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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not sliding back

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guns, glass and ‘extra protein’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paying up 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story was fact-checked by Sarah Liez.

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

Update (5/18/23): The Allegheny Regional Asset District will grant $3.8 million to five Mon Valley libraries. The RAD board voted to steer its first-ever Transformative Community Library Fund grants to:

• Braddock Carnegie Library ($1.25 million) for exterior and vestibule repairs and reconstruction
• Carnegie Free Library of Swissvale ($800,000) for accessibility renovations
• Carnegie Library of McKeesport ($750,000) to create public space for community groups
• Clairton Public Library ($500,000) to help move the library to a new space
• Carnegie Library of Homestead ($500,000) to make the building more accessible and increase programming space.

The fund, meant to address the needs of libraries serving low-income communities, has a $5 million outlay and further grants are likely, according to RAD.

WESA and PublicSource reported last year on the gulf in funding and needs of the dozens of separate library systems in Allegheny County.

Reported 6/2/22: The Allegheny Regional Asset District will push millions in additional funding toward libraries serving the county’s most impoverished areas, the agency’s board announced Thursday. 

A new $5 million Transformative Community Library Fund, to be spent over four years, will help libraries that serve distressed areas to plan improvements, amid a push for more effective collaborations to reduce administrative burdens.

“The communities that most need libraries may have less access to them,” said RAD board Secretary/Treasurer Sylvia Fields. She added that short staffing often hamstrings libraries’ community service. “Library directors and their staff are oftentimes consumed by administrative duties.”

RAD is a major funder of Allegheny County’s 46 separate library systems — the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and 45 suburban systems — which have disparate levels of funding, physical spaces, staffing and programming.

The Allegheny County Library Association characterizes 16 of the county’s suburban libraries as serving distressed communities, based on poverty rates.

Fields called RAD’s commitment an “unprecedented investment” shortly before the board at its quarterly meeting voted to amend the 2022 budget to draw $5 million from reserves for the new fund.

The money need not be shared evenly across the four-year period. It can be distributed rapidly or slowly, depending on the applications received. RAD staff will work with the libraries to craft their plans and applications.

WESA and PublicSource reported last month on the disparate finances and needs of the dozens of separate library systems in Allegheny County. Among the findings:

• 10% of the funding flowing from the RAD tax to suburban libraries is distributed based on poverty rates, with the rest allocated based on factors including local contributions, circulation and use of computers and wi-fi.
• More than three times as much RAD money flows to the 19-branch CLP than to all 45 suburban libraries combined.
• CLP has offered to share some of its expertise with suburban libraries, but acceptance of those offers has been uneven, and collaboration currently isn’t mandatory
• Officials believe funding concerns will eventually force more shared services, though wholesale mergers appear unlikely in the near future.
• State funding to libraries has been flat for more than a decade and runs less than one-sixth of what Ohio gives to its libraries.

RAD has been pushing smaller libraries to cooperate more on back-office functions, either with the 19-branch CLP or through ACLA. Fields said RAD will “look forward to having all libraries enroll in these programs.”

“It’s something that’s really, really important to us to bring our libraries in distressed communities to a higher level of service to their communities,” said Dusty Elias Kirk, the RAD board chair, at the board meeting.

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

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

90.5 WESA’s parent organization, Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting, is among the organizations that receive RAD funding.  

The post Updated: Mon Valley libraries get $3.8 million for ‘transformative’ changes appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

On a Tuesday evening in October in the Duquesne branch of the Carnegie Library of McKeesport, a lone teen was hanging out while the librarian worked at her computer.

A broken clock on the wall was stuck at a few minutes before 2 o’clock.

It was quiet at the library — some might even say too quiet.  

Tucked away in the community’s elementary school and until recently open only eight hours a week, the library branch in this Mon Valley community sometimes struggles to attract patrons. 

Since Oct. 31, library officials are finally — though barely — meeting state minimum standards by having the branch be open 20 hours a week. The library’s director says they are working to get the word out about the services and programs they offer.

