes. They resumed meeting about the revisions last year. 

“We’ve waited since 1997, we don’t have to rush through this process of a Housing Advisory Committee,” she said. “They can move forward with the proposed changes. However, we still know that there are a lot of places within the Article VI code that have to actually be reviewed as well that impact resident community health.”

Modernizing policies and improving safety

The Health Department’s proposed revisions for Article VI revolve around enhancing the code’s readability, improving safety standards and modernizing property maintenance requirements to meet international standards.

A portion of the revisions are intended to clarify the responsibilities of landlords and tenants, including changes that will instruct tenants to notify landlords of issues, work with landlords to manage pests, avoid creating fire hazards and ensure they store potentially dangerous materials safely.

Several sections of the code would be updated to reflect the standards set forth in the International Property Maintenance Code, which establishes minimum requirements for ventilation, occupancy limitations, plumbing facilities, fire safety and mechanical and electrical fixtures. These include adjusting requirements regarding ventilation and openable windows.

The department is also proposing revisions to improve safety requirements for properties, including requiring deadbolts on all entry doors, requiring property owners to provide tenants with sufficient trash storage containers and requiring carbon monoxide detectors for all dwellings with fuel burning appliances, ongoing renovations, fireplaces or attached garages. 

Part of the revision process involves updating more than 20 definitions to improve Article VI’s clarity, which they believe will improve compliance.

“Article VI, as it currently reads, is a little convoluted,” said Tim Murphy, the department’s housing and community environment program manager, during the board’s meeting. “But we really feel it’s important that the average resident be able to understand it.”

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.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on 5/9/23 to include additional information provided by the Allegheny County Health Department.

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

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Over the past eight years, housing insecurity has taken many forms for Juno St. Robbins. 

It’s been nights in the bunkbeds of Allegheny County’s shelters. Nights in a house that made him feel unsafe. Nights sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the attic of a three-bedroom home, with 12 roommates scattered throughout the rooms below. 

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These nights shaped his understanding of what constitutes homelessness. 

“To me, homelessness was literally somebody sitting on the street, not people who didn’t have a place,” said St. Robbins, 26. “I didn’t know what I know now.”

His experience is only a sliver of what homelessness and housing insecurity look like for young people across Allegheny County. 

After a decline throughout much of the past decade, data shows the number of people ages 14 through 25 using Allegheny County’s homelessness services increased by 27% from 2020 through 2022, which could reflect these services lifting their COVID-19 restrictions. The services include emergency shelters, bridge housing and street outreach programs. 

“We know that the pandemic caused a reduction in the number of people served in shelters due to some reduced capacity,” wrote Mark Bertolet, a spokesperson for the county’s Department of Human Services, in an email to PublicSource. He added that people across all age groups have been staying longer at shelters, which may have contributed to the initial drop in the number of people using services as there was less turnover of beds.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development selected the county to become a Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program community in 2020, which Bertolet said has “likely been helpful” in keeping service utilization numbers from reaching pre-pandemic levels. 

But many young people across the county are experiencing invisible forms of housing insecurity not captured within these services, like couch-surfing, living in hotels and staying in dangerously overcrowded homes. 

“It’s when they’re absolutely destitute that they show up to a shelter with all of their bags and belongings, and that’s when folks have really hit the bottom,” said Yodit Betru, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work. 

Mirroring nationwide trends, racial disparities persist among all age groups utilizing the county’s homelessness services, with Black people accounting for 54% of those using these services in 2022. The disparities are heightened among young people. In 2022, 71% of people ages 14 through 25 using county homelessness services were Black.

Young people begin experiencing homelessness for a variety of reasons. Due to the very nature of being young, they have limited credit histories, employment histories and rental experience, all of which makes it difficult to secure housing. Once they become housing insecure, the unpredictable living conditions can make it difficult to pursue work and educational opportunities — resources often critical for finding permanent housing. The stigmatization of homelessness leads many to isolate themselves, worsening mental health conditions and hindering their ability to maintain positive relationships. 

“It definitely weighs on someone’s mental health,” said Aimee Plowman, director of transition age youth services for Auberle, a nonprofit serving youth and families in Pittsburgh and McKeesport. “That instability, that uncertainty — how well can you sleep if you’re not in a stable place and don’t know what’s happening?”

As young people across the county navigate through homelessness, local organizations are helping them access resources to meet their basic needs and build futures beyond housing insecurity. 

31% to 46% of people aging out of foster care experience homelessness

The roots of youth homelessness — especially among non-white youth — can often be traced back to systemic inequalities, Betru said. She points to issues like the overrepresentation of Black children in the child welfare system and findings indicating that Black children are more likely to be referred to punitive systems while white children are referred to treatment. 

“We haven’t done right by our Black children, so it shows up when they finally emerge as young adults — if they haven’t already been incarcerated,” she added.

Young adults who have aged out of the foster care system face a heightened risk of experiencing homelessness, with one study finding that 31% to 46% of young adults aging out of the system experience homelessness by age 26.

“A lot of people take for granted the things you learned by watching the people that you lived with, and sometimes young people who have foster care experience haven’t always been able to watch their caregiver provide those things,” Plowman said. This includes everything from budgeting to home maintenance skills, work readiness preparation and learning to drive, she added.

Chasity “CC” Cook entered the foster care system following their mother’s death — less than a year after their father’s — when they were 17. At 18, CC entered the county’s Independent Living Program, and although they received help learning skills for self-sufficiency, it came at a price. They were paired with caseworkers who often made them feel judged, and as CC conformed to the caseworkers’ expectations to avoid criticism, they felt like they “lost” their sense of identity.

“I didn’t want to be seen as a troubled child,” said CC, now 23. “I’m not a bad person for wanting to do something different from what they told me.”

Young adults exiting the carceral system are also at a heightened risk of becoming housing insecure, said Davonte Johnson, founder of the Young Voices Action Collective [YVAC]. 

“People might expect that it’s like an airport arrival — there’s somebody with a sign waiting outside for you,” Johnson said. “But that’s not the reality for a lot of our young people. The reality is they were already fending for themselves when they went in.”

Youth in the juvenile justice system often experience educational disruptions and exit with juvenile delinquency records, which can make it hard to find work. They may not have a home to return to because incarceration can fracture — or entirely destroy — a young person’s support network. Due to the discrimination they’re likely to face from public housing authorities and private property owners, they may struggle to find affordable housing on their own. 

Many young people face housing insecurity because it’s not safe — either physically or emotionally — for them to remain at their current residence, even if it’s their only stable shelter option. This particularly impacts LGBTQ+ youth and those living in abusive environments.

“They’re living in really prejudiced or oppressive systems where they know they’re not welcome at home, so they leave and no one is looking for them,” said Betru, whose experience includes consulting for a local human services provider and running a shelter that provided transitional housing for women and children. “That, to me, is one of the saddest things.”

Housing services often divide clients based on their biological sex, and this can create additional barriers for people whose gender identities do not match the sex assigned to them at birth.

“If you’re a person in any phase of transitioning, or want to be in a space that’s accepting or made for folks who are queer, we don’t have enough services or spaces for that,” Betru said of the U.S. emergency housing system. “They’re even more at risk.”

69% of youth experiencing homelessness have mental health difficulties

When young people become housing insecure, they often blame themselves and feel ashamed, Betru said. “They don’t have enough other loving adults or attachment figures to tell them, ‘Hey, it’s contextual, it’s society, it’s the way in which we haven’t shown up for you,’” she added. 

As they cope with this feeling of shame, many tend to withdraw. 

“When you isolate, you get worse, you get sicker,” Betru said. “The solution, often, to these things is more connection, more community. But unfortunately, the way that the symptoms play out is that you feel more depressed and worse off, and probably want to have less contact with people.”

St. Robbins first came to Pittsburgh when he was about 16, moving from his childhood home in Ohio, to live with his then-partner’s family. He’s diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and, at 18, he began experiencing more severe symptoms, noting that his mood began “going down.” Eventually, he felt so overwhelmed that he packed his belongings into a trash bag and left. 

The stigma associated with schizoaffective disorder, compounded with that of homelessness, weighed heavily on St. Robbins and made him afraid to let his guard down around others for fear they’d view him as dangerous.

“I felt alone,” he added. “I had to be protective all the time. I had to guard myself. I felt tense. I felt like I had to defend myself.”

This fear would often manifest as a physical feeling of tightness in his chest, similar to the onset of a panic attack. 

When young adults become housing insecure, they often adopt a prolonged “survival mindset,” where, by necessity, their attention becomes entirely focused on where they’ll next find shelter, food, water and hygiene resources, leaving them with little bandwidth to process their emotions and trauma. 

