Appeals of Allegheny County property assessments, unleashed by a lawsuit, are starting to bite into the revenues of governments, notably in already strained Mon Valley communities. Pittsburgh, meanwhile, has stayed above water, because rising residential value has outstripped slashed skyscraper tax bills — so far.

Unbalanced
How property tax assessments create winners and losers

As thousands of pending appeals threaten to upend municipal and school budgets, County Executive Sara Innamorato is taking a cautious path on one of her key campaign planks supporting routine countywide reassessments.

A reassessment would come with political costs for Innamorato and monetary costs for some individual property owners. (It could also cost her personally, by boosting the low tax bill on her Upper Lawrenceville house.) But experts say it’s the cure for a defective system that currently overtaxes some and undertaxes others.

Even with most of last year’s appeals as-yet undecided, some municipalities saw a drop in taxable assessed value in the last two years, with much of the downturn coming in Mon Valley communities that are hurting economically. Fifty of the county’s 130 municipalities lost taxable value since the start of 2022; Homestead (10%), West Homestead (6%) and Clairton (4%) saw the biggest percentages of their tax base disappear.

Property owners filed an unusually large number of assessment appeals last year. That’s because a court ordered a change in the math used to calculate assessments determined by appeals, making it more favorable to owners.

Owners of large commercial buildings appealed en masse and are expected to win significant cuts to their assessed values, lowering their tax bills. Already, three of the dozens of Downtown towers have won appeals and seen significant tax relief. 

When big property owners saw the new tax math, “they jumped on it,” said Dominick Gambino, a local government consultant who managed the county’s assessment office from 2001 to 2003. He added that yet another change in the tax math, taking effect this year, could cause a fresh round of appeals.

While Pittsburgh’s assessed value rose 1.87% from 2022 to 2024, a PublicSource review found, a decline has already begun Downtown. 

Assessed value in the city’s 2nd Ward, which spans much of Downtown and the Strip District, dropped 3.73% during that time period, shedding more than $112 million in assessed value. Using current tax rates — measured in mills — that $112 million represents more than $900,000 in lost tax revenue for the city and $1.2 million for the city school district. And appeals for dozens more commercial properties are still pending. 

So far, value has increased enough in residential neighborhoods to make up for Downtown’s problems. The 6th Ward, in Lower Lawrenceville, saw a whopping 30% increase in assessed value ($130.2 million in taxable value). The 5th (Hill District), 16th (South Hills) and 17th (South Side) wards each increased between 9% and 13%.

But the math is unlikely to favor taxing bodies for much longer.

Looming crisis

The successful Downtown appeals are “just the beginning” of the wave of assessment cuts Downtown, said Chris Briem, a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research. “I think what’s in the news of late of the percentage declines in these big buildings are probably typical of what most Downtown buildings will get in the short term.”

Six-figure tax bill decreases for dozens of commercial properties would have a devastating effect on the city and school district. The city is facing a razor-thin budget in the near future with an operating surplus of just a few million dollars. The school district is already operating at a deficit and is considering plans to close school buildings to cut costs.  

“One way or the other, property values Downtown are coming down,” Briem said. “It’s probably going to force a millage increase on everyone else.” That would effectively raise tax bills on property owners throughout the city to make up for the lost revenue coming from Downtown.

While Downtown owners will see lower tax bills, Briem said they are hardly winners in the situation. 

“They’ve lost, they’ve lost a lot and they’re going to keep losing,” Briem said, because decreased demand for office space since the start of the pandemic has crushed commercial building revenue. The assessment cuts are “reflecting that reality.”

Pittsburgh Public Schools solicitor sounded the alarm in a January interview.

“If these large reductions that have occurred Downtown and will continue to occur, they simply do not have financial wherewithal to sustain that,” solicitor Ira Weiss said.

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s office took a less dire tone. 

“Budget wise, the team forecasted the possibility of reduced real estate tax revenue,” said city press secretary Olga George. “Currently, Finance and [the Office of Management and Budget] are watching how real estate collections are processing.”

The mayor’s 2024 budget does not forecast a drop in real estate tax revenue. This year’s budget plans for a number slightly higher than last year’s, and the city’s five-year plan projects increases each year.

George said the city is assessing new valuations and deciding whether to contest them in court. 

Peter McDevitt, the budget director for Pittsburgh City Council, said it’s too early and there are too many variables to “hit the panic button,” but the city could eventually be forced to find new revenue or cut services. “Raising millage is not the only avenue, but it’s the most viable one” to raise revenue, he said. 

The county’s $1.1 billion operating budget, which relies on property taxes for around 37% of its revenue, is not in danger of a shortfall, according to county spokesperson Abigail Gardner.

Reassessment vs. ratios

Experts including Briem and Gambino say the fix for the county’s assessment woes lies in conducting routine, countywide reassessments — a concept Innamorato has endorsed, as long as it can be done with new protections for vulnerable taxpayers. 

Gardner confirmed that Innamorato continues to believe “that a reassessment would be a more fair and equitable way to determine values,” adding that “there are no immediate plans to engage in a reassessment.” The real estate market is shifting, she wrote in response to questions, prompting “a reimagining of how to keep our Downtown thriving.”

The last time the county reassessed all its properties was in 2013,after a judge ordered then-County Executive Rich Fitzgerald to do so. Fitzgerald never did so again.

Pennsylvania allows counties to leave decades-old assessments in place, subject to appeals where there’s evidence of rising value. 

In counties that use this “base-year” approach, properties without improvements or recent sales generally keep the same assessments each year. Where there’s evidence of a change in value, the owner or a taxing body can file an appeal.

When an appeal is filed in Allegheny County, the Board of Property Assessment Appeals and Review assigns a new fair market value. That value is multiplied by the common level ratio [CLR] to come up with an assessment.

The CLR is meant to adjust appeal-generated assessments to resemble those last set in the base year. But a lawsuit revealed that the county submitted flawed data for the calculation of the CLR, and a judge forced its reduction. 

For appeals filed in Allegheny County this year, the fair market value will be multiplied by 0.545 to determine the assessment, meaning a property with a post-appeal value of $100,000 would be assessed at $54,500. By contrast, for appeals filed in 2021, the ratio was 0.875, meaning that same property would have been assessed at $87,500. 

Property owners whose assessments were boosted in prior year appeals may appeal now, and use the lower CLR to push their assessments down. The ratio, though, won’t help owners whose property values have soared.

Your tax depends on when you bought

Despite the change in the ratio, tax bills in Allegheny County continue to be driven less by the value of the property than the date of purchase. The wild variances in assessments are evident on the streets of the current and prior county executives.

Fitzgerald arguably benefits to the tune of thousands of dollars per year from his decision not to reassess.

He bought his house in Point Breeze in 1989 for $202,000. Because the county doesn’t regularly reassess, his tax bill has remained static, even as property values have soared.

A next-door neighbor bought a similarly sized house in 2021 for $970,095. That price drew an assessment appeal by the Pittsburgh Public Schools, and a resulting fair market value of $616,000.

The neighbor’s total annual tax bill — county, city and school district — is around $3,000 higher than Fitzgerald’s.

Innamorato could lose out financially under the scenario she proposed during her campaign for executive. She has said she'd like to reassess all properties, while increasing existing tax breaks for homeowners and seniors and adding protections for longtime owner-occupants.

Innamorato bought her row house in Upper Lawrenceville for $71,000 in 2015. On the same side of the same block is a house that’s around 20% larger (though it’s not a row house). Purchased during the Lawrenceville real estate boom, it is subject to a tax bill around five times higher.

Gambino said the current system, with no reassessments and one CLR for the entire county, is unfair because different areas have appreciated at different rates since 2013 — meaning homeowners in low-appreciation markets are subject to the same ratio as those in high-appreciation areas.

