Lindsey Ramsey became an aide in an infant room at a child care facility as a 19-year-old single mom looking for work so she could afford diapers for her daughter. Never having thought about entering the sector, she learned how to care for children from a group of passionate caregivers.

“I had no idea what I was doing,” said Ramsey, 34, now the executive director of Shady Lane School in Point Breeze North. “But we had a wonderful group of educators who helped uplift new people entering the field … and they taught me how to change diapers and be a mom … I started to fall in love with early childhood education.”

The pandemic, though, exacerbated a multitude of underlying problems that had long haunted the care industry, such as high costs for parents and low wages for employees, according to child care advocates and providers. Now some child care practitioners are anticipating crisis.

While Congress injected $39 billion into child care through the American Rescue Plan Act [ARPA], it didn’t address underlying problems in child care infrastructure. 

More than half of that funding ended in September, igniting fears over a mass closure of child care facilities dubbed the “child care cliff.”

While the end of federal funds will not lead to wholesale closures, Cara Ciminillo, executive director of Trying Together, an Allegheny County-based child care advocacy group, said the decline of providers will continue if long term funding is not brought in.

Despite the mounting challenges, Ramsey said caring for the community and her love of childhood education keep her working in the field.

“I’m driven by equity, because it is so important that we are elevating those who don’t have the resources, who don’t have enough to be able to succeed and thrive in life,” Ramsey said. “Having access to early childhood [care] early on, is one of the leading contributing parts to human development. So I consider it to be a key component to equity, and that’s why I am rooted and stuck here.”

Ramsey is one of many child care providers in Allegheny County who shared concerns with the Pittsburgh Media Partnership. They fear that affordable and accessible child care could take major hits without new funding and government resources. 

Pennsylvania shuttered 2,189 child care programs from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to June 2023, Emily Neff, Trying Together’s public policy director, said in an email. And even with new facilities opening, the net loss was 597.

Neff said 181 child care programs permanently closed in Allegheny County from 2019 through November of this year for a net loss of 18 in the county.

Diane Barber, executive director of the Pennsylvania Child Care Association, partly blames the closures on high operational costs of facilities and rapid staff turnover that occurred throughout the pandemic.

Barber said utility bills rose over the pandemic, compounding bills for child care providers and families. 

As the pandemic dragged on, employees at child care facilities across the state left for better-paying — and often easier — positions in public schools or even at retail locations, Barber said. And when the pandemic wound down, they didn’t return.

“I’ve heard this not once, I’ve heard this