A survival mindset is only meant to be a fleeting state for the nervous system. Maintaining this unrelenting stress puts people at risk for physiological issues, including early death. It can also drive young adults to rely on potentially harmful coping mechanisms, which can lead to issues like substance use disorders, Betru said. 

The pressure to find housing can also leave young people vulnerable to becoming victims of human trafficking or violence. 

“They may be carrying a weapon to be safe,” Betru said. “But what happens when you have a weapon is you’re more likely to have it used against you.” 

Johnson said lacking affordable housing for young people is “state-sanctioned violence.”

“It’s not our fault that we’re here,” Johnson said. “There’s a system at play here that continues to not invest in us, and now we’re in another generation that’s responding to that lack of investment.”

The first steps toward meeting needs

Although housing insecurity often made him feel a deep loneliness, St. Robbins remembers feeling a sense of belonging for one of the first times in his life while staying at the Downtown Outreach Center and Shelter [DOCS], which Familylinks operates exclusively for clients ages 18 through 25.

“I got to hang out with people who are cool and like-minded, and had similar experiences,” he added. 

Living in a congregate setting can present challenges for young people experiencing homelessness, including a lack of privacy. For St. Robbins, following the rules at shelters like DOCS felt overwhelming. 

Lisa Trunick, Familylinks’ senior program manager, said just coming to a shelter can be a “trauma in and of itself” for young people.

“Sometimes you might see folks struggling with their mental health even more after they present to shelter,” Trunick said. “Our hope is that we’re able to address some of those things with on-site services.” 

DOCS was recently renovated to expand its capacity to 26 clients and update common spaces. To improve privacy, the renovation included shifting the shelter’s sleeping accommodations from two dormitories of bunkbeds to 12 bedrooms, where clients either live by themselves or with up to two roommates.

Familylinks focuses on first meeting young adults’ basic needs, then helping them work toward personal goals, including pursuing permanent housing, education and work opportunities. As part of its approach, Familylinks teaches clients skills for living on their own — like budgeting and preparing balanced meals — and provides wraparound services, including a health clinic and connections to education and employment opportunities.

Young people are permitted to stay at the shelter for up to 60 days — unless they’re granted an extension — and some leave having signed a lease for an apartment with a fellow client, said Lauren Galletta, director of development and outreach for Familylinks. 

A community where ‘they see themselves’

Johnson’s team at YVAC is helping young people navigate through housing insecurity by providing rental assistance, cash assistance and mutual aid. They also offer transitional housing for a handful of young adults at their Freedom House in McKeesport, which Johnson described as a “sacred” space that doubles as an “organizing hub for young revolutionaries.”

With membership reserved for people ages 26 or younger, YVAC has created a community of young activists who deeply empathize with one another’s experiences. 

“They see themselves, and then they see the potential of where they could be, what they could do,” Johnson said.

Central to YVAC’s advocacy is improving conditions for other youth facing housing insecurity — whether that’s helping to prevent evictions, hold predatory landlords to account or advocate for the creation of more affordable housing options.

“Our work is derived out of the state of young people — what young people say their needs are, what young people say their issues are,” Johnson said. “There cannot be a sustainable future until young people are put at the forefront of life decisions.”

Building a stronger future

During CC’s first time at Auberle’s 412 Youth Zone, they dipped a thin brush in white paint, adding a quote to the “412” mural slowly taking shape on the wall. 

“Be strong! Be kind! Be unique! Be YOU!” their quote reads.

Amid Auberle’s youth housing programs, the Youth Zone provides programming and workshops to help people ages 16 through 23 learn practical skills for independent living, including assistance learning to drive, courses in renter preparedness and job interview preparation. The goal is to create a comfortable space where young people can escape the pressure of the survival mindset, focusing instead on pursuing goals and self-discovery.  

“Even though all of their problems aren’t solved, they get to have a meal, sit down, relax — it’s a safe space and you can let your guard down a little bit,” Plowman said. 

When CC came to the Youth Zone at 18, it was the first space they heard the words “I’m so proud of you” since their parents passed away. Through working with youth coaches and participating in therapy, CC built the confidence to pursue their lifelong interest in art, and they’re currently preparing to move to San Francisco to study animation next school year. 

“Everybody else told me, ‘It’s not going to work’ or ‘Everything is going to fall apart,’” CC said. “But my coaches here told me, ‘You just have to go for it, you’ve got to believe in yourself.’”

During St. Robbins’ time with the Youth Zone, he recalled completing scavenger hunts of resources scattered across downtown Pittsburgh, drinking milkshakes during summer trips and hanging out with peers during holiday parties. He remembers once completing a “gender-bread man” activity that encouraged him to explore his gender identity for the first time. 

Through these activities, he finally began to learn about himself as a person — his sense of self became untethered from his experience with housing insecurity. 

“I’m a very curious person,” St. Robbins said. “I’m gentle. I can adapt, and I can change. I’m not going to be stuck in one spot forever — I can grow, and that’s OK.”

In the years since he aged out of the Youth Zone’s programming, he’s used the momentum he gained to continue exploring his identity. 

He’s taking two courses at the Community College of Allegheny County about literature and anthropology. He wants to get back into wrestling, and volunteer with EMS and fire services — two ways of honoring his father’s legacy. And he wants to pursue activism to promote the rights of marginalized communities, including people experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ community. 

“I want to help people,” he said, “like people help me.”

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.

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

This story was fact-checked by Punya Bhasin.

The post Allegheny County youth are using homelessness services at nearly pre-pandemic rates. Many more may be housing insecure, but invisible. appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

When Kyrique Mitchell walked into the blue meeting room of the Community of Change Center seven Thursdays ago, he already felt disillusioned. He didn’t want to give his all to another workshop making empty promises to prevent gun violence in the West End. 

Every week since, he’s felt grateful to be wrong. 

“They were actually asking my opinion about things, and they made me feel comfortable to speak my mind and say my suggestions,” said Mitchell, 18. 

Last week, teens from Braddock and the West End area presented proposals for violence intervention initiatives they’ll implement in their communities this summer, ranging from hosting community events to repairing basketball courts and creating civic groups. Their ideas are the culmination of each neighborhood’s participation in a seven-week workshop series that community organizations — the Helping Out Our People [HOOP] Alliance in Braddock, and West End Providing Opportunities With Effective Resources [POWER] — facilitated in partnership with a research team from the University of Pittsburgh. 

With the feedback received from the presentations, the neighborhoods are now designing plans to roll out the initiatives, each using $2,000 allocated to the community organizations by the research team. 

Mary Ohmer, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work, has led the research team as part of her overall analysis of how neighborhoods build “collective efficacy.”

“Now that sounds fancy, but it means building stronger relationships among youth and adults — and their neighbors and their peers — and developing norms and values for the community around [violence] prevention and supporting youth,” Ohmer explained. 

She began hosting the collective efficacy workshops 10 years ago in Atlanta and brought the initiative to Perry Hilltop and Fineview last year, seeking input from residents to tailor the curriculum to each neighborhood. 

During the weekly workshops, the facilitators split participating teens and adults into groups that generated the ideas presented during each neighborhood’s final workshop session. Ohmer estimated that about 15 adults and 10 teens regularly attended the Braddock workshops, while the West End workshops had about 15 adults and 12 teens.

For Jullian Turner, co-founder of HOOP Alliance, the workshop series demonstrated how powerful communities become when they rally together.

“This should be a flourishing community,” Turner said about Braddock. “I feel like that’s something that we can be again one day. But just bringing back the togetherness of the community, and being whole instead of just parts and pieces.”

Turning problems into solutions

Anthony Jetter, 16, felt nervous as he turned to face his West End neighbors gathered in the blue meeting room, but his mother’s voice cut through the chatter of the crowd. 

“That’s my boy!” she said from her spot front and center on the floor. 

As the room quieted, he took a deep breath before launching into his group’s presentation — an initiative embodying the kindness his mother has always strived to instill in him.

West End participants proposed using their funding to carry out the Kindness Project, a campaign to post positive affirmations throughout their community — from school hallways to trees and lampposts — promoting self-love and neighborliness. 

“The main idea of it is just to counterbalance hate and violence with young people,” Jetter said. “Just walk around, have a smile on your face and tell people, ‘You’re doing enough, you’re good enough,’ and encourage random acts of kindness.”

Jetter said he’s struggled in the past with his anger, allowing it to snowball into fights, but participating in the workshops has helped him feel more peaceful. Ashley Cabiness, his mother and one of the workshop facilitators, has seen him grow calmer over the past two months. 