The base-year system is “something Robin Hood’s evil twin would condone,” Gambino said. “All this talk about reduction and refunds, these are all symptoms of a sickness called the base-year scheme.”

Plight of boroughs

Seth Abrams feels conflicted. On a personal level, a countywide reassessment would cost him money. He bought his home 13 years ago and said it has appreciated significantly since the last time the county assessed its value.

But Abrams is the borough manager for Munhall, a place that stands to lose a lot of money in pending appeals. Just one appeal, by the Lowe’s hardware store in the Waterfront, has already cost the borough $50,000 in annual revenue, enough to wipe out a cushion he had planned for the 2024 budget.

Now, the possibility of a millage increase weighs on him as more appeals, including some from U.S. Steel, are pending.

“If [U.S. Steel] got something along the lines of what Lowe’s got and they got their assessment cut in half, that’s another $60,000 or $70,000 loss that I’m trying not to factor into things right now,” Abrams said. “That would mean that we would have to dig into the reserves, we would have to look at all of our fees and our taxes.

“People will see increased costs if this trend of losing taxable value continues.”

Despite the implications to his personal tax bill, as a professional, Abrams wants to see a reassessment. 

“I need to look out for the needs of an entire community. In Munhall, I’m looking at 5,000 or 6,000 residences. For me, I’m looking at one.”

Assessed values dropped from 2022-2024 in numerous Mon Valley communities near Munhall, showing Abrams’ problems are shared by his peers in other towns. Many of those municipalities and the adjacent school districts already have some of the county’s highest millage rates, giving them less margin to raise the levy.

Clairton will have to deal with the outcome of 32 parcels under appeals filed by U.S. Steel, which operates the Clairton Coke Works there. Clairton Mayor Rich Lattanzi told PublicSource in April that the steelmaker accounts for about one-third of its tax base, and the revenue loss from appeals could “be catastrophic for the City of Clairton.”

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

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

This story was fact-checked by Delaney Rauscher Adams.

The post Property tax appeals erode budgets as assessment burden shifts appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

On a Tuesday afternoon in December, around a dozen public housing tenants facing eviction filled a waiting room in McKeesport, where Magisterial District Judge Eugene Riazzi asked each if they could pay their delinquent rent. 

If so, the tenant agreed to pay the amount owed, plus court costs of more than $150. Unless they pledged to pay, Riazzi ruled in favor of the McKeesport Housing Authority, starting a process that can lead to the tenant’s removal within weeks. Tenants who said they couldn’t pay were referred to a county human services worker who waited in the lobby to help them apply for rental assistance. 

A similar scene plays out on many Tuesdays in McKeesport. 

Since the end of the pandemic-era moratorium on evictions in 2021, all three housing authorities serving Allegheny County have filed numerous eviction cases, but none has done so with the same vigor and frequency as the McKeesport Housing Authority [MHA]. These legal actions come as county human service officials and advocates cement a rental assistance network created through pandemic-era federal funding that’s helping tenants of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County Housing Authority. 

The McKeesport authority, by far the smallest of the three agencies with the fewest number of housing units, has filed 562 landlord/tenant cases against its tenants from the start of 2021 through early December. Pandemic-driven curbs on most evictions ended in 2021.

The Allegheny County Housing Authority [ACHA] filed 131 cases and the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP] filed 263 in that same time period, according to court data gathered by Anne Wright of Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab, who tracks eviction cases.  

Wright noted that tracking eviction filings for Pittsburgh’s housing authority can be difficult because the organization often uses various names when filing evictions against tenants. Eviction filings also do not necessarily correlate with actual evictions, as some tenants are able to gather the money and stay after a filing.

McKeesport Housing Authority solicitor Jim Creenan wrote in response to questions that the three housing authorities are structurally different. The MHA, he said, has limited resources, so it needs a consistent stream of federally required rent from tenants. He also noted that the authority has a “substantial waiting list” of families wanting to move into its communities.

Pittsburgh’s and Allegheny County’s housing authorities also have waiting lists for the units they manage.

County human service officials said that the Pittsburgh and county housing authorities are using partners including Just Mediation Pittsburgh to prevent evictions, while MHA has largely declined to use these resources. 

“Prior to the pandemic, the largest filers of evictions were the housing authorities, and at least two of the three housing authorities here are using mediation as a first step to avoid evictions. So that drastically reduced the number of filings we’ve seen in the county,” said Chuck Keenan, an administrator of the Office of Community Services within the Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS].

Keenan said the MHA used the county’s eviction prevention services at the beginning of 2023 to mediate around 20 tenant cases. Keenan said the housing authority has since stopped using mediation and returned to filing evictions against their tenants. 

“They’re not really using mediation as much as we would hope,” he said. “We would encourage all landlords to use mediation as an alternative to filing — including the housing authorities.” 

McKeesport’s Creenan said the authority “has entered payment plans and we have facilitated hundreds of applications for each stage of the COVID-era rental assistance.” In most cases, those tenants continued to rack up delinquencies, he said.

He added that each mediation requires hours of staff time and the resulting delays in payment did not “align with our limited resources and contributed to the arrears” owed the authority.

Fewest units, most landlord/tenant cases

Ziara Wright, a mother of two in McKeesport who is facing eviction and owes several months of rent, said she was still making partial rent payments last year before the housing authority took her to court. She fell behind in part because of a paperwork problem that led to her losing access to her food stamps, forcing her to spend more money to feed her family. 

After a ruling against her and a judgment of $2,417, she filed an appeal. The eviction process and filing for an appeal has been stressful, she said.

“You got to go through that while you’re juggling everything else. You got to pay your bills out there. You got to go to work every day,” she said. 

Speaking broadly, Creenan said that with all of the protections afforded to tenants — including appeal rights and rental assistance — only about 20% of the first-time evictions the authority files against tenants lead to a judge’s order for possession, entitling the authority to remove the tenant.

“Many tenants appear to be gaming the system,” he said, “as the number of tenants filing late appeals and other delay-type motions to the Court of Common Pleas have increased dramatically in the past two years.”   

Local housing advocates urge inexpensive mediation before court filings. Landlord/tenant complaints result in fees and legal stains that can hurt the tenant’s ability to find rental housing in the future. 

The McKeesport Housing Authority has 1,021 housing units, and last year it filed a landlord/tenant case for roughly 1 out of every 4 of its housing units. In contrast, the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh brought cases against around 4.6% of its tenants, or about 1 in 20. The county’s housing authority, with 3,839 units, filed cases against 2.6% of its tenants last year. 

MHA’s Executive Director Steve Bucklew declined to discuss its eviction policies with PublicSource and WESA, citing unspecified, ongoing litigation. He referred reporters to a published report by the Public Housing Authorities Directors Association, citing ongoing rent collection difficulties for housing authorities. 

In an interview with PublicSource in 2022, with pandemic-era rental aid expiring, Bucklew said too many tenants were delinquent in their rent. 

“We’ve never experienced delinquencies like this,” he said at the time. “There’s groups trying to delay evictions, but I feel that the only way the message will be communicated to tenants that they have to pay rent is by filing evictions.”

Pittsburgh and Allegheny leaning against eviction

The county Department of Human Services has been working with ACTION-Housing, Rent Help PGH and Just Mediation, among others, to divert landlord/tenant disputes to mediation, rather than court.

The county and those agencies have learned a lot since 2021, when pandemic-driven rental assistance started, said Keenan. He said the county in 2023 provided rental assistance to more than 1,100 households, totaling upward of $14 million, whereas pre-pandemic spending was $2 million to $3 million a year.

Pittsburgh and Allegheny County’s housing authorities try to avoid court.  

“Eviction prevention has become a standard operating procedure for the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh,” said Anthony Ceoffe, senior director of asset management for HACP.