On this evening, though, Duquesne teen Cristian Davis was the sole patron, playing video games on the computer. He couldn’t check out any books because of the fines he owed.

He said he enjoys coming here when there’s nothing to do outside.

“Most of the time it’s chill, you know, come here. There’s a lot of books, a lot of options. You know, even there are some interesting books on the shelves. Really. Just come here, hang out, chill out, you know, have fun,” he said.

Some libraries in Allegheny County are open 60 to 70 hours per week. Duquesne’s branch — part of just one of 46 separate library systems in the county — highlights the disparities in local library staffing, finances, programming and services. WESA and PublicSource have chronicled some of those disparities and how they have been fueled by the region’s fragmentation and funding formulas that push Regional Asset District [RAD] tax revenues to libraries that have higher circulation and more local funding.

However, more funds are poised to soon flow to libraries in some of the county’s most distressed communities.

RAD Board Vice Chair Dan Griffin said a library “can be a resume center, it can be a community area, it can be a senior center, it can be a kids’ library center, it can be an after-school study center, it can be all of the above.”

That, he added, is why libraries are so vital to disadvantaged communities. “There’s a huge differential between people who have access to high-speed internet, people who have access to good libraries, etcetera, and those who don’t.”

From a castle to a single room

Duquesne’s facility may need more than dollars to bring back the bustle of years past.

“I feel like it would be nice for the kids if it was open more. And for the adults,” said Kierha Crumity, who, along with her children, was in the library one day this summer to use the printer. She often ends up driving to the Carnegie Library of Homestead when Duquesne’s facility isn’t open, she said.  

The Duquesne branch’s hours, its location in a school and a slow rebound from pandemic changes may be conspiring to limit its effectiveness in a community of high need, where half of its children live in poverty. 

The community’s library wasn’t always an underused room in its school. 

The city was originally given a Carnegie library, which opened in 1904 to great fanfare. A newspaper article from that day noted a “monster parade” with a crowd of 20,000 people in honor of the library’s dedication. The Pittsburgh Daily Post called it the greatest day in the history of Duquesne.

Like other castle-like early Carnegie libraries — similar to those still standing in Braddock and Homestead — it was also home to a pool, gymnasium, auditorium and more. 

The building was torn down in 1968, and Duquesne was without a library for some time. McKeesport’s library system opened a branch here in the early 2000s.

The Duquesne branch isn’t always dead quiet, said Vincent D’Alesio, the director of the Carnegie Library of McKeesport. The library’s program coordinator has also done some “crafternoon” activities to attract more families to the branch, he said.

“It’s a little bit easier in summertime,” he said. “We’re able to have … more daytime hours because we can’t have the branch open during school hours, during the school year.”

Balancing the books

Libraries in poorer communities tend to have less funding, translating into smaller workforces and shorter hours.

Citing disparities earlier this year, major local library funder RAD announced in June that it will push millions in additional funding toward libraries serving the county’s most impoverished areas. RAD distributes proceeds from the 1% countywide sales tax add-on.

RAD’s new $5 million Transformative Community Library Fund aims to aid places like Duquesne.

D’Alesio said McKeesport’s library system is considering an application to the fund. To date, though, only the Braddock Carnegie Library has applied to the fund, for aid to its ongoing renovation effort. RAD officials say they’ve been having informal talks with libraries and are hopeful they will be distributing money soon.

RAD Executive Director Rich Hudic said the slow flow of applications isn’t worrisome.

“Our board is looking for proposals that will have transformational impact for their communities. That requires time and due diligence to make sure the projects are as strong as they can be,” he said.

The new RAD fund isn’t meant to subsidize library operations, which are already largely backed by the sales tax. RAD expects to steer nearly $35 million to libraries in the county next year. (Of that, $27.3 million is slated for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, some of which is spent on services shared with suburban libraries.)

In addition to more funds from RAD, the Allegheny County Library Association [ACLA] has also shifted a formula twice in recent years to push more funds toward libraries in poor communities. 