“He’s not a ticking time bomb anymore,” Cabiness said. “He definitely thinks more before he acts, and I definitely appreciate that.”

Participants from the West End also proposed using their funding to host block parties throughout the summer, bringing people across the community together for games and activities like dancing, talent shows and poetry slams. 

Braddock participants similarly proposed using their funding to host community events throughout the summer, like to celebrate Juneteenth. They also suggested forming a group — of youth and adults alike — that will publish newsletters highlighting community resources. These resources could include year-round employment opportunities for youth, which Ohmer said can be a strong deterrent for involvement in violence. 

“There’s kids out there like me that want to work,” said Dynasty Knight, a 15-year-old participant. She works at Kennywood and a trampoline park, but noted that Braddock teens can struggle to find year-round jobs, especially because the available jobs aren’t always desirable. “I want to be in a happy environment. I want to find joy in work, not go there being miserable.”

The Braddock group also proposed rehabilitating the Library Street Basketball Courts, including replacing the hoops’ rims, updating benches and landscaping the areas surrounding the courts. On the courts’ fence, they want to hang a painting of a tree, which would serve as a community gathering place and a symbol of the issues they’re navigating, including gun violence and mental health.

“The trunk is our problem, the roots are the root causes of the problem, the branches are solutions and successes,” said Xavier Jones, one of the teens who presented the idea. 

Although participants in Braddock and the West End completed the same overarching training, Ohmer was excited to see the different ways they approached solutions. 

“They’re different communities, but they’re doing the same kinds of things: Bringing people together, addressing some issues that the community feels would help to strengthen itself and also strengthen their ability to prevent violence,” Ohmer said.

Proving their voices matter

The workshop series kicked off in Braddock and the West End in late February. For nearly three hours every week, participants engaged in circle discussions, role-play exercises and brainstorming sessions on topics like building strong relationships with neighbors, understanding violence’s impact on mental health and practicing safe ways to defuse conflicts before they turn violent. 

Participants were primarily recruited through word of mouth and were paid $20 for attending each training session, as well as a $20 bonus if they attended all sessions and $10 for every survey they completed throughout the series. The community organizations who partnered with the research team received $20,000, including the $2,000 funding to implement the violence intervention initiatives.

One of Aaron Bagsby Thornton’s friends volunteered him to participate in the Braddock workshops, and he went to the first session for two reasons: the food and the compensation. Every week after, he wanted to come back. 

“I just started thinking about it a lot and seeing the problems — not really caring before here,” said Bagsby Thornton, 16.

Knight found out about the Braddock workshops after discussing gun violence with a friend’s grandmother, who encouraged her to participate. Although Knight initially felt hesitant to share her ideas with the group, she quickly opened up. 

“I don’t really like talking out loud, I get real nervous,” she added. “But just the energy, the whole vibe. I knew a couple people here, so I was like, ‘Why not?’”

One of the greatest challenges both the Braddock and West End groups worked through was helping participants see eye-to-eye as they shared their perspectives. 

“[The adults] want to talk about how things used to be, but they look at the youth and assume they don’t want to be part of it — that they just want to tear it down,” Turner said about the Braddock workshops. “Now you see how they interact better. Kids feel more comfortable speaking to them. They started to meet each other at each other’s level.”

A few weeks ago, tensions rose so high between youth and adult participants in the West End workshops that the facilitators sent them to separate floors, where each group discussed how they could better respect one another’s perspectives — both in and out of the workshops. 

“Look how small the answer was — they made these ground rules up,” said Terri Minor Spencer, the executive director of West End POWER. “This is what they’re asking for to be respectful, to respect our peers.”

For Maraya Hutchinson, 13, the West End workshops served as a non-judgmental space to share her opinions.

“A lot of adults think that just because children aren’t their age, and they’ve lived more life than them, that they have more authority than them and their voices don’t matter,” she added. “It’s important for youth’s voices to be heard.”

Melinda Bradley, who was born and raised in Sheraden but now lives in Elliott, was grateful for the opportunity to hear from the younger participants. 

“Us older people, we’ve been here,” she added. “We need to see where [youth] are coming from. We need to see how they’re thinking, what they want for their future, what they want for themselves, what they expect from the world and what they can give to the world.”

Months of preparation

As teens left the final Braddock workshop session last week, Ohmer stopped them before they reached the door, beaming as she handed them each a certificate to commemorate completing the program. 

This was Ohmer’s first year conducting the workshops with a full team of research assistants and community partners supporting her, and although her presence wasn’t necessary at every workshop session, she wound up attending them all.  

“I couldn’t help myself,” she added.

The workshop series is part of The Pittsburgh Study, a collective impact initiative to assess youth health and address causes of inequity. Countywide community partners include UrbanKind Institute and Neighborhood Resilience Project, while academic partners include the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work and Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Last year, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA] awarded Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services a $5 million grant to administer violence prevention programming. Ohmer’s team is receiving 25 to 30% of that funding to conduct their workshop series in two neighborhoods every year for the next five years. Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Center for Adolescent and Young Adult Health physicians and staff also provide programs under this grant, working with youth and communities across the county.

Ohmer worked with the Braddock and West End communities last year while researching for the Child/Youth Thriving Matrix, a project she co-facilitated that assessed youth welfare. At the end of her research for the matrix, community residents asked how they could dig deeper into supporting their young populations. 

“They were like, ‘We want to do more, how can we? This was really interesting, but now what can we do?’” Ohmer said. 

When her team secured the SAMHSA funding to conduct her workshop series over the next five years, she knew these two neighborhoods would be the perfect starting places.

Ohmer’s preparation for the workshop series began months before the first session. In the summer of 2022, her team assembled a community advisory board in each neighborhood to gather information, assessing what violence prevention resources were available in the area and surveying attitudes toward community issues. 

Collaborating with local organizations and residents was pivotal for this process, she added.

“You don’t want to just jump into a community and go, ‘Oh, we’re going to do this training,’” Ohmer said. “It’s important for us to understand — coming from the outside — what is happening in those communities? What’s working?”

The path forward

With Braddock and the West End moving forward with executing their intervention initiatives, Ohmer’s team will start meeting this week with community groups in Homewood and Wilkinsburg, where they’ll conduct workshops next year. 

Her team selected Homewood and Wilkinsburg after discussing and reviewing data about crime, housing vacancy, economic status, population demographics, community engagement and existing violence prevention resources. 

In addition to the SAMHSA funding, Ohmer’s team has received a $2.2 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to measure the impact of their programming in the participating communities over the next five years. 

To measure the impact in Braddock, the West End, Homewood and Wilkinsburg, Ohmer’s team will compare levels of collective efficacy observed after the workshop series to the levels in “matching” neighborhoods. Her team identified these matches based on similarities in metrics including population size, age demographics, employment rates and poverty levels. 

The matching neighborhoods will receive health promotion workshops, where residents will select the curriculum they receive, she added.

Although Ohmer’s team has not yet selected the remaining six neighborhoods they’ll study, they’ve identified a list of neighborhoods considered high priorities and will randomly select six for collective efficacy programming. 

As he looks toward the summer, Turner is excited to see what other solutions his community can generate now that they’ve learned to work collaboratively in their advocacy.

“The ball is rolling now,” he said. “Now we just keep taking steps towards whatever the next issue is that needs to be resolved.”

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.

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

Editor’s note: After initial publication, names of partner organizations were added to this story.

The post ‘The ball is rolling now.’ Braddock and West End teens share violence intervention initiatives they’ll roll out this summer. 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.

In the fall of 1987, seven strangers at the Allegheny Country Rifle Club struck an agreement: They’d work together to start up a new drug network. 

In the year that followed, they peddled “China White,” a white powder marketed as heroin. But produced in a laboratory using stolen chemicals and swindled prescription drugs, the substance was hundreds of times more potent, leading to the deaths of 18 people and as many as 60 nonfatal overdoses before the ringleaders were arrested in December 1988. 

That white powder was the first analog of fentanyl recorded in Allegheny County, setting the stage for a variety of others to sweep into the region in the decades since — especially over the past two years.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is pharmaceutically used to treat severe pain, but it has become the most common drug involved in fatal overdoses nationwide. Its analogs are substances with similar uses and effects but different chemical compositions, leading some to be significantly weaker than fentanyl and others to be dozens of times stronger.