Ceoffe said HACP worked with Just Mediation Pittsburgh and Rent Help Pittsburgh to help mediate cases with its tenants who are facing problems paying their rent. As a result, he said, the authority didn’t evict any tenants in 2023 because of nonpayment of rent. (Some evictions did take place for issues including safety violations, he said.) 

Ceoffe said the authority also has used a partnership with a third party to connect its tenants to budgeting classes, financial literacy and ongoing case management.

“So just because somebody has received rental assistance, that does not mean that the eviction prevention coordinators are done with them,” Ceoffe said. 

Landlords and tenants in mediation have access to available rental assistance — so landlords are still able to eventually get the funds owed to them. 

HACP officials said the book “Evicted,” work by local foundations and advocates, and lessons from the pandemic have contributed to a shift away from eviction filings.

“We are in the business of providing housing,” said Michelle Sandidge, chief community affairs officer for HACP. “To evict a bunch of people just … adds to the homeless situation. That is not something that we’re trying to do.” 

Rich Stephenson, chief operating officer for the Allegheny County Housing Authority, said the agency has invested money and time in preventing evictions through mediation and financial literacy classes for tenants.

“We try to identify the problem,” Stephenson said, “because if someone’s behind in their rent, there’s usually an underlying problem.”

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

Kate Giammarise is a reporter at 90.5 WESA, Pittsburgh’s NPR News Station, covering housing and social services.

This story was fact-checked by Rich Lord.

The post Small housing authority files far more evictions than larger Pittsburgh-area agencies appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

The 2024 election is coming, and Pennsylvania is once again at the center of the political universe. More than most other places, Allegheny County voters will have a say in what comes next at the White House, in Congress and in Harrisburg. 

The stakes are high. What do you want to know about the upcoming vote?

The presidential race, potentially a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, is expected to hinge on just a few swing states. Pennsylvania is the largest. 

Not sure how important Pennsylvania is? Biden has already visited the Keystone State upward of 30 times since becoming president. He’s paid more visits here than to any state but his home of Delaware. 

Control of the U.S. Senate could hinge on Pennsylvania’s contest between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and a to-be-nominated challenger. Control of the closely divided U.S. House could be tipped by the swingy 17th Congressional District, now held by Democrat Chris Deluzio of Aspinwall.

And the political order in Harrisburg would change if Democrats can flip three state Senate seats and control the upper chamber. One of their three targets is in Allegheny County — the 37th District seat held by Republican Devlin Robinson of Bridgeville.

With so much on the ballot, and so much at stake, things can get confusing fast for voters. PublicSource is aiming to keep readers informed on the 2024 election at a local level.

Tell us what you want to know using the form below. Check as many boxes as you want next to topics that interest you. Most important: Use your write-in vote to tell us what else you want to know about the 2024 election season in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

You can also find our stories on Facebook, X and Instagram. PublicSource will strive to meet your needs between now and November — and beyond.

The post Election 2024: What do you want to know? appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

The Community College of Allegheny County has lost more than a third of its student body since the pandemic derailed the lives and aspirations of current and prospective students. But this fall, enrollment at the college stabilized.

Pencils Down
How plummeting enrollment and low success rates at the Community College of Allegheny County harm students and the Pittsburgh region

Just over 10,500 students enrolled at the college, known as CCAC, according to data from the institution. That’s about a 0.4% increase from last year. Nationwide, community colleges reported a 4.4% increase from the previous year, preliminary data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows. 

“We’re out of the pandemic, people are getting better equipped to take in-person classes now. They feel like things are coming back to normal,” said Dorothy Collins, vice president for enrollment services at CCAC. “I think we’re trending upward. I’m happy.” 

While a silver lining, this small bump in enrollment still reflects a 34% drop from fall 2019 – and roughly a 50% drop from fall 2010, around the time community college enrollments peaked nationwide. 

Renewed declines could have significant implications. The college relies on tuition for a sizable share of revenue, and regional employers count on CCAC graduates to fill vital jobs in industries such as health care. On top of that, people without degrees often earn less over their lifetimes than those with them. 

Bringing students back is a priority for CCAC. The college has created a Strategic Enrollment and Retention Management Plan, and the cross-departmental team overseeing the plan will soon set goals around enrollment, retention and affordability, said Collins, who took over this summer. 

The college has not yet set specific numerical goals for boosting enrollment.  

What’s driving the growth?

Tom Brock, director of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, said the nationwide upswing in community college enrollments is encouraging. He said the boost, though, is largely because they “fell so far during the pandemic that you could say, ‘They could only go back up.’”

Collins attributed CCAC’s recent uptick to the region’s post-pandemic recovery, which may also be reflected in the diversity of the student body. Community colleges often serve communities of color that were disproportionately impacted by the crisis, and this fall, the share of students of color at CCAC exceeded pre-pandemic levels in some areas.

Black students made up about 17% of the student body, up from about 14% in fall 2021. The share of Hispanic and Latino students steadily increased throughout the pandemic, growing from roughly 3% in fall 2019 to 4% in fall 2023. The share of white students declined slightly during that time, from about 61% to 60%, with roughly 1 in 5 students falling into other categories.

But there are other factors driving the boost nationally, experts told PublicSource, and some could bode well for CCAC. Community colleges that focus on hands-on learning and short-term credentials have benefited from the public’s growing concern about student debt and declining confidence in the value of a four-year degree. 

“Families are seeing it as a better value,” Brock said. The tuition rate at CCAC for county residents taking classes full-time is $1,890 a semester, while the figure is at least $10,077 for in-state students at the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus.

Collins has observed that more students are coming to the college looking for credentials that will quickly lead to well-paying jobs. The college has invested in this area, recently opening its $43 million Center for Education, Innovation and Training to house programs in the skilled trades and other high-demand fields. 

And since the pandemic, high schoolers have become a substantial boost to enrollment at community colleges nationwide, experts said. High schoolers can pay to take community college courses; the practice, known as dual enrollment, aims to reduce the time and cost associated with a four-year degree. 

CCAC wants to enroll “every type of student that wants to come here,” Collins said — and recruiting high schoolers is part of its strategy. So far, though, the college has not seen a substantial return from dual enrollment. High schoolers made up 16% of the country’s community college students in 2019 but just below 8% at CCAC that fall, according to data from the college. Since then, their share of CCAC’s student body has fallen to about 5%. 

“I think that you’ll see that our dual enrollment is going to increase after this semester,” Collins said. “We’re meeting, we’re going out, we send email blasts. We’ve sent a lot of information to let the high schools know that we’re here.” 

There are plenty of benefits for the high schoolers taking these classes, but their enrollment in a few courses may not bring CCAC the same revenue as a full-time student. 

“By and large, community colleges do worse financially by enrolling a dual-enrolled student,” said Joshua Wyner, founder and executive director of the College Excellence Program at the Aspen Institute, noting lower tuition and subsidies for the high school students. 

But these students can come back after graduation, Wyner said, especially if the colleges provided them with meaningful advising and helped them take courses that match their career interests. At Florida’s Valencia College, for example, about half its dual-enrollment students return. Most community colleges see about 20%, Wyner said.

Collins said CCAC is looking at ways to reduce or cover the cost of dual enrollment, from securing grant funding for some students to “trying to entice the state” to pay for these programs. Ohio, for example, covers the tuition and textbook fees of public high school students through its College Credit Plus program. 

Beyond these areas, she said CCAC is working to bring students back by hosting walk-ins to help students complete federal financial aid applications; marketing open houses months in advance; and informing prospective students of the college’s support services. 

Enrolling students is half the battle

A shrinking student population isn’t the only challenge CCAC faces; many students struggle to reach graduation after they sign up for classes. 

Community college students often face more challenges than students at four-year universities, as they are more likely to be low-income. At CCAC, almost 40% struggle to consistently access basic needs like food, shelter or child care, according to minutes of meetings of the college’s Board of Trustees. 