ACLA, a nonprofit that provides services to all of the libraries in the county, has adopted a 2023 budget distributing $6.8 million in RAD funds to suburban library systems. It contemplates using a formula that would give each library a base amount, plus payments based on capacity and performance, but would reserve 15% of the total for distribution among 16 libraries serving distressed communities. 

That 15% is up from this year’s budget, in which 10% of the funds are divided among libraries serving distressed populations. In 2019, just 5% of the RAD funds were allocated based on distress.

“It is our hope that this will help those communities to build capacity to continue to provide the library services that we all deserve, regardless of where we live,” ACLA said in a statement in response to questions.

In October, the Duquesne branch advertised to hire a part-time clerk, for $10 an hour.

We’re hiring! pic.twitter.com/htOs66Lgh8

— Carnegie Library of McKeesport (@mckeeslibrary) October 17, 2022

Staffing problems bedevil many of the 457 libraries that the state helps to fund, as rising wages pull workers elsewhere, said Susan Banks, a state deputy secretary of education who is also commissioner of libraries. “It’s also a problem sometimes with the governance of the library agencies who don’t see pay for library staff as a priority.”

Libraries in struggling communities need to do the hard work of engaging with the people who aren’t using their services, Banks continued. That needs to be “robust and meaningful communication efforts, in person” she added.

“It’s not easy,” said Banks. “But it’s the only way.”

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

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

90.5 WESA’s parent organization, Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting, is among the organizations that receive RAD funding.

The post Whispers in the stacks: Can a library be too quiet? appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Under new management

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes, ma’am’

By early summer, Hi View tenants were impatient.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wires hanging

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

McKeesport police and 911 calls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Better — but for how long?

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

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

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

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

The entire complex may be heading for a new chapter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Though libraries are wordy places, they occasionally send blunt messages.

“My car has been hit by a piece of the building that fell off,” recounted Vicki Vargo, executive director of the sprawling and creaky Braddock Carnegie Library. “If it had been a split second sooner, it would’ve hit my head.”

Braddock’s library building is closed for renovation, and these days Vargo’s staff works in a cramped office in a storefront on Braddock Avenue, as she tries to nail down the remaining $7 million toward the $15 million construction cost. Even that just begins to describe the challenges facing the community centerpiece.

And that’s just one library.

The county’s 45 suburban libraries and the larger Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh system have wide ranges of financial resources, physical spaces, staffing, and programming and services. Those disparities are fueled by the region’s fragmentation as well as a funding formula that drives some countywide sales tax revenues to libraries that have higher circulation and more local funding. 

Though suburban library officials have been striving in recent years to make funding more equitable and push more dollars to poorer communities, the system still fails to even the playing field between some of those areas and wealthier neighbors.

Whispered about for years in the region’s Byzantine and fragmented library world, concerns about funding inequities are no longer being shushed down. Gathered around the proverbial table are local library leaders and major funders including the Allegheny Regional Asset District [RAD] and the Office of Commonwealth Libraries. So far, the focus is on increased cooperation between libraries.

“We’ve been really nudging. Pushing. Cajoling. And threatening” in an effort to get libraries to share their accounting, human resources and payroll specialists, said Dan Griffin, a longtime member of the RAD board of directors, which distributes revenue from the 1% county sales tax. Such sharing, he said, could help to level the financial playing field.

That’s easier said than done in a county with large and small libraries — some owned by municipalities but most run as independent nonprofit organizations — where there’s no one “average” library.

A push for equitable library services “is absolutely necessary,” said Sue Banks, the state’s deputy secretary for libraries and state librarian. “It is very difficult to watch from this point of view while small libraries are left to languish.”

Braddock: Big needs, modest funding

The medieval-looking fortress built in 1888 just blocks from the Edgar Thomson Works was the first of many U.S. libraries built by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. 

With a pottery studio, screen-printing shop, gymnasium, tool and puppet rentals, and spaces for adults and kids, the Braddock Carnegie Library is more than a collection of books and computer terminals. But it’s no longer what it was in its heyday, when it offered the public a swimming pool and a music hall. And it lacks consistent heating, air conditioning and elevators.

Vargo said she hears patrons say things like, “I just had my hip replaced. How do I get up the stairs?”