Fatal overdoses in Allegheny County have risen since 2018, with 2021 reporting the highest since record-setting 2017. Fentanyl analogs and other non-prescription synthetic opioids are becoming increasingly common across the county, with data showing that they were tentatively detected in 49% of fatal overdoses in 2022 — up from 21% in 2020. The county’s Office of the Medical Examiner has not yet completed toxicology tests on some of last year’s suspected overdoses, and expects to have that finalized by June.

Researchers fear that the proliferation of fentanyl and its analogs reflects a troubling nationwide trend: People no longer know the strength and composition of the substances they’re using. 

“You don’t know the potency of it,” said Dr. Jeanine Buchanich, associate dean for research at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health and a professor within the school’s Department of Biostatistics. “You do become at-risk for having a potency higher than you wanted or intended, and then in that case, you’re very much at greater risk of overdose or death.”

Dr. Karl Williams, Allegheny County’s chief medical examiner, said that fentanyl and its analogs are among a range of substances contributing to overdoses across the county. “It’s rare to find a single drug,” he said. “They’re all mixtures — two, three, sometimes as many as nine different drugs through those stamp bags.”

‘The difference between life or death’

Nationwide, drugs are becoming increasingly adulterated, and this weighs heavily on people using substances, Buchanich said. 

“They don’t always know what they’re on,” she added. “They know that it’s giving them this effect, but they don’t know exactly what it is.” 

When fentanyl and its analogs are sold illegally in Western Pennsylvania, Williams said they’re often distributed in stamp bags. The stamp bags contain a powder form of the substances, which presents physical complications for the people packaging them.

“It’s not easy to get that perfect mixture when what you’re mixing is a solid,” said Jonathan Caulkins, a professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. “You can have deaths caused by, in effect, an accident. They don’t realize there’s more in the bag than they thought.”

In January, Pennsylvania decriminalized fentanyl testing strips, which detect if fentanyl and many of its analogs are mixed into a substance. Although a step in the right direction, Alice Bell said this preventative measure is years too late and doesn’t address the current situation, since most testing strips can’t determine the quantity of fentanyl or analogs in a sample.

“At this point, we’re in such a crisis that I think we have to have a regulated, safe supply,” said Bell, the coordinator of the Overdose Prevention Project for the harm reduction nonprofit Prevention Point Pittsburgh. “People have to know what they’re getting.” 

A lethal dose of fentanyl is equivalent to the size of a few grains of sand, and a lethal dose of its analogs can be slightly smaller or larger depending on their potency. For fentanyl and its analogs to trigger an overdose, they must be introduced into the bloodstream or mucous membranes — not simply touched — according to the National Harm Reduction Coalition.

The challenge of cutting fentanyl and its analogs into substances means that doses often vary from stamp bag to stamp bag. Because they’re such potent substances, Bell said that “a small difference in how much is in [a stamp bag] can be the difference between life or death.”

Treatment becomes complicated when substances of varying potencies are mixed together, particularly when adding fentanyl and its analogs to a substance makes it stronger than anticipated. If a person overdoses after using that substance, Buchanich said it’s difficult to determine how many doses of naloxone — a medicine used to rapidly reverse the effects of opioid overdoses — are necessary.

There are also consequences when the addition of fentanyl analogs to a substance makes it less potent than expected. 

When people use opioids like fentanyl and its analogs, they develop a tolerance over time, meaning they need an increasingly higher dose to achieve the intended effect. They may take a larger dose if the substance doesn’t have the intended effect, increasing the risk of overdosing.

The rising prevalence of fentanyl and its analogs could additionally be leading people to choose to use a wider range of substances, Buchanich said. 

In Allegheny County, the percentage of fatal overdoses involving both opioids and stimulants has steadily risen from 15% in 2014 to 48% in 2021, with 2022 expected to rise slightly higher. Buchanich suspects that people are using stimulants to counteract opioids’ depressant effects, which could put them at a greater risk of overdosing.

This creates an added challenge for treating people who have overdosed because, while naloxone can help reverse the effects of opioids, it’s ineffective against stimulants. 

“You have poly-substance users, so you need to treat abuse problems for multiple different drugs,” Buchanich said.

A new round of whack-a-mole

The rise of fentanyl analogs isn’t groundbreaking when contextualized against the waxing and waning demand for illegal substances, said Dr. Jane Liebschutz, chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine. 

“It’s like whack-a-mole,” she said. “You get something, and then something else pops up.” 

A decade ago, fentanyl was a rarity in Allegheny County — detected in just 5% of fatal overdoses in 2012 — and its analogs had disappeared without a trace years earlier. Heroin was the most common substance involved in fatal overdoses, supplanting prescription opioids. 

Two years later, fentanyl’s meteoric rise changed everything.

As fentanyl was increasingly cut into local drug supplies, fatal overdoses across the county reached unprecedented levels, peaking with 835 deaths in 2017 — of which 73% involved fentanyl, according to the county’s overdose dashboard. The percentage of fatal overdoses involving fentanyl has continued to climb in the years since, accompanied by the growth of fentanyl analogs. 

Williams said the most popular fentanyl analogs detected across the county over the last five years are acetyl fentanyl, which is less potent than illegally manufactured fentanyl, and para-fluorofentanyl, which has a similar potency to illegally manufactured fentanyl.

“There’s no rhyme or reason — nationwide or in any area — why one particular analog shows up or the other doesn’t,” Williams said. 

Buchanich said the steady emergence of fentanyl analogs is the natural next step in the cycle of producing more potent substances for the lowest price.

“What we used to see for a while was just prescription opioids,” Buchanich said, “then just heroin. Started becoming heroin adulterated with fentanyl and then more fentanyl than heroin. Now, adulterated fentanyl with fentanyl analogs.”

The cycle ensnares people using substances by making them dependent on stronger and stronger doses, leading to more demand for highly potent substances like fentanyl analogs. 

From an economic standpoint, creating synthetic opioids like fentanyl and its analogs benefits drug producers and traffickers because it provides them with an alternative to the laborious process of farming and transporting heroin. 

“Synthetic opioids cost less per gram, and they are more potent,” Caulkins said. “When the supply chain switches from heroin to synthetic opioids, it is just reducing its costs.”

In recent years, recipes for producing fentanyl and its analogs have become easier to find online and replicate, which may be contributing to their rising prevalence. 

“The whole world has developed over the last 25 years, and now there’s a lot of people in a lot of places that know enough chemistry to do these synthesis reactions, particularly now that there are some that are simpler than what was in the past,” Caulkins said. 

The path to ‘keep folks alive’

Caulkins said law enforcement is experiencing greater difficulty curtailing supplies of fentanyl and its analogs because the process of creating these substances has grown so decentralized. People can now import the precursor chemicals for creating fentanyl and its analogs, and as the equipment to finish synthesizing these substances has grown simpler, more laboratories have cropped up. 

“At this point, it’d be very hard to shut down enough labs to make the fentanyl go away,” Caulkins said.

Buchanich said anyone using illegally produced opioids should carry multiple doses of naloxone — in case they overdose after using a substance stronger than anticipated — and avoid using without another person nearby. She also recommended that first responders, law enforcement officials and health care providers be continually provided with training on substance use and harm-reduction principles. 

“You have to keep folks alive to get them into recovery,” Buchanich said. “Harm reduction helps to do that.” 

Williams’ office is currently conducting research to analyze the quantity of substances detected in stamp bags across the county, funded through a grant from the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. 

“To know the exact levels of each of the drugs — nobody else in the country is doing that,” Williams said.

Williams’ research is set to end soon, and as of late February, he was unsure if the grant funding would be extended. 

Buchanich said this sort of testing could especially help to identify the effects of new fentanyl analogs coming into the region. “Then we can look into the potency [and] understand what may be happening to substance users and first responders who have contact with it,” she added.

Liebschutz added that until the root causes driving people to misuse substances — such as poverty and unemployment — are addressed, the cycle of peddling increasingly potent substances will continue pressing forward. 

“The analog problem is just part of this bigger issue,” she said. “It’s just a continuation of the same issue that we’ve been experiencing in our country for a long time.” 

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. 

This story was fact-checked by Abigail Nemec-Merwede.

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

The post ‘Make the fentanyl go away’? The rise of fentanyl analogs buoys challenges for reducing substance use in Allegheny County  appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now consider Allegheny County to be in the “low” level of community COVID-19 activity. The CDC bases that characterization on a review of new hospital admissions and inpatient beds occupied due to COVID-19, and new cases over seven days.

For the week of March 1 through 7, the county Health Department reported 698 new COVID-19 infections, 89 hospitalizations and 8 deaths.

Allegheny County's map of vaccination sites

For more information or help with scheduling an appointment through Allegheny County’s Area Agency on Aging, residents can call 412-350-4234.

Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 vaccination page

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

The post CDC keeps Allegheny County in low level of community COVID-19 appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald has committed $50 million over five years toward funding partnerships with community organizations taking public health approaches to preventing gun violence. 

“This effort is intended to be coordinated at the county level but implemented locally,” Fitzgerald said in a press release Tuesday afternoon. “The organizations receiving funding, and the people who do the work, are best suited to determine how to make an impact in their community.”

The public health approach to violence prevention calls for treating violence like an infectious disease. Researchers seek to identify the root causes of gun violence — including poverty, systemic racism and a lack of educational opportunities — so that they can understand what factors may put an individual at risk of becoming involved in gun violence, and how they can intervene before it’s too late.  

The county’s Department of Human Services selected the organizations it’s partnering with after soliciting two Requests for Proposals [RFP] last year. 

Through the first RFP, DHS selected Neighborhood Resilience Project, an organization promoting healing in trauma-affected communities, to serve as a “countywide convener” — a leader promoting cooperation and coordination among violence prevention initiatives across the county. DHS also selected to fund several organizations whose violence prevention efforts can be centrally operated, including: 

• Social Contract, which brings stakeholders together to evaluate trends and causes of shootings, using this insight to inform prevention strategies.
• Reimagine Reentry, a program that sends trauma responders to visit shooting victims in hospital trauma centers, in hopes of connecting young men to services that will decrease their risk of retaliating against shooters. 
• Center for Victims and Community Empowerment Association, two programs that help gunshot victims and their loved ones connect with supportive services for trauma recovery, like mental health care and survivor support groups. 
• Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, an approach to reducing crime through strategies like blight reduction, strategic lighting placement and vacant property remediation.

Richard Garland, executive director of Reimagine Reentry, said the county’s emphasis on collaboration is “imperative” because it will help organizations sharpen their violence intervention efforts by sharing knowledge about “hot people” — those most at risk of becoming involved with violence.

The funding will allow Reimagine Reentry to hire three more outreach workers for their hospital-based intervention efforts and provide additional relocation assistance to victims of violence, Garland said. 

“Since I’ve been doing this work, there’s only been two of us, and if one of us misses one day, the person might get discharged and we might not get to see (a victim),” he said. “With this funding, when the hospital alerts me that they have somebody that agrees to see us, I have somebody there helping them.”

In their second RFP, DHS selected programs that will focus on implementing violence reduction plans in communities outside of the City of Pittsburgh that have been highly impacted by gun violence, including Sto-Rox, Penn Hills, the Greater Wilkinsburg Area, the South Pittsburgh Hilltop, parts of the Woodland Hills School District and the Mon Valley. The programs selected include: 

• Cure Violence, which trains trusted community figures to serve as “credible violence interrupters” tasked with connecting at-risk individuals — especially people ages 15 through 34 — with prevention services. 
• Becoming A Man, a school-based program that employs full-time licensed counselors to provide behavioral therapy, peer support and future orientation services to boys and men in middle schools and high schools.
• Rapid Employment and Development Initiative, which connects at-risk young men with mental health supports, paid transitional jobs and professional development opportunities. 

The organizations selected through the second RFP each identified a local agency that will oversee and coordinate with other groups who will help carry out their violence prevention plans. These local agencies include: Focus on Renewal in McKees Rocks and Stowe, the Penn Hills School District, South Pittsburgh Coalition for Peace, Greater Valley Community Services, Steel Rivers Council of Governments and Community Forge in Wilkinsburg. 

Organizations selected for the first RFP are entering into one-year contracts with the county, while organizations selected for the second RFP are entering into five-year contracts with the county. 

Lee Davis, a violence prevention expert who has helped implement the Cure Violence model in Pittsburgh over the past four years, said the funding will be critical for providing more case management and outreach workers on the ground. However, he said that violence prevention groups “need a bigger commitment” and “need a longer commitment” than five years of funding.

“Let’s be honest, three years — you’re just really getting up and running, and getting to know who’s who, and getting the coordination together between all these organizations,” Davis said. “By the time five years come, we’re back at ground zero again.”

Rashad Byrdsong, Community Empowerment Association’s founder and CEO, said the funding his program is receiving will help them to add academic, emotional and social support for youth navigating the trauma of violence. 

However, he noted that violence itself is a systemic issue that’s taken root in Allegheny County over the course of decades, so the county’s commitment is only a first step. “We definitely need more than $50 million to address the deep-rooted problem of violence in the city,” he added.

The county did not immediately provide figures on specific dollar commitments to the individual organizations.

“We are extremely fortunate in this region to have so many different organizations and entities that engage and active when there is a need and addressing violence in our community is certainly no exception,” Fitzgerald said in the press release. 

The need for violence prevention

In 2022, there were 128 homicides — a majority of which involved firearms — across Allegheny County, the highest reported in recent years. 

Last month, there were 13 homicides in the county. 

Research from the county’s Department of Human Services shows that gun violence clusters in pockets within the county’s “higher-need” communities and its victims are overwhelmingly young Black men between the ages of 18 and 34. 

“This problem didn’t arrive yesterday,” said Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey during a press conference about citywide gun violence on Dec. 2. “We’re not going to solve it tomorrow, but we will solve it in the future.”

Last June, Gainey announced his “Plan for Peace” to curb gun violence, including expanding the city’s crisis response intervention teams — which pair social workers with police officers — and creating hubs across the city to administer emergency services. As part of this plan, Gainey and Pittsburgh City Council recently announced they’d be creating an advisory committee to study approaches for opening youth and family resource centers throughout the city, particularly in neighborhoods impacted by youth violence.  

The city, in partnership with the POISE Foundation, also distributed nearly $1 million in Stop the Violence grant funds to more than 30 community organizations across Pittsburgh last November. 

Countywide, community organizations play a pivotal role in violence prevention work, like this McKeesport group training trusted community figures to defuse tensions before they escalate to gunfire.

After-school programs are working to halt the cycle of gun violence by providing safe environments where young people can connect with one another — and mentors — to learn and practice skills for taking care of themselves and their mental health. These programs are helping teens feel empowered to become activists and lead the conversation about reducing gunfire across the county. 

Local colleges are also helping students of all ages work through the trauma of gun violence, including a new program at the Community College of Allegheny County that’s providing participants — who have been impacted by violence — with life-coaching, financial assistance and free therapy. 

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.

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

The post Rising violence draws $50 million public health commitment from Allegheny County appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Two legal advocacy groups are urging Pittsburgh and Allegheny County officials to develop policies for respectfully decommissioning homeless encampments, citing December’s closure of one along Stockton Avenue as a potential violation of the constitutional rights of people who lived there.

“The government can do a lot, but they have to do it in a constitutional way,” said Vic Walczak, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania’s legal director. “Unceremoniously taking and destroying people’s private property without adequate notice is clearly unconstitutional.”

In a letter sent to the city and county on Jan. 19, the Community Justice Project and the ACLU argued that the closure of the Stockton Avenue encampment was a “fiasco” because the governments did not provide the residents with sufficient notice of the closure, alternative housing options or storage for the items they left behind. They’re requesting that city Solicitor Krysia Kubiak, county Solicitor George Janocsko and other officials meet with them to establish criteria for determining when to close encampments and protocols for executing closures. 

In an email to PublicSource, county spokesperson Amie Downs said the city was solely responsible for the Stockton Avenue encampment closure. “The county had outreach staff available to connect any individuals there who hadn’t already been connected to housing or other services, but that was our only presence there,” she added. 

City officials, with support from county human services workers, closed the Stockton Avenue encampment after providing nearly five days of written notice to its residents. Estimates of the number of people living there at the time range from a dozen people to 45. On the day of the Dec. 14 closure, officials were joined by police and work crews who used front-loaders to clear items from the encampment — at one point inadvertently scooping up a woman in a tent who then fell several feet to the ground. 

The Stockton Avenue encampment closure, and an accompanying clearance of tents along the nearby Three Rivers Heritage Trail, marks the second since Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s administration took office last January. Lisa Frank, the city’s chief operating and administrative officer, said the city’s goal during the closure process was to make the transition to housing “comfortable and delightful” for people. 

“There were some people [from the Stockton Avenue encampment] who moved into SROs and were taking selfies and sending them to their family and said, ‘I got in and this is a great place,’” Frank said. “We want it to be like that.”

The city is storing the belongings that encampment residents left behind for six months, half the time offered during prior encampment closures. CJP and the ACLU question if the items can be properly preserved after the “haphazard manner” in which they were collected.