Still, the college’s graduation rate falls short of accreditation standards. Only 20% of full-time freshmen who enroll for the first time graduate three years later — one year beyond what an associate’s degree typically requires — according to a college spokesperson. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education says the rate should be at least 23% and has required the college to detail its plan for improvement. The commission will decide whether to renew CCAC’s accreditation in 2026. 

CCAC is working to meet the commissions’ standard, Collins said. The college has purchased software that alerts the institution when students are missing or failing classes, she said, and the enrollment planning committee will prioritize reaching the requirement.

“We’re going to be intrusive. We’re going to be deliberate. We’re reaching out, ‘Hey, you’re not doing what you said you were going to do when you decided to come to this institution. Now, we want to get you back on track. We want to help you succeed,’” she said.

Experts pointed to a variety of reforms that could help students enroll and graduate. Colleges should be more flexible with when, and how, courses are offered, and potentially expand online and weekend options. They should improve partnerships with four-year universities to help students transfer seamlessly. And they need greater financial support from state or local governments to help low-income students finance college. 

Take Virginia’s “Get a Skill. Get a Job. Get Ahead,” or “G3,” program, which the state officially launched in 2021. Initially funded at $69 million over two years, the program provides tuition assistance to students with annual household incomes below a certain level pursuing degrees in “high-demand” fields. Enrollment in eligible academic programs grew by 9% from fall 2020 to fall 2021, according to reporting by Virginia’s public media outlet.

A few community colleges nationwide have staved off enrollment declines by sharpening their focus on student success, according to the Aspen Institute. The Alamo Colleges District, a system of five in Texas, improved their graduation and transfer rates after hiring more advisers and ensuring all students received guidance earlier, among other improvements. Over the last decade, enrollment grew by 24%.

Lake Area Technical College, a small community college in South Dakota, saw enrollment grow by 61% in the last decade, partly because it tailored its academic offerings to the workforce needs of the region. More than three-quarters of students graduate in three years, and nearly all are employed one year after graduation. 

Above all, community colleges need to ensure their students get bachelor’s degrees or well-paying jobs, Wyner said. “Colleges that deliver value — meaning strong graduation rates and degrees that have value to students after they graduate, either in transfer or in the workforce — have gained enrollment. … 

“I think that too many colleges believe that they can market their way out of the current challenge or recruit their way out,” Wyner added. “I just don’t think we’re at a moment where that’s likely to work.”

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

This story was fact-checked by Pamela Smith.

The post After pandemic disruption, enrollment at CCAC stabilizes appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

A few months prior to my 20th birthday, as I was waiting and hoping that my younger brother would wake up from his cancer-induced coma, I found out I had been accepted at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia.

Since age 16, I had been working at a Giant Eagle to help support my family. Neither of my parents had bachelor’s degrees and there were zero expectations in my house that I’d go to college. I figured that if I didn’t go to college soon, I’d never get the hell out of that stock room and away from the chronic back pain it inflicted. I had applied to the only two colleges I knew anything about, WJU (now Wheeling University) and the later-discredited Art Institute of Pittsburgh, intending to enroll at whichever accepted me first, if either of them did.

I had missed nearly 115 days in high school, some of which were due to an emergency medical condition greatly worsened by doctors’ refusal to listen to my mum or me, resulting in an amputation. Other times I skipped because of how I was treated at school. I’d been tardy nearly 95 times, had countless detentions, and graduated with a 2.07 GPA and a 470 on my SAT.

A school staff member used to tell me that my “kind of people don’t go to college” and most of my peers at my suburban, Catholic high school either ignored me completely, called me and my family “poor white trash,” or mocked my appearance and heavy Pittsburgh accent. All throughout high-school, I was called lazy, stupid and ignorant by other students and even by several teachers. When I showed up for school, I’d sometimes deal with it by sneaking a swig of booze or popping Valiums that my mum gave me.

Fifteen years after that acceptance letter from WJU came through, I’m a data analyst, dedicated to understanding and addressing poverty, segregation, affordable housing and community violence.

On the way, I’ve developed a clear understanding that white poverty tends not to come with the additional, deep racism-based challenges that often come with Black poverty – though white poverty can be similarly grinding in places like rural Appalachia, the deep rural South and parts of the Rust Belt. But that understanding didn’t happen overnight. I’ve learned that while racial disparities are stark on their own, they’re often intertwined with class and other identities. 

Given this, when policymakers work to address challenges like poverty, they must be aware of the ways race, class, gender and other identities intersect so that they can tailor solutions to address the different challenges that tend to be experienced by different groups — including low-income white people.

A poor kid’s response to ‘white privilege’

My parents moved us from Carrick to Brookline when I was little, in hopes of keeping us away from gun violence. They sacrificed what little money they had, “robbed Peter to pay Paul,” and had us kids write letters pleading for financial aid to the Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh to attend Seton La Salle High School in Mount Lebanon. They wanted us to be safe and get a Catholic education, and had concerns about us going to Brashear High, which was Brookline’s Pittsburgh Public Schools feeder school.

Still, I didn’t always feel very safe at Seton or in my own home during much of high school. My parents did, and do, many loving things for me but also repeated the cycles of abuse they themselves were exposed to. Outside of the bullying and isolation at school, I was exposed to significant trauma in my home. As a result, our house was frequently visited by police. 

Police also had a tendency for following me around stores and harassing me. Once, an officer even kicked in a stall door that bashed into my head when someone falsely accused me of doing drugs in a carnival bathroom.

When the time came to start at WJU, my Pell Grant and other financial aid left a few thousand in tuition to pay. Around the same time, my dad lost his job and never regained full-time employment. We only hung on to the house because of Obama’s unemployment extension, my mum’s disability and my younger brother’s Supplemental Security Income from having cancer. But they didn’t have anything to help me, so I asked the priest who baptized me at the now-closed Saint Canice in Knoxville to lend me the money, and he did. My dad and brother dropped me off at WJU with a single pillow, my guitar and one backpack full of clothes.

Adapting to being a college student was hard at first. I spent the first few weeks trying to collect unemployment from the just-closed Giant Eagle where I had worked, and hearing about the problems at home on my flip phone. Academically, I didn’t know what paragraph breaks were, so my first submitted essay was a single wall of text. I went through college without a computer. 

But I made lifelong friends immediately. The son of an unemployed electrician, I felt included among classmates who were the sons and daughters of coal miners and tradesmen. Many of the professors were from Appalachia and cared deeply about first-generation college students. I had a bed again (my mattress at home got maggots, so I’d been sleeping on the floor) and a meal plan, which meant I didn’t have to worry about food stamps running out or having to steal food from Giant Eagle to eat lunch.

Given my life experiences and how hard (and lucky) my road to college was, when a middle-class white student in my psychology class said something like, “white people don’t experience real poverty,” I pushed back. And when they then told me to “check my white privilege,” I could barely keep from blurting out: “What the fuck did you just say?” Comments like that initially made me allergic to conversations about privilege.

Blaming poor people for poverty

I was slightly above, at or below the poverty line from birth until age 29, so my understanding of the advantages of being white came slowly and through meaningful exposure to people with different perspectives and life experiences.

It came through self-reflection on what I’d seen in my own life, a growing understanding of what many of my poor Black peers faced, and, importantly, an intersectional and non-shame-based approach to conversations about privilege and the history of discrimination in the United States. 

This all culminated in a major belief change in 2014, when I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations,” which affected me because it was coming from a Black man who grew up poor and reflected data, plus experiences, that connected with mine. 

Building off much of the existing research cited in Coates’ essay, Opportunity Insights of Harvard released a landmark study on race and income mobility. It found that when accounting for race, class and gender, poor Black and Indigenous Americans had significantly lower average incomes in adulthood when compared to their poor white and Asian peers, and poor Latinos fell somewhere in the middle.

