On the day before Thanksgiving, a 34-year-old man in a high school letterman’s jacket entered District Judge Oscar Petite’s courtroom, looking weary. “I don’t sleep very well,” he told the judge, attributing it to a traumatic brain injury.
A year prior, he had signed a lease to stay in a single room occupancy [SRO] unit at the county’s then-brand-new Second Avenue Commons.
Even as he walked into court to defend himself against eviction from Second Avenue Commons, that facility’s board showed members of the media around its $22 million building, touting what its management called in a press release “one year of service to adults who are experiencing homelessness, their partners, and their pets.”
The tenant — who is not being named because publicity might make it harder to find new lodging — was $388 behind on his rent for the room. He was also accused of having visitors in his room after formal visiting hours, which are 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Renee Brown, an assistant property manager at Second Avenue Commons, told the judge that the tenant kept a “cluttered” room, had tried to enter the facility with an unspecified tool and had argued with building security.
Asked by the judge whether the facility might give the tenant another chance, Brown, an employee of NDC Asset Management LLC, said, “It’s not possible.”
The man is among 69 people, currently or recently living in three centrally located SRO facilities, who have been subjects of landlord-tenant complaints — which initiate eviction proceedings — this year. Of those, 19 were filed from Oct. 31 through Nov. 2. Eight of those 19 apply to Second Avenue Commons tenants.
The evictions were filed by NDC, a firm based in Bradenton, Florida, with a Strip District office. That company handles the day-to-day management of the SROs at Second Avenue Commons; Wood Street Commons, Downtown; and Centre Avenue Housing in the Hill District.
NDC officials did not respond to an email or voicemail messages seeking comment. NDC works in partnership with nonprofit developer and manager ACTION Housing at all three facilities.
“I’ve had conversations with NDC about evictions,” Kyle Webster, ACTION’s vice president of housing and general counsel, told PublicSource. “We expect them to ensure that they have exhausted options before they file for evictions. We do know that threatening eviction is one of the options you have to exhaust” in some cases to get the tenant’s attention, he added.
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Simply filing a landlord/tenant complaint, even if it does not end in an eviction, can poison the person’s prospects of finding alternative housing, said Eileen Yacknin, an attorney with Neighborhood Legal Services who has previously defended an SRO resident.
“It’s becoming increasingly hard and devastating to poor people to find adequate, affordable, safe and secure housing in Pittsburgh and all over,” she said.
The 19 autumn evictions come as the Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS] and the City of Pittsburgh worked on plans — still not fully detailed — to address the needs of the unhoused this winter. ACDHS has said it has 450 shelter beds available and a plan for more beds in severe weather situations, but the agency’s online dashboard counts nearly 900 people either in shelters or receiving outreach services while living outside.
The department funds some beds or tenants in each of the three SRO facilities, and in some cases tenants must participate in program requirements in order to receive rent benefits, according to Mark Bertolet, the ADCHS spokesperson. In an email response to questions, he did not address whether the county has guidelines regarding evictions from those units.
For some of those in SROs, the alternatives are bleaker than the weather.
Asked by Petite about his income, the young man said, “I don’t have one right now.” The judge asked whether he has a substance abuse problem. “No.” How does he eat? “I get by.”
SROs part of ‘homelessness prevention’
SROs are an important link near the bottom of the continuum of housing options, said Webster. The rooms are small, some with their own bathrooms, and typically connected to communal kitchens and other shared spaces.
“They’re kind of a lower-barrier housing option,” he said, much as YMCAs were for single men in decades past. “A primary reason [for their existence] would be homelessness prevention,” he added, and some people thrive in them because of their communal nature.
Financing their creation and operation is a complex task, Webster said, often involving a mix of public housing funding streams, investor contributions, other contracts and tenant rents. Rents for Second Avenue Commons SROs, disclosed on landlord/tenant complaints, appear to range from $525 to $646 a month. Tenants, though, don’t usually pay full freight.
Tenants with Housing Choice (Section 8) Vouchers can pay just 30% of their income in rent, Webster noted, and that can push their obligations below $100 a month, or even to zero.
The tenant in Petite’s courtroom on Wednesday had been receiving rent help through a program administered by Pittsburgh Mercy, which runs the emergency shelter at Second Avenue Commons. According to Brown, the man failed to attend required counseling, so the rent aid stopped.
‘Nothing offered’
Second Avenue Commons includes 43 SROs, 95 year-round shelter beds and 40 overflow beds available for the winter months.
Down the block from his SRO unit at Second Avenue Commons, Brody Tuckfelt passed Tuesday at Allegheny County Jail, where he was being held on a nonviolent offense. On a phone call, he said he found out he was evicted from Second Avenue from his girlfriend, who lives in the neighboring SRO unit in the facility.