CJP and the ACLU are representing clients who were residents of the encampment, but were unable to make them available for comment. PublicSource has not yet been able to reach other former residents of the encampment. 

The city and county split responsibilities for closing encampments within Pittsburgh, with the city initiating decisions to close encampments, ordering people to relocate and storing their property. The city and county jointly helped residents of the Stockton Avenue encampment move into single-resident occupancy [SRO] units and shelter beds at Second Avenue Commons, the county’s low-barrier shelter that opened on Nov. 22.

CJP and the ACLU said they hope the city and county will consider revising their decommissioning strategy in the future to provide encampment residents with more notice of closures, more expansive housing alternatives and longer storage options for items left behind. 

“These are well-meaning folks, and we just need to get together and come up with some rules of engagement that respect the constitutional rights, but still allow the government to perform their functions,” Walczak said. 

Litigation is a last resort, he added. 

“If they pull something like this again,” Walczak warned, “there will likely be litigation.”

Rising homelessness, new plans

Allegheny County’s homelessness services include programs for street outreach, emergency shelters, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing. More than 9,000 people used at least one of these services in 2022, a 16% increase from 2021. 

Since the summer, Pittsburgh City Council and the Mayor’s Office have evaluated strategies for addressing homelessness, including everything from opening more emergency shelters to building accessory dwelling units. Most recently, City Council preliminarily approved a bill on Jan. 18 directing the Gainey administration to provide for policies and programs that will address the city’s lack of affordable housing.

The Stockton Avenue encampment closure marks a stark departure from the two-decade-old city procedures for addressing encampments — a change that’s been on the drawing board since the summer. 

The city’s previous policies for closing encampments stem back to a legal settlement reached in May 2003, after the ACLU sued Pittsburgh for clearing an encampment two years prior without providing notice to its residents, destroying their property in the process. Under the settlement, the city agreed to provide a week of written notice before closing encampments and to store any unattended property for a year. The agreement expired in 2006, but its signature features — the timeline for providing notice and storing unattended property — were the backbone of the city’s approach until last fall.

Walczak, who litigated the 2003 agreement, said previous mayoral administrations respected the agreement’s tenets, even though it had expired.

“We never had to go back to court and haven’t been in court since then,” Walczak said. “That’s largely because all of the mayoral administrations since that time — until now — agreed to follow those guidelines and did follow them.”

Frank said the Gainey administration’s approach to closing encampments isn’t built upon the 2003 agreement, but rather it “grew out of a concern for people’s well-being and an opportunity to do something about that.”

Last September, city and county officials shared their joint intentions to close at least five encampments throughout the fall with the county’s Homeless Advisory Board, which is set up to advise the county, city and other municipalities on their programs and efforts to prevent homelessness. 

Since then, the board has not held any meetings regarding the “decommissioning process” nor has the board held a post-operation review of the Stockton Avenue encampment closure. 

The city does not have imminent plans for closing additional encampments. 

“Where would we put people? We’re full,” Frank said.

However, CJP and the ACLU fear that more closures could be on the horizon. 

“In light of rumors that the City intends to close additional encampments, we respectfully request a meeting with relevant City and County officials, and other necessary stakeholders, to discuss adoption of policies and procedures that will allow the government to fulfill its responsibilities, but does so in a way that protects our clients’ dignity and constitutional rights,” the organizations wrote in their letter. 

What’s a credible offer of housing?

Courts have long ruled that local governments are allowed to decommission encampments, but only if they provide residents with an adequate offer of alternative shelter. Otherwise, they’re violating the residents’ constitutional right to be protected from cruel and unusual punishment. 

Frank said it’s typically difficult to close an encampment because the city isn’t always prepared to provide all residents with credible offers of housing. “The key to it all is the credible offer, the availability of the housing supply,” Frank said. 

“In the county, we might get one or two beds somewhere opened,” Frank added. “Second Avenue Commons gave us 43 SROs and 90 congregate beds, so you could start to think about, almost, priorities.” 

On Nov. 10, just before the opening of Second Avenue Commons, the city closed an encampment along the segment of the Allegheny River Trail parallel to the 10th Street Bypass. City officials acted quickly to close that encampment after outreach workers from the Department of Public Works reported they no longer felt safe stopping by to clean up trash and check on residents, according to Frank. 

During this first closure, city officials provided seven days of written notice before the evacuation, offered to store unattended items for a year and provided short-term hotel stays to encampment residents as their offer of alternative housing. 

Although this largely mirrors the guidelines established under the 2003 agreement, Frank said the 19-year-old protocols did not set the tone of the city’s approach. 

Frank said offering short-term hotel stays was a way of biding time until Second Avenue Commons opened about two weeks later. The decision to store items for a year was a byproduct of the city reusing a sign from a closure in the “distant past,” Frank said. 

Threats and baseball bats

Second Avenue Commons gave the city and county an opportunity to match dozens of people experiencing homelessness to, at least, temporary housing options. 

Frank said city outreach workers began speaking with residents of the Stockton Avenue encampment about the possibility of moving into Second Avenue Commons in late September, just after the facility’s dedication ceremony. 

Meanwhile, community concerns with the encampment and other perceived disorder in the surrounding neighborhood mounted, emerging in meetings with public officials, according to Barbara Burns, a former city councilwoman who runs the Sweet Time General Store on East Ohio Street in nearby East Allegheny.

“The tents were a visual metaphor for the problem” of populations involved with hazardous behaviors, said Burns. “And we seem to have not even a police response that we can count on until it gets so bad and so visual that you feel like you’re embattled. … We can’t coexist with this because it’s not healthy, and I’m entitled to feel safe and healthy in my own community, in my own house. Everybody’s entitled to that. Everybody, including them.” 

The plans to decommission the Stockton Avenue encampment didn’t solidify until later that fall, after the city received reports of threats made against encampment residents. 

Situated next to the elevated arm of Interstate 279 just before it curves to bisect East Allegheny, the Stockton Avenue encampment sat on a strip of grass within walking distance from the Hampton Battery section of Allegheny Commons East Park. This portion of the park is known as an open-air drug market.

“The folks who were, let’s say, doing business in the park had gone down to Stockton and threatened to remove people themselves with baseball bats, and we had to do a little intervention around that,” Frank said. 

The encampment closure quickly became a “chaotic” process, said Jackie Perlow, an attorney with Community Justice Project. CJP first heard whispers about the plan to close the encampment on Dec. 6, and sent a letter on the morning of Dec. 9 — hours before written notice of the closure was officially posted — asking Gainey, County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and other officials to halt their plans. 

Perlow said, in discussions with CJP, the city initially committed to providing encampment residents with 10 days of written notice and offering short-term hotel accommodations as an alternative housing option. However, this was scaled back to five days of notice and an offer of only shelter accommodations.

“Why was it acceptable to have such a chaotic process that could have been resolved with more time and thinking and planning?” Perlow added. 

‘You’re taking away their freedom’

When city and county officials began speaking to residents of the Stockton Avenue encampment about relocating amid the closure, the only offer of alternative housing they provided was staying at Second Avenue Commons — either in a SRO room or in a low-barrier shelter bed, according to Frank.

Chase Archer Evans, a member of the county’s Homeless Advisory Board who’s been experiencing homelessness for more than 15 years, said the city and county’s decision to present Second Avenue Commons as the only housing option for Stockton encampment residents diminished their autonomy. 

“It doesn’t matter if it was a mansion,” Evans said. “If you require them to go there or you’re binding them to that location, you’re taking away their freedom. Period.”

A handful of the encampment’s residents chose to continue living outdoors, rather than heading to Second Avenue Commons, said Frank, adding that such decisions likely stem from past traumatic experiences at shelters or similar settings. “When people choose that, it’s because they had a terrible experience at a shelter,” she added.

Dave Lettrich, the executive director of the Bridge Outreach group serving people without housing across Pittsburgh, said offering stays at Second Avenue Commons doesn’t necessarily constitute a credible housing offer if it’s not a person’s preference to stay at a shelter. 

Second Avenue Commons’ opening, he said, “became an excuse to force people into a shelter space that weren’t comfortable in a shelter space.”

“If people are not comfortable in a shelter space, there are very good reasons for that, there are very good psychological and other reasons for that,” he said, noting things like shared bathrooms in SROs or a social anxiety diagnosis can make choosing to live in a space like Second Avenue Commons less desirable for some.  

Second Avenue Commons reached maximum capacity within days of opening, so the city and county set aside beds and SRO rooms for the Stockton encampment residents to guarantee they’d have spots. This resulted in other people waiting at Second Avenue Commons’ doors being turned away and directed toward other shelters, including the low-barrier winter shelter at Smithfield Unified Church of Christ, according to Frank and Erin Dalton, director of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services. 