While the study shows that lower-income people of all races tend to do worse than their peers of the same race who did not grow up in poverty, it also makes clear that class alone doesn’t explain gaps between the outcomes of poor children of different races. The study proposed two primary factors: racial bias against Black people and the neighborhood context in which low-income Black children tend to grow up. 

Here in Allegheny County, 73% of poor Black families reside in our higher need census tracts, along with 22% of poor white families and 14% of poor Asian families. Poor white and Asian families mostly reside in lower-need working-class and middle-class neighborhoods, unlike their poor Black peers.

As I wrote in a previous essay for PublicSource, our neighborhoods look the way they do because of the causes (structural racism) and consequences of persistent racial and economic segregation, in addition to the massive impact of deindustrialization. While I grew up poor, I did so primarily in a low-poverty, working-class, relatively safe neighborhood. Most of my poor Black peers are disproportionately exposed to concentrated poverty and gun violence and I strongly argue we cannot ignore them. Exposure to gun violence may be one of the most important factors that explain why neighborhoods matter in affecting life outcomes.

Despite being low-income, and after moving us from rental to rental, my parents were able to get a mortgage for our house in Brookline, an easier lift because they are white. Government programs kept the family afloat. Additionally, attending a college like WJU and meeting mentors there who held me to high expectations and supported me undeniably helped me eventually rise out of poverty. While the classism I faced throughout middle and high school was challenging (and would have been even harder if I was poor and Black), getting to attend a low-poverty school was still of huge benefit to my social mobility. 

While it took tremendous efforts to go from lifelong poverty to middle-class researcher, I rose out of poverty not because I worked any harder or was any smarter than poor peers, but because I was exposed to enough protective factors and got lucky at various points in my life.

With all this context in mind, I still think it’s important to talk about and understand white poverty in its own right and in a way that doesn’t invalidate and dismiss its challenges, especially in the current political reality. 

In my experience, politicians on the political right — from former poor people like Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance to generationally wealthy people like Donald Trump — tend to exploit poor white people when they are politically useful, but otherwise demonize them and do little to address poverty. And people on the political left tend to acknowledge the systemic drivers of poverty for every marginalized group except poor white people, but at least they tend to support the social safety net more broadly. 

Recent research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that social liberals, when prompted to reflect on white privilege, had reduced sympathy for poor white people and were more likely to blame them over external causes for their challenges. Liberals showed higher levels of sympathy for other poor groups. On the other hand, conservatives expressed low levels of sympathy for all low-income people. My experience is that neither political conservatives nor liberals tend to look at the very real external causes of white poverty. They blame poor white people for supposed personal failures.

Addressing learned biases and better understanding privilege, call for an intersectional approach that acknowledges how different, intersecting identities shape our experiences and outcomes. If a conversation or research study doesn’t minimally include the intersecting realities of race, class and gender, then that conversation or research is insufficient and incomplete. Just as poor Black people tend to experience additional hardships to those experienced by upper-income Black people, being poor and white is incredibly distinct from being upper income and white, so looking at race alone is not enough.

There also is a lack of understanding of the volume of white people who experience poverty. Here in Allegheny County, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the white poverty rate in 2022 was 8% and the Black poverty rate was 31%, which reflects the realities of structural racism. At the same time, there are more poor white people in the county than any other group: more than 73,000 poor white people and around 43,000 poor Black people. Nationally, most poor people are white, with over 17 million white, non-Hispanic people living in poverty. 

Policymakers have to understand the full scope of poverty and how it intersects with race to properly address disparities across groups and serve all those in need. 

Closely intertwined with the enduring reality of racism in America is the enduring reality of classism, reflected in the slur “white trash.” As documented in Nancy Isenberg’s book “White Trash,” people coming to the New World from England during the colonial era weren’t primarily escaping religious persecution and the monarchy, but rather shipped over because British elites saw America as a trash bin for England’s poor when starvation, incarceration or war didn’t dispose of them.

Surrounded by populations of white people brought over as indentured servants and Black people transported into slavery, wealthy whites, terrified of a united rebellion, have exploited the construct of race to divide and control poor people since the colonial era. According to Isenberg, the general landlessness of America’s white rural poor, meanwhile, led to a series of slurs that are still openly used to this day: waste people, redneck, hillbilly, white trash, clay eater, cracker and trailer trash, as just some common examples. Given how often I still hear them used, they seem to be considered acceptable, even on the political left. 

Throughout America’s history, poverty has been wrongly viewed as hereditary, not the result of structural barriers. As part of the eugenics movement of the early 1900s, forced sterilization was used to control “undesirable” populations, which included women of color and poor white women. And while discriminatory voting, housing, lending and land use laws throughout U.S history took clear aims at disenfranchising Black people, they also impact poor people of any race, though not equally.

Such thinking has seeped into political discourse on all sides, with poor white people viewed as part of a group of deplorables. Even today, most of the discourse on the 2016 election results blames poor and working class white people for the election of Donald Trump, even though exit polls show he was mostly elected by middle- and upper-income white people.

Statistical truths, individual experiences

In 2022, West Virginia — where my classmate had denied white poverty — was 90% white and the third-poorest state. Its second-poorest county, McDowell, is 90% white and has the state’s highest suicide rate, America’s highest opioid overdose rate among counties according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the nation’s lowest county life expectancy, the latter statistic on par with Iraq. 

Here in Allegheny County, most Black people live in our higher-need neighborhoods, which is not true of any other racial or ethnic group. At the same time, there are nearly as many white people in our higher-need neighborhoods as Black people — around 76,000 white people and around 82,000 Black people. While need is most concentrated in our Black neighborhoods,  there is also high need in mixed-but-majority-white neighborhoods in Pittsburgh’s South Hilltop, McKees Rocks and steel towns throughout the Mon Valley. These are neighborhoods where low-to-moderate-income people of different races are exposed to challenges like gun violence,  pollution, economic isolation, food deserts, transportation barriers and more, a fact that may get overlooked. 

I was poor or near poor from birth until about six years ago, when I landed my career as a researcher after graduating from Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College (an aggressive culture shock for me given that two-thirds of students come from the top fifth of the income distribution). Despite my own economic mobility, the consequences of poverty and trauma still impact me to this day. I also have had to deal with years of people invalidating my experiences or demonstrating a lack of empathy toward poor white people. 

This approach didn’t work in teaching me about the reality of racism, and it doesn’t help build coalitions across race and class to abolish structural racism, classism and other forms of discrimination. But exposure to intersectionality and approaches that combine empathetic listening with highlighting our shared humanity did and do work, and as a result, I’ve dedicated my adult life to addressing the causes and consequences of persistent racial and economic segregation.

We need to recognize and separate statistical truths from individual ones. One should never assume what someone’s life experience is without getting to know them. Individual experiences can and do stray from statistical averages. If someone has a bias or a lack of understanding about how intersecting identities tend to shape outcomes, we should educate in a way that acknowledges these identities and expose people to these ideas in ways that are effective, not confrontational.

We should care about eradicating poverty for people of all races, with an understanding that individuals from different groups tend to require different levels of support, given the reality of structural discrimination. To do that, we need diverse anti-poverty coalitions across race and class, not silos. 

Nick Cotter is a researcher with Allegheny County and the creator of the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project. He can be reached at pittsburghneighborhoodproject@gmail.com. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author alone. This piece does not reflect official views of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services. You can follow the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Project here.

The post From poor white roots to intersectional anti-poverty solutions for all appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

A year after its director was plucked into the service of the state, the Allegheny County Health Department remains without a long-term leader. 

The Board of Health and new County Executive Sara Innamorato have just begun an effort to fill what a spokesperson called “a vital position for the administration.”