“My girlfriend told me they put a sign on the door saying you got evicted and you owe two thousand-some dollars,” said Tuckfelt, who said a housing program through Pittsburgh Mercy had previously picked up the rent.
“There was nothing offered like, ‘Hey, you can go to another shelter,’ nothing,” he said of his eviction notice from NDC.
The notice came about a year after the controversial closure of the Stockton Avenue encampment where Tuckfelt had been tenting. He was on the local news as one of the first enthusiastic residents of Second Avenue Commons on the heels of the camp closure, excited for his own room, a microwave and brand new facilities.
With no job or Social Security income, Tuckfelt is counting on his contacts at Community Care & Resistance In Pittsburgh [CCRIP], an aid group serving those recently released from jail, to help him secure an alternative to living, again, on the street.
On Wednesday, Russell Beyer, a guest on Second Avenue Commons’ shelter floor, walked through the rain to the bus to accompany an SRO resident to an eviction hearing, wondering why his friend had to go to court to stay sheltered.
“The whole point of these SROs is you’re housing homeless people, so if you’re not going to elect to renew the lease for the term then you should have some plan for them so they’re not homeless again,” said Beyer.
SRO eviction reasons? Mostly, failure to pay
Pennsylvania law allows evictions when the rent isn’t paid, when the lease expires and when a term of the lease is violated. Landlords must state at least one reason on the landlord/tenant complaint, though they are allowed to add more at the time of the hearing.
Judge Petite’s office provided PublicSource with complaints in the most recent 32 cases filed by NDC against tenants of Second Avenue Commons, Wood Street Commons and Centre Avenue Housing. Of those:
- All 32 alleged that the tenant was behind on rent
- None alleged that the lease had expired
- 12 indicated there had been other lease violations — mostly untidiness or abandoning the unit — but did not suggest violence
- 3 claimed the tenant was violent or threatening.
Petite said that when someone is behind on rent, he can refer them to rent relief specialists or Neighborhood Legal Services attorneys, who are often right in his courtroom. Sometimes he tells them to go immediately to the Housing Stabilization Center on Seventh Avenue, Downtown. That center guides tenants to a variety of available housing funding sources.
Webster added that the tenant must be involved in the rent help application process, and some “are completely unresponsive until they get that court date.”
“I hate evicting people for failure to pay,” Webster added. “I think it’s a stupid reason to make somebody potentially be unhoused.” But sometimes program requirements or investment contracts require that every tenant pay rent.
Webster said some SRO tenants have behavioral health problems, and managers should be understanding, but there are limits.
“If one tenant’s behavior and activities are adversely affecting the enjoyment of the premises by other tenants,” he said, an eviction filing may be unavoidable. “It is unfortunate that in our current system the primary leverage a landlord has is the threat of eviction, but that is the system we exist in.”
Housed for Thanksgiving?
Yacknin said landlords often scrutinize the rental histories of prospective tenants, and can access limited information on eviction cases via publicly available dockets.
“They are able to see on a court docket that an eviction case has been filed against prospective tenants, regardless of the outcome of that, regardless of the merits,” she said. “What has been happening is that the landlord will adamantly refuse to lease to anybody with a record regardless of anything that [the tenant may say that] doesn’t appear on the record itself.”
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Some states seal some eviction records, so they don’t become barriers to housing, but Pennsylvania has not taken any such measure, she said.
Back in the courtroom, Petite weighed his options. “The condition of your unit is enough for them to put you out,” he told the Second Avenue Commons tenant. “It’s very cluttered.”
The tenant said the room was a mess because he “was getting ready to sell a bunch of stuff in there.”
After Brown, of NDC, said the company would not consider extending the tenant’s lease, Petite noted that it doesn’t expire until Nov. 30. He postponed consideration of eviction until Dec. 5.
Said the judge to the tenant: “You can stay over Thanksgiving.”
Are you facing possible eviction?
Call the Allegheny Link at 1-866-730-2368.
If you’ve received notice of an impending eviction and have a landlord open to mediation, contact Just Mediation Pittsburgh at 412-228-0730.
If there has been an eviction action filed, contact Neighborhood Legal Services at 412-255-6700.
Need in-person help? The Housing Stabilization Center at 415 Seventh Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh has drop-in hours Monday through Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Check out eviction process information and resources from Eviction Lab.
The Allegheny County DHS Housing Navigator has a downloadable step-by-step guide to the eviction process and has a unit that works with renters and their landlords to help keep people in safe, affordable housing.
Correction: This year 69 landlord/tenant complaints have been filed against tenants of Second Avenue Commons, Wood Street Commons and Centre Avenue Housing. An earlier version of the story included a lower number. This story has also been updated to reflect comment from the Allegheny County Department of Human Services received after initial publication.
Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org, on Instagram @stephaniestrasburg or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @stephstrasburg.
Rich Lord is the managing editor at PublicSource and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org.
Venuri Siriwardane contributed.