She plans to give them an elevator and effective climate control, revive the performance hall, convert the old pool into a lounge area, add event spaces … and she has half of the money needed to do it.

The library serves high-poverty communities including Braddock, North Braddock, East Pittsburgh and Turtle Creek, where resources are tight. Government, though, provides much less than half of the library’s budget.

This year, Braddock Carnegie Library is slated to get $147,000 from RAD. That number comes from a formula crafted by the Allegheny County Library Association [ACLA], an umbrella group that includes all 46 libraries and distributes the RAD money to all except the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh [CLP].

Poverty rates determine 10% of the funding — up from just 5% in 2020. That change came after RAD asked ACLA, in 2019, to reexamine the formula to better address the needs of distressed communities.

Homestead: Entertaining and training

The change in the formula “definitely helped us,” said Carol Shrieve, who runs the Carnegie of Homestead, another combination library, music hall and gym in a high-poverty area.

Built in 1898, it benefits from concert and liquor sale revenue but still struggles to pay competitive wages. Shrieve said the RAD increase helped her to boost wages and expand programs.

The new formula cost some libraries funding. Northland Public Library, for instance, gets $41,187 less from RAD than it did in 2020, down to $570,761. Mount Lebanon is down by $34,356, to $379,734.

The Penn Hills Library gets $5,811 less from RAD this year than it did in 2020. On a per-capita basis, it has the second-lowest RAD allocation, with Plum the lowest.

Tina Zins, executive director of the Penn Hills Public Library, called the funding dip “concerning.”  She added, though, that it would be hard “to figure out a formula that is fair and equitable across the board,” she noted.

Braddock’s library gets 18% more in RAD money than it did two years ago. On a per-capita basis, though, it still gets less in RAD money than do libraries in wealthier Upper St. Clair, Mount Lebanon, Pleasant Hills and Sewickley (though also less than libraries in Clairton and Wilkinsburg). 

Braddock Library Director Rachel Brehm doesn’t envy her suburban peers but does note the chasm between the smaller libraries and the largest.

“The winner is Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, like hands down,” she said. “There’s no real comparison.”

Pittsburgh: Better-funded and looking to share

RAD is paying the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh a total of more than $26.3 million this year. RAD is separately granting nearly $7.1 million to ACLA, of which nearly $6.6 million is distributed to those libraries, with the rest going toward the Bookmobile and shared administrative and accounting services.

RAD's payment to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh includes four parts:

• $21.7 million for the library's general operations
• $3.4 million for operation of the eiNetwork, a computer network shared by all of the libraries in the county
• $249,000 toward other electronic resources shared with the other libraries
• $1 million to cover debt payments on money borrowed to renovate libraries in the city.

The $21.7 million toward library operations grew from the days before RAD’s 1995 launch, when the city and county both supported the system to the tune of more than $11 million a year, according to Karlyn Voss, CLP’s director of external and governmental relations. RAD’s annual payment to the system started at around $12 million and increased by around 3% most years.

The bigger allocation also reflects CLP’s role as a countywide and statewide resource, Voss noted.

The Pittsburgh library’s funding dominance creates staffing challenges for other libraries. Shrieve said CLP can pay thousands more per year than most of its suburban peers, and as a result, “A lot of the independent libraries are essentially becoming stepping stones for employees.”

Recognizing the challenges faced by smaller libraries, CLP has rolled out a series of pilot programs to share its expertise.

CLP is handling, for various suburban libraries, some purchasing, cataloging and distribution of materials; cataloging of books; human resources consulting, fundraising and capital project planning.

It also wants to assist its smaller cousins with website design.

“We've had some [libraries] opt in,” noted Lou Testoni, a CLP trustee and interim president of the board. “We have probably not had enough to opt in yet, but they are still pilots. They're still growing. We figure that eventually the value of those services will be recognized, and they'll jump in and take advantage of it.”

CLP highlighted its eagerness to share in the April announcement of its incoming president and director, Andrew Medlar, who starts May 31.