“The director and the [board] have broad responsibilities that range from infant mortality and the opioid epidemic to air pollution and food safety,” wrote Abigail Gardner, the county’s communications director, in an email to PublicSource. “Leading the Health Department is highly technical and process-oriented work,” requiring understanding of law and regulations and “a massive amount of genuine public engagement.”

Unclear at this point is the public’s role in the selection process. Gardner wrote that “it is likely that there is some kind of piece of the process that will involve public input.”

At its Jan. 17 quarterly meeting, the Board of Health did not discuss plans to choose a director, and Acting Director Patrick Dowd declined comment.

Some advocacy organizations are setting out their expectations up front. 

On Dec. 7, a coalition of 35 organizations and 37 individuals under the banner of the Equitable and Just Greater Pittsburgh Network petitioned the county to prioritize health disparities and social determinants of well-being in its choice of a new director.

“The Health Director’s role and the Health Department affect so many aspects of people’s lives,” said Jason Beery, director of the network, convened by UrbanKind Institute, a Pittsburgh-based “think-and-do tank.” A new director would likely want to be involved in issues including air quality, housing health and the county’s development of a climate action plan, he said, so it’s important to hire someone “with certain qualities that we think would best address some of the complex health challenges and health outcomes that affect all of our communities and municipalities.”

Important department, leadership vacuum

Debra Bogen served as the county’s health director from early March 2020, as the pandemic shutdown loomed, until January 2023, when Gov. Josh Shapiro announced her nomination as state secretary of health. Bogen serves as the acting secretary because Republican lawmakers’ concerns have prevented state Senate confirmation. Dowd, the acting director, is a former Pittsburgh City Council member with a doctorate in history.

The 300-person department’s responsibilities include:

• Monitoring air quality, enforcing emissions regulations and allocating the Clean Air Fund
• Inspecting restaurants and otherwise enforcing food safety measures
• Enforcing housing health rules
• Striving to curb violence, overdoses and other causes of death
• Preparing the public for health emergencies like the pandemic.

The director is technically chosen by the nine-member Board of Health. Eight members continue to serve despite expired terms. The slots are some of many that Innamorato can use to shape the county bureaucracy after 12 years of former Executive Rich Fitzgerald making appointments. Gardner did not provide a timeline for reappointing or replacing members, or for hiring a director.

“We look forward to continuing to dig in with them and understand the expertise the board could use going forward to meet the moment or urgent public health needs,” Gardner wrote.

At its meeting, the board reelected as its chair Lee Harrison, a physician and epidemiology professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He has served on the board since 2001, was last reappointed in 2017 and has continued though his term expired in 2020.

‘Hard to get information’

Innamorato’s transition team has posted the health director position on its job opportunities website, indicating that it wants candidates for the $270,000-a-year position who:

• Will focus on racial and economic health disparities
• Has experience making “a measurable impact” on community health
• Is ready to support marginalized communities
• Can craft “an inclusive strategy” to fill vacancies in the department
• Will partner with governmental organizations, nonprofits and businesses to address health challenges.

A medical doctorate is “highly desirable,” according to the posting, though a candidate with a doctorate in public health may be considered.

In its letter to the Board of Health, the Equitable and Just Greater Pittsburgh Network called for a health director conversant in the social determinants of health — the effects that economic, environmental, political, social and cultural factors have on well-being.

The letter also noted the longstanding disparities in health care in the county, some of which improved in recent decades but many of which remain stark. 

The local health system’s failure to bring Black residents’ life expectancy and chronic disease rates in line with those of white residents was magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. The department pledged to work on closing gaps in care driven by racism and the lack of culturally appropriate health access in announcing a five-year plan a year ago.

A new director should also have experience in policy implementation and commit to transparency, openness, accountability, accessibility, cultural humility, collaboration and public participation in budgeting, according to the letter.

“It’s been hard to get information out from [the Health Department] in the past, and considering it is a department focused on public health, it feels like a lot of that information needs to be made public, and there needs to be clarity on why the department is making certain decisions,” said Beery in an interview with PublicSource. He also outlined the network’s views during the public comment portion of the board meeting.

The four-year-old network has never weighed in on a personnel decision before, according to Beery. Member groups would like to see some kind of public input process, potentially including representatives of underrepresented communities, areas burdened by pollution or other health threats and groups directly affected by health policy.

The network has not yet received a response to its letter, which was sent to the department, the Board of Health members and several Innamorato transition team chairs.

Beery said that a thorough and prompt process would be ideal, but added that the network is not trying to be antagonistic. “There is an amount of grace that we would show any new person in this kind of executive role,” he said.

Less patient was Clairton resident Kim Meachem, speaking at the board meeting as the department moves toward issuing a new operating permit for U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works.

“We are sick and tired of coming before this panel to tell you the same story over and over and over again,” she said, “and not seeing any results.”

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

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

The Jewish Healthcare Foundation has contributed funding to PublicSource’s healthcare reporting.

The post County’s top health post, vacant for a year, ‘vital’ to Innamorato administration appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

This story was originally published by Technical.ly, a news partner of PublicSource. You can sign up for their newsletters at technical.ly/subscribe.

In the final weeks of 2023 and first weeks of 2024, Technical.ly asked Pittsburgh founders and execs what trends they were anticipating for the local tech space.

Some leaders expect regulatory bodies to emphasize cybersecurity, while others anticipate more students considering their sector as a career possibility. Now, two weeks into this new year, here’s some of what Pittsburgh founders are thinking (or hoping) will happen next.

Cybersecurity will be prioritized across industries

In 2023, cybersecurity experts told Technical.ly that even when the worst happens and companies have to downsize, they usually don’t cut corners in the area that keeps company secrets safe.

For Vigilant Ops CEO Ken Zalevsky’s part, he anticipates that regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration would take an increased interest in cybersecurity. Having worked in the field himself, Zalevsky said being vulnerable to attacks can be costly in any industry — and when it comes to healthcare, a lack of cybersecurity can compromise patient safety. The FDA requires cybersecurity measures to be built into medical devices; Zalevsky expects other industries will follow suit.

“We’re already seeing that energy and others who are trying to look at legislation and ways to make their products within their industries more secure, requiring security documentation, like the software bill of materials and others,” Zalevsky said. (Vigilant Ops makes an automation platform for the generation, maintenance and authenticated sharing of certified software bill of materials.) “I think we’ll just kind of see that trend continue as the year [progresses].”

The commercial space industry will expand

Away from healthcare and into galaxies far away, Astrobotic CEO John Thornton told Technical.ly in December that 2024 could bring the commercial space industry more NASA collaborations. He cited NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative as one indicator — especially because it’s a program the North Side space tech company is participating in via its Peregrine Mission One, which launched on Jan. 8. The team’s efforts to gather payload data have been fruitful, but due to a propellant leak on Jan. 9, the spacecraft is now expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Additionally, Thornton imagined that companies might be willing to take more risks — but if the payoffs weren’t worth it, this could lead to fewer successful missions.

“One risk I see to this model’s success is that companies may be willing to bet everything on an opportunity to participate in the burgeoning space industry,” Thornton said. “If companies do this by underbidding future commercial contracts without having a strong financial footing, we may see a decline in mission success that could affect the industry as a whole.”

Robots will aid the manufacturing workforce, in more ways than one

Even when the world is in turmoil, things still need to be made. Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute Senior Outreach Manager Livia Rice said she believes the need for manufacturers will remain — yet robotics will be increasingly incorporated into the sector to fill workforce gaps. In addition to the ARM Institute’s outreach efforts, Rice expects robotics will be used to do the more dangerous parts of a given job, which will further incentivize young people to consider manufacturing as a viable career.

“I think that’s going to be a huge trend in really trying to influence the next generation of people to consider careers in manufacturing,” Rice said. “I’m sure when we were kids, no one was talking to us about manufacturing … but it really is a very vibrant career. So focusing on that, and then the integration of AI into robotics and manufacturing, I think that’s going to continue to be a very important trend.”