Walczak questions if Second Avenue Commons constituted a credible alternative housing option if it only had space for the Stockton residents because beds were specially reserved. 

“[The city and county] said, ‘We’re going to combat these encampments by offering beds,’” Evans said. “And all that means is, ‘We’re going to offer beds that aren’t there, that are full, and we’re going to continue to criminalize you as long as we offer that bed.’”

New rules of engagement

Both the city and county have responsibilities when encampments are closed because, while city land is involved, many resources to address homelessness — like shelters — fall under the county’s purview. 

Although DHS has helped shape the strategy employed to decommission encampments, Dalton said the city initiates a closure. “We’ve brainstormed with the city about how and looked at other best practices with them,” she added. “But when it comes to any kind of operations … our job is outreach engagement and connection to housing.”

Dalton said there are no plans to close any encampments in the near future, but that the county is continuing to work with Pittsburgh and other municipalities in assessing its strategy for relocating both individuals and groups from living outdoors to indoors.

Lettrich said the county already has very efficient and effective supportive housing services in place that are made less efficient when people outside the system trip the the wire to force encampment closures. 

“When the city steps in and makes moves, all that does is create more challenges for the system, the incredibly effective system that’s already out there,” he said. He instead encourages the city to provide on-site waste collection for camps and adapt laws to keep sites hygienic, safe and less of an eyesore. From there, outreach workers can meet people where they are and get them into the housing system.

“The only reason that anyone’s on the street for more than a year in Pittsburgh is due to unique circumstances or human will,” he said.

Frank said that the city will continue to use the basic principles of the Stockton Avenue encampment closure — sharing available resources with residents to help them move indoors — during any future closures. But with few beds available across city shelters, Frank said the city is focusing on turning Second Avenue Commons into a stepping stone to finding more permanent housing. 

“What we want to do is have a place where people go to get their bearings,” Frank said, “and then we want on the other side of Second Avenue to be, ‘Boom, I can go here, and I can go here, and I can go here, and I can go here.’”

Evans added that, compared to other cities nationwide, Pittsburgh is doing a great job of reducing homelessness. 

“We actually have an ability to take care of the problem,” Evans said. “But if we don’t accept the actual solutions, it’s going to keep getting worse and worse.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments received after its initial publication.

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 Betul Tuncer.

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

The post Tent camp closure marks shift in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County homelessness policies appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Julian Johnson knows firsthand the consequences of rampant gun violence, and he wants his younger neighbors to know “you don’t have to live like that.” 

Two of his cousins have been shot and killed. He’s lost a lot of friends the same way. He knows the father of a young man who died in a shooting at 20. Outside of his funeral this October, another shooting injured six more people. 

“It takes a toll,” said Johnson, 51.

He hopes a program he completed at the Community College of Allegheny County [CCAC] will catch on – and change his community. 

With an $800,000 grant from the commonwealth, CCAC has launched the Guns Down, Level Up program, which welcomed its first cohort in September. The program requires CCAC students to participate in free therapy through the Allegheny Health Network [AHN] and meet with a student success coach each week. For participants enrolled in for-credit programs, the college picks up tuition and other educational costs that financial aid doesn’t cover. As of mid-December, more than 50 students had participated.

“How is it going to grow if the people who went through it don’t tell everybody else?,” Johnson said. 

“If you don’t have something for them to do,” said Johnson, referring to young people caught up in cyclical violence, “or if they think there isn’t another way they can get a better education or learn a trade – if all hope is lost – they’re going to keep doing what they’re doing.” 

‘Don’t give up now’

In January 2022, the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency awarded 25 entities across the state about $23 million collectively to develop projects aimed at preventing gun violence and group violence. CCAC was the only college in the county to receive a grant in that funding round. 

The funding comes as Pittsburgh’s homicide rate hit at least a seven-year high in 2022. Nearly nine out of 10 involved a firearm, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported in late October. 

The CCAC program broadly defines what it means to be impacted by gun violence, said Angelica Perez-Johnston, the college’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer. Students are eligible if they have firsthand experiences or are from an area where this violence occurs – “which is everywhere in Pittsburgh,” she said.

People with criminal records can participate, too. 

“I wanted this to be an opportunity for everyone to work towards life-sustaining wages,” said Perez-Johnston, who wrote the grant for the program. “We are trying to get folks into a path of prosperity and not a path where they’re re-entering into the system.” 

Working side-by-side in CCAC’s Homewood-Brushton Center, the program’s two success coaches have seen their students grow in confidence and take steps toward careers. The coaches’ backgrounds have helped them genuinely connect with students.

Student Success Coach Amber Sloan does this work “because I’m being who I wish I had,” she said. Sloan, who was raised in Homewood, was incarcerated for 15 years. While she was away from home, she constantly thought about giving back to her community. She’s since launched a program to serve at-risk youth and engaged in violence intervention work.

Like Sloan, Mike Talley brings a personal connection to his work as a student success coach. Growing up, he learned how to navigate life with the tools passed down by those around him. He put himself through college at Norfolk State University by selling drugs, he said, but was incarcerated before he could continue his education in law school. 

“The majority of our students come in here and they have situations and life challenges that they only speak to me and Amber about,” Talley said. “Me and Amber know how to bring it down and talk their language. We’re from where they’re from. We know how to speak to them, sit down and kick it.”

Perez-Johnston and the coaches have supported students in a variety of ways. 

Sometimes it’s simple gestures. Sloan keeps a stash of Reese’s cups on hand because they’re the favorite of a student with diabetes — both flavor-wise and as a blood sugar pick-me-up. 

And, they offer the kind of sustained support that helps students stay enrolled. 

Perez-Johnston walked another student through resolving a long-standing problem with their financial aid. For those with criminal records, Talley and Sloan have discussed felony-friendly career paths that match the student’s interests. 

“A lot of them, when a problem occurs, you can see the defeat, because they’re so used to people not helping or people telling them, ‘Well, you need to figure this out,’” Talley said. 

He tells the students: “‘Obstacles are a part of life. At this juncture, I know you know that, because you overcame so many. This is why you’re here. So, you came this far, don’t give up now.’”

This lesson means everything to Ashlee Bentley, a single mother who owns her own salon in Ambridge. Bentley enrolled in the program after meeting Talley during her CCAC orientation and learning about the resources and therapy services participants receive. After two decades of feeling afraid to ask for support, she said the guidance she’s received since joining, especially from Talley, has made her feel less confined and helpless. 

“Every resource that he could possibly find to try to help me, he did,” said Bentley, 37. “Even if I forgot because I was overwhelmed — or if I asked him five times already — it didn’t matter, it was still the same answer, the same help, the same compassion, the same understanding.”

As a Beaver County resident, Bentley’s typical commute to CCAC’s Homewood-Brushton Center takes about 90 minutes one way — a huge time-suck that cuts into her ability to operate her salon. When her car broke down this fall, her only option for getting to class was taking three buses. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to continue with her studies. 

Talley helped her apply for grants that covered the cost of car repairs. 

In “the very near future,” Perez-Johnston expects to be able to reimburse students for transportation, including providing bus passes or gas.  

Providing mental health support – and encountering stigma

Along with receiving support from the success coaches, students in the program participate in therapy through The Chill Project at AHN. 

The individual sessions are focused on helping students develop coping skills to manage their trauma response and mental health, said Crystal Spano, a licensed counselor and behavioral health supervisor with the project. The program’s therapist helps students identify their strengths, work through their triggers and process feelings such as guilt or hypervigilance. 

Spano has seen a mixed response from students so far. She said the students enrolled in longer-term academic programs have been able to attend more consistently and receive more support than those enrolled in shorter-term workforce development programs. The depth of participation has also varied among students, which Spano said she thinks is common in therapy.

“It is hard for them to talk about it, because anybody with trauma, it’s a process. And so I think that a lot of them have wanted to stay on the surface,” she said. “You have some that really are utilizing it, and they’re coming in, and they’re invested.”

Some people who inquired about Guns Down, Level Up decided not to participate in the program because of the therapy requirement. Though Ebone Drake, 38, had a positive experience in the program, the therapy requirement was one aspect she didn’t like. She said she doesn’t struggle with her mental health. 

“Everybody doesn’t have an issue who lives in Homewood,” Drake said. “Don’t make it mandatory, like it’s something that we have to do.”

Other students benefited from therapy but were initially apprehensive. Spano said hesitancy may stem from a fear of being judged, a denial of their struggles or a desire to appear tough. On top of that, Black communities often face greater discrimination and stigma around mental health challenges, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. 