Griffin said RAD would likely be willing to pay to encourage smaller libraries to use CLP’s services. He said that might help overcome the concerns of smaller libraries that “think somehow the big bad wolf in Oakland is going to gobble them up.”

Harrisburg: Flat allocations to lobbying libraries

CLP is, in fact, hungry — for more help from the state.

“We are facing deficits within the next two to three years,” said Testoni. “The costs keep [continuing] up, and the funding has been more or less flat.”

The state is providing less operating help for libraries this year ($60.5 million) than it did 14 years ago ($75.7 million). Compare that to Ohio, where the state puts more than $400 million a year into libraries. 

“Arguably, [Ohio's are] the best libraries in the country because of that,” said Banks, who worked in Ohio libraries and then at CLP before becoming Pennsylvania's state librarian. 

By contrast, many of Pennsylvania's 457 public libraries "operate at such a lean and low level and did even before all of the impacts of pandemic and the economic downturn," she said. "It is a difficult time, and libraries are chronically underfunded."

In Bridgeville, financial strains caused by the debt on its 11-year-old library building prompted a novel arrangement.

The Bridgeville Public Library and the South Fayette Township Library now share a director and other staff that handle teen programs and outreach to children. They also share a marketing and digital engagement specialist.

Why not fully merge?

“There have been those conversations," said Ben Hornfeck, the shared director. "It’s never been something that has been fully considered, and I don’t think it will be.”

Bridgeville has an endowment from a private donor that requires its library to remain in existence, he explained. The libraries’ finances are markedly different because Bridgeville owns its building – and has a mortgage – while South Fayette operates in a township-owned space. Plus, two libraries may be able to tap more funding than one.

The area’s historic preference for local control also works against deeper change to the overall system – though virtually everyone interviewed acknowledged this is not the system anyone would design if they were starting from scratch.

Some library officials note that in a county with 130 separate municipalities and 43 school districts, libraries are in some ways less fragmented than other civic services. They add that library users can access the entire catalog of 46 separate organizations with one card.  

“If one entity comes and absorbs all of the libraries, there would be cuts,” said Homestead’s Shrieve. “They would lose the independence, the autonomy, and I don’t think we’ll ever get to that point.” 

“I don't think anyone would choose this, but I don't see a whole bunch of mergers in the future. I just don't,” said Braddock’s Brehm.

But at least one powerful funder doesn’t see mergers or a more unified system as completely off the table.

“I think there would have to be an awful lot of thought into what a more unified system would look like,” said Richard Hudic, RAD’s executive director. “But is that out of the realm of possibility? No. You know, as funding becomes tighter, as resources shrink … people are always thinking about, is there a better way?”

For the time being, notes Banks, the library system remains novel in its fragmentation, “and it is such an object lesson in haves and have-nots and the maintenance of that reality.”

90.5 WESA’s parent organization, Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting, is among the organizations that receive RAD funding.  

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

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

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

The post Whispers in the stacks: Allegheny County’s 46 library systems face uneven funding and pressure to change appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When mice played in the stove

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Renting trend not likely to reverse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘The No. 1 issue in every single market’

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

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

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

Instead? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It started with an act of mercy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why stay in a dilapidated property without heat and water?

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

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

400 days later …

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

Fourteen months later, that hadn’t happened.

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

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

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

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

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

They remain unpaid. 

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

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

A potential solution

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

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

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

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

Is there another approach?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story was fact-checked by Linden Markley.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Case 1: A Wilkinsburg duplex

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

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

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

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

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

Case 2: A Carrick rental house

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

Criminal charges

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

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

Order tenants to vacate

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

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

Rent withholding

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

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

Civil penalties

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

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

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

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

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

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

Case 3: A Penn Hills rental house

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

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

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

Case 4: A Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar rental house

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story was fact-checked by Linden Markley.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carrying the ‘political football’

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

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

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

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

In Allentown:

• Landlords must register every housing unit with the city.

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

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

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

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

Listen to the 90.5 WESA story:

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

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

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

But back in Pittsburgh …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch it before it collapses

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

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

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

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

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

‘Hell on earth’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story was fact-checked by Matt Maielli.

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

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