Autonomous ground vehicles will be used in government defense efforts

For Neya Systems Division Manager Kurt Bruck, the theme of 2024 is speed. The Warrendale-based company develops advanced autonomous solutions for unmanned systems and was recently selected for part of a $14.8 million U.S. Army contract along with Carnegie Robotics and Robotic Research Autonomous Industries. The Department of Defense, Bruck said, often needs its vehicles to go 80 miles per hour to effectively navigate jungles or forests.

Additionally, he thinks navigating with cameras as opposed to LIDAR-based navigation will become a trend due to the expense and the fragility of night vision cameras. He also imagines that drones and autonomy will become a priority in the name of speed and creating fewer risks for soldiers.

“The Department of Defense has been fielding drones for a decade, but ground vehicles have never been fielded. I’ve never seen autonomous ground vehicles actually working with soldiers, because it’s just more of a difficult, different challenge,” Bruck said. “But fielding these systems for the first time [will be] a key trend and overarching trend. I think in the next three years, we’re going to start to see many, many more autonomous brand vehicles working with soldiers and various missions being kind of like a tool in the toolbox that they use daily.”

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a 2022-2023 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.

The post Pittsburgh tech leaders expect more emphasis on cybersecurity, NASA collaborations and renewed interest in manufacturing jobs in 2024 appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

I love aggressive music.

In fact, my love of extreme music forms a major part of my identity, like it does for so many others who enjoy heavy metal, punk rock and hardcore. This is my toe-tapping, heart-thumping, above-the-neck music that has brought me joy over the past few decades.

The first time I knew I loved aggressive music was in grade school. The ubiquity of MTV and pop radio exposed me to videos and music from varied artists. Something happened to me when I first heard the sound of the electric guitar. It was as if a blast of lightning struck my nervous system. Everything in my body felt supercharged. It’s an excitement I still feel every time I push play. I was bound to be a metalhead.

At the time “hair-metal” was everywhere. This became my entry into the greater world of heavy metal. Seeing videos by Poison, White Lion and Skid Row showed me that others also enjoyed this music. Musical connections with other metalheads forged in grade school led me to bands such as Anthrax and Sepultura, which in turn led me to artists that would eventually become central to my identity in my teen years, such as Helmet, Jawbox and Fugazi. These days I’m quite fond of a subgenre known as doom metal. 

Though heavy metal has an unfortunate reputation for hostility and sometimes even intolerance and racism, I’ve found something entirely different: A scene that has transcended politics and borders, which encourages conversation about taboo topics, marginalized lifestyles and diverse backgrounds — including mine. 

My love of aggressive music opened up the world that I only ever saw in newspaper headlines and still photos in encyclopedias, and introduced me to most of my closest friends. 

Aggressive sounds and African horizons

Heavy metal has also opened doors to cultures, countries and people in ways I could never have imagined. 

As a college student, I majored in political science, and focused my attention on Africa’s post-colonial history. A door opened for me while I was studying for an MA in African Studies in London. Friends in the heavy metal scene there asked me about the metal scene in Africa. I had few answers, but decided to find some. 

What I discovered was a continent that was rich with a music scene that resonated for others the way it has for me. I saw firsthand how metal has bridged troubled histories, connected rival ethnic groups and built common understanding. 

I have since authored two books on the subculture’s existence and challenges in Africa, and have contributed research to the growing body of work of metal studies in academia by way of published papers and speaking engagements across universities in the U.S. and Europe. 

Metal has provided me the confidence to step into this world as a scholar and writer, an unimaginable thought as a kid.

Fans in Africa found it much easier to talk to me as an outsider about certain issues because of the common love of metal that allowed us to break through cultural barriers. Notably, many Africans were curious about America’s openness to the LGBTQ+ communities, because being openly gay was still viewed negatively in many countries. This also allowed for questions on American life, social issues and how Africans felt Westerners viewed them.

I have also seen how metal bands in Madagascar and Togo celebrate their pre-colonial histories and cultures by incorporating pre-Francophone languages and traditions. I met a band from Ghana that uses their music to address widening economic disparities and highlight how poverty is cleaving their county. I have seen how South Africans use metal to build a post-apartheid future, and a band in Zimbabwe that uses heavy metal to spread a message of unity and hope in the midst of authoritarian rule.

Needless to say, these experiences have taught me to be more human, humbling me in multiple ways. And heavy metal is very much at the center of bridging conversations in centers of conflict. In Kenya, I met the band Last Year’s Tragedy, whose music serves to unite the scene as they ask fans to look beyond their ethnic upbringings in the wake of post-election violence that pitted neighbors and communities against each other.

A welcoming scene with global reach

Having had the privilege of learning how aggressive music scenes have come to exist within other cities and countries, especially in Africa, I gained a greater appreciation for the second-to-none scene that exists in my adopted hometown.

I was introduced to this city’s metal scene in the mid-90s, after my mother moved us to Central Pennsylvania. Raised by a single mother, my younger sister and I bounced around more than we would have liked to. My love for metal allowed me to discover more about the region and get closer to others with the same affinity. 

For Appalachia-based fans, Pittsburgh’s scene was the “go-to” for what was happening in metal, punk and hardcore. After leaving Pennsylvania for a stint in South Florida, I returned to the Keystone State (this time in Pittsburgh), where I immersed myself in the metal scene as a writer, guitarist in the band Negative Thirteen and passionate fan. 

Pittsburgh’s metal scene is ambitious and honest, because of the fans and their drive to keep pushing to the next level. Our scene has long prided itself in being a community bound by our love of metal, punk and hardcore, but also by our status as outsiders. 

Though there are times when the scene may not be as unifying as fans feel it could be, Pittsburgh metal fans are quick to remind each other that our love of aggressive music puts us in the same room together, providing an entryway to better understanding others and respecting various lived experiences. Discussions around social and political issues at shows end with handshakes because of this.

Pittsburgh’s Metal, punk and hardcore shows are no place for hate, or spiteful rhetoric of any kind. “All are welcome” is a common theme within the scene and at our venues. This is exactly the welcoming that has allowed me, as a Puerto Rican fan, and many others to feel at home at a metal gig. Notably, the ability to speak Spanish at a metal show with another fan and not be told to “go back to where I came from” is a feeling of comfort I cherish.

The work ethic, talent and passion that many in this city have for aggressive music has only grown in recent years and it is a scene that we have been able to share with the rest of the world in a big way.

In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, bands such as Dream Death, Eviction, Aus-Rotten, Half Life and Zao began pushing Pittsburgh’s aggressive music scene to audiences worldwide. Since then bands such as Signs of the Swarm, Lady Beast, Submachine and Horehound have kept its aggressive music engine revving. All of these bands have fan bases throughout the U.S. and abroad. 

Others have elevated this scene to another level.

Code Orange formed when its primary members were students at the Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12 arts magnet, and they have gone on to become a global brand with two Grammy nominations. Citing punk, hardcore and metal influences, their success was expected by many who closely watched the local scene.

It is remarkable to walk into a record shop in Stockholm or Tel Aviv and see an album by one of Pittsburgh’s own, or to see fans wearing shirts of bands from the Pittsburgh scene at metal festivals in Kenya and Johannesburg. Having fans and musicians in various cities around the world ask me about Pittsburgh’s metal scene has been wonderful.

What is it about our scene that has brought it to stages around the world? Part of it is the work ethic that many in this city know all too well. Most here grew up in working-class homes with working-class upbringings and values that encouraged people to push forward regardless of circumstances — a true “do-it-yourself” mindset.

Going underground

It was not always like this.

By the mid-2000s, Pittsburgh’s metal scene was fairly stagnant. Gatekeeping and “scene politics” kept many bands from making strides. Bands struggled to get gigs, promote themselves and get taken seriously by other fans of aggressive music in this city.