Johnson didn’t mind going to therapy, as he hoped to help others by sharing his experiences. Scheduling conflicts with work, school and personal matters prevented him from speaking with the therapist more often, he said. 

“If I could get back the time to be there and work with her, I would’ve,” he said.  

Connecting to opportunities

Since Drake completed the program, CCAC has helped her find job opportunities. She was still looking as of early December, but she expected to hear back soon. 

For Bentley, participating in the program has strengthened her business. As a student in CCAC’s barber school, her peers and coaches with Guns Down, Level Up have pointed clients her way, some of whom now regularly book appointments at her salon, Lilly J’s Hairtorium. 

When her time with Guns Down, Level Up ends in March 2023, she hopes to pursue a business degree at CCAC. Talley has already helped her schedule a few introductory courses. She’s long wanted to open a barber and cosmetology school alongside her salon, and participating in the program has made her more motivated than ever. 

It showed her what’s at stake.

“There’s so many kids out here especially, I see so many teenagers walking by,” she said. “I would like to be able to get the finances and funding to be able to have a school to take so many students in for free so they’re not out here on the streets.”

Johnson enrolled in CCAC’s Commercial Driver’s License program, seeking a steadier income and greater security than his job in construction provided. He’s now working at the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. 

As of early December, he was trying to move up in the water authority and start driving its rigs. He’s glad to have a better job with the authority.

His family is proud of him for finishing the program, too. He recently welcomed his first grandchild, a boy, and he’s excited to be a positive role model for him. 

“It’s helping people have a better life,” he said.

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org.

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. 

This story was fact-checked by Ladimir Garcia.

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

The post Pittsburgh is reeling from gun violence. A CCAC program aims to break the cycle and create ‘a path of prosperity’ appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

A column of nine cursive names is taped to a pale wall in the Youth Enrichment Services office in East Liberty. 

These are the teens the organization has lost to gun violence in recent years, including its own members and their friends and relatives. 

The wall was designed by Matthew Steffy-Ross, a 17-year-old who joined Youth Enrichment Services [YES] in 2015 and, over the years, became a mentor to his peers. He had only just finished the wall when he was fatally shot in April during a party at an Airbnb, where another teen was killed and at least eight others were wounded.

“I do not want to go to another one of my kids’ funerals,” said YES Executive Director Dennis Jones. “I don’t. I just don’t. I can’t.”

The students at YES are acutely aware of gun violence’s toll on Allegheny County — they’re grieving the losses of family, friends, classmates and neighbors who were caught in the crosshairs of shootings. This month, the organization released the “Reducing Gun Violence in Our Community: Teen Voices and Visions” report, which includes teens’ ideas for reducing gunfire across the county. The report is a culmination of the organization’s yearlong effort to train teens to heal from the trauma of gun violence and become activists promoting solutions to the crisis. 

“Nothing will get done if you don’t take action,” said Takara Pack, a 15-year-old YES member. “You can’t just sit back and just watch it all happen. You have to actually step up and do something.”

From January through November, there were 23 homicide victims ages 18 or younger in Allegheny County, accounting for about 19% of overall victims. 

City officials believe that shootings are often catalyzed by tensions between cliques of teenagers and young adults, whose social media fights escalate to gunfire. 

In a Dec. 2 press conference, Mayor Ed Gainey said young people citywide are inheriting the “culture of violence” created by previous generations, which — coupled with the availability of firearms — perpetuates the cycle of gun violence. “If a kid can get a gun like they can get potato chips, then we understand what the end result is.”

Taking up the mantle

Tya Carter, 16, is tired of seeing headlines about people losing family members to gun violence. “At this point for me, I’m just over it.” 

These headlines are a reminder of what she could’ve lost. One of her younger brothers has been shot twice, and she’s “surprised he’s alive” today. 

She and her fellow teens at YES believe their advocacy isn’t an opportunity, but a necessity. For the county to move the needle toward reducing gun violence, youth voices must be heard. 

“It’s something we have to do because no one else is doing it,” Pack added. 

In November, nearly 40 of the group’s teens came together for a three-day retreat at Seven Springs, where they worked together to identify root causes of youth gun violence, including poverty, unresolved trauma, cultural influences, neighborhood conflicts, limited social opportunities, limited conflict mediation training and barriers to sustainable employment. 

They then proposed actionable ideas that government departments, educational institutions, businesses and nonprofit organizations can implement for prevention. The organization synthesized the teens’ recommendations in the report, including: 

• Creating programs for teens to build skills in mentoring, conflict mediation, listening and empathy
• Increasing teens’ collaboration with police departments, along with initiating a gun buy-back program specifically targeted to teens
• Generating opportunities for local business owners to network with their communities and help teens strengthen their employable skills

Teens especially wanted to create more safe spaces in their communities where they can engage in after-school activities. They feel that few of these spaces exist today because many recreation centers have limited their operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic and low staffing. 

Teens also want to see more programs helping them and their families heal from the trauma of gun violence, including grief counseling programs. Carter especially wants to create a program to help teens navigate depression. “It’s basically a safe place or area where people can come and do their things to just help them to feel healthy again.”

Jones said the report’s findings are “not abnormal.”

“These kids want to be kids,” he continued. “They want to have enough food. They want to have the ability to walk through the neighborhood without getting shot, and want to have the ability to get treatment for the trauma and the pain that they carry with them.”

He said he hopes the report will provide gun violence prevention stakeholders with the necessary building blocks to prioritize youth perspectives as they pursue solutions to the crisis. “We want people to look at it and see areas that they can take it and work with it,” he added. “Nobody can say, ‘We don’t know what the kids want.’”

Jones began pushing to create the report in July after YES hosted its Teen Violence Prevention Summit, which brought teens together with researchers, law enforcement officials and community leaders. In the coming months, the organization will begin seeking partners at the local, state and national levels to begin implementing the report’s proposals.

Collaboration, he said, could help them overcome the greatest challenge of implementing the prevention initiatives: securing funding. 

“This is the crux of the matter: Are we willing as a city, as a community, as a region, as a state, to invest the level and the magnitude of the resources that it’s going to take to address the problem?” Jones said.

‘Someone believes in you’

The YES report is a culmination of the organization’s mission to amplify teen advocacy throughout what the organization has dubbed the “Year of Peace and Nonviolence in our Neighborhoods.”

Since its formation in 1994, YES has worked with teens impacted by gun violence. Jones recognized the need to turn violence prevention advocacy into their flagship project after a friend of one of the organization’s members was shot in September 2021.  Shortly after announcing the decision, two other teens — friends of YES members — were shot, which Jones said only validated their decision.

“We have such a 100% saturation of gun violence upon our kids, there’s this constant trauma,” Jones said. 

Jones wanted their approach to gun violence prevention to be proactive, providing teens with opportunities to engage with positive role models and activities. Throughout the year, the organization created educational opportunities for teens to research solutions to gun violence, and connected teens with mentors who have helped them develop the tools to care for their minds, bodies and emotional well-being. 

They’ve also linked teens to jobs that have helped them gain technical and leadership skills. This opportunity is what brought 15-year-old Sarah Nervais to the organization, and she’s stayed because of the friends she’s made. “I came into the office, and everyone here was so loving,” Nervais said. “They’re like a second family.”

At their November retreat, teens attended healing circle discussions and workshops about music therapy, meditation and peer mentorship. Since then, Pack has begun incorporating breathing exercises into her daily routine and tries to meditate every day.

“I struggle with both depression and PTSD, I also have very bad anxiety,” said Pack, whose brother was severely wounded from gunfire and whose uncle was fatally shot. “When I was told about the breathing circles and the meditation, it really helps me relax and just find myself again.”

Jones said he hopes he’s teaching teens the most critical skill for protecting them from gun violence: resilience. A combination of information, preparation and community “allows them to reach their peers, allows them to feel they have some agency.”

The trust that YES vests each member with is what gives them the confidence to pursue their goal of reducing gun violence while working with YES and in their everyday lives.

“It felt good knowing that someone believes in you,” said Will Sheffield, a 16-year-old member. “And they can in other places if you just allow it.”

As the organization looks to 2023, Jones hopes the training they’ve provided teens to become informed, responsible and empathetic leaders will amplify their activism and empower them to bring their ideas for solutions to fruition. 

“We’re going to give it our best shot.”

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. 

This story was fact-checked by Sophia Levin.

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

The post ‘Step up and do something’: Teens at Youth Enrichment Services are leading the conversation about solutions to gun violence appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.