What happened next was an ignition.

Independent promoters got more involved in the local scene, encouraging venues to take metal more seriously. Heeding the call were Mr. Smalls Funhouse, Penn Brewery, Shred Shed and the aggressive music Mecca in the making, Preserving. These venues and promoters have provided local acts the opportunity to perform with touring acts and to connect with regional artists while elevating our own scene.

Bands started to push each other in a way that fostered a professional outlook. With the ever-moving vicissitudes of the music industry, musicians started to assist each other by promoting local bands on social media platforms, offering up design services or assisting in teaching other musicians how to navigate new avenues such as streaming and platforms. Record labels such as 20 Buck Spin, Willow Tip, Our Ancient Futures, Play Alone and Katzulhu Productions have helped validate Pittsburgh’s scene by investing in a city that believes it can be a global center for heavy metal.

Eventually Pittsburgh’s metal scene started to believe in itself. The success of festivals such as Deutschtown Music Festival, The Millville Music Festival, Descendants of Crom, Metal Immortal and Skull Fest have provided opportunities for fans and musicians to converge in new spaces and enjoy the local talent.

For me heavy metal has become more than just another lineup of albums in a playlist. It has shaped my identity, providing me with a passport of memories and a life of words that continues to open up new doors for me and take me to places I had only previously dreamed of seeing. There is nothing like heavy metal.

Edward Banchs is an author and independent researcher based in Verona and can be reached at edwardbanchs@gmail.com.

The post How heavy metal took me all the way to Africa — and deeper into Pittsburgh appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Sara Innamorato laid out a new administration priority yesterday, allocating $500,000 to a pilot program for subsidizing child care in one of her first big moves since taking office.

The new Allegheny County executive said the region faces an “urgent crisis” in child care while announcing the funds during a tour of the Shady Lane School daycare center in Point Breeze North.

Innamorato said thousands of local families may be unable to afford care for their children in the absence of government help, which could pull parents out of the workforce and hamper economic growth.

“Child care is such a priority of my administration,” Innamorato said. “…The work will not stop today.”

The $500,000 boosts an existing county program that subsidizes child care for families making twice to three times the federal poverty level who also meet work or education eligibility requirements. The program – Allegheny County Child Care Matters – began in April 2022 using $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act [ARPA] funds allocated by the federal government to prop up day care services. 

So far, the program has subsidized care costs for 356 children. This week’s top-up will usher in 28 more who make up the current wait list, leaving some leftover funds for an unspecified number of additional children. The administration believes as many as 15,000 children may fall within the eligibility bracket.

Experts say high operational costs and staffing shortages prompted by low pay and high stress have strained the child care sector since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Pennsylvania now has nearly 600 fewer facilities than in 2020, with a net loss of 18 in Allegheny County.

The county established the Department of Children Initiatives [DCI] in 2021 to shore up an industry reeling from the pandemic and got to work distributing relief funds directly to care providers. Out of that later flowed the Child Care Matters program in conjunction with the Early Learning Resource Center.

While some child care professionals, such as Shady Lane Executive Director Lindsey Ramsey, say DCI has helped day care centers stay afloat, others in the industry are concerned the gaps remain wide and fear what may await when federal funds dry up.

DCI had spent less than a third of its $20 million ARPA-funded startup budget as of December, and must divvy out the remainder by the end of 2024 or return it to the federal government. 

Innamorato yesterday emphasized she appreciates the scale of the challenge and is committed to applying county resources to solutions.

“We are going to be meeting with businesses, nonprofits, our state and federal government and the foundation community to discuss a more unified and holistic approach to subsidized childcare for working families in Allegheny County and support the provider workforce,” she said.

“It is not just an issue for young families. It’s an economic issue for our whole county.” 

Correction: A previous version of this story mischaracterized the income qualifications for the Child Care Matters program.

Jamie Wiggan is Deputy Editor at Public Source. He can be reached at Jamie@publicsource.org.

The post Innamorato pledges $500k to alleviate child care ‘crisis’ appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Advocates for reform at the Allegheny County Jail received new hope at Thursday’s Jail Oversight Board meeting. New County Executive Sara Innamorato attended along with two other new board members, continuing her shakeup of county government.

Innamorato’s mere attendance of the board’s meeting was notable after her predecessor, Rich Fitzgerald, was criticized for sending a proxy to its meetings for almost his entire 12-year tenure. That criticism grew especially loud in recent years as a string of deaths in the county jail drew attention to the Fitzgerald administration’s management of the lockup. 

“This is going to be a place where there is productive dialogue,” Innamorato told reporters after the meeting. “It doesn’t mean that everything that the community demands of us is going to happen instantaneously, but there is going to be an honest answer.”

She was mostly quiet Thursday as residents made comments to the board, but longtime advocates made note of her presence.

“I am actually heartened to see our county executive here,” said Tanisha Long, an organizer with the Abolitionist Law Center. “We haven’t had one here in years.”

After public speakers repeatedly aired concerns about a lack of medical staff in the jail, Innamorato asked jail officials how they are trying to speed hiring of nurses and other staff. One responded that they hope to boost hiring incentives for medical staff. 

Judge Susan Evashavik DiLucente, who sits on the board as the newly-elected president judge of the Court of Common Pleas, tried to reset the board’s tenor after 2023 was marked by internal debates between members and anger from community members. 

After one advocate, Marion Damick, criticized the board for its performance last year, DiLucente responded, “We’re off to a new start, with a lot of new members, and it’s going to be a new day.”

Another board member, County Controller Corey O’Connor, welcomed the board’s new members, saying their approach to questioning jail officials “is different than what we had in the past, and having the county executive here as well, we’re able to get a lot more information.”

Poor jail conditions and deaths of incarcerated people were a major issue in the campaign for county executive last year. Innamorato, a progressive Democrat, pledged as a candidate to take a more active role in the oversight board and jail management.

Innamorato was not the board’s only newcomer. DiLucente, elected president by her fellow Common Pleas judges late last year, and Judge Eileen Bigley replaced Judge Elliot Howsie and Judge Beth Lazzara, respectively. 

The board’s three citizen-member seats were empty Thursday. Innamorato’s spokesperson told PublicSource the executive will nominate new members this month. They will need County Council approval to serve.

Several speakers said Thursday that their hopes for a more productive board are mixed with deep-seated frustration with slow progress.

“If we are not your partners, we will be your adversaries.  And we do not want to do that,” said Dave Swanson, a Mennonite pastor and member of the Pennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network. “We want to work together.”

Another resident gave a solemn reading of the names of people who died in the jail as public attendees and board members stood. 

“This is an ongoing and persistent problem where our loved ones are going into the jail and they are not leaving,” Long said. “My hope is that with this newer board that these are problems we can begin to solve.”

O’Connor and Sheriff Kevin Kraus are holdovers from the last two years. So is County Councilor Bethany Hallam, a political ally of Innamorato who harshly criticized Fitzgerald’s jail management practices and often quarreled during meetings with Howsie, the board’s former chair.

While the board and the jail have fresh leadership, many problems will persist. A staffing shortage continues, stretching correctional officers thin and often requiring overtime. The jail’s medical staff has dozens of vacancies, raising more safety concerns. And some major aspects of the jail’s operation, like the arresting practices of local police departments and the judges’ choices of which defendants to confine in the jail, are entirely out of Innamorato’s control.

The jail is without a permanent leader after Warden Orlando Harper retired in September. The state appointed an interim leader to serve while Innamorato and council decide on a permanent replacement.

“I think a lot of people in this room are in general hopeful about what we can do as a new board, [with] a new warden,” resident Jodi Lincoln said during the public comment period. “The possibilities to improve the jail feel more real than ever before.”

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

The post Innamorato brings ‘new day’ to Jail Oversight Board, but deep issues remain at lockup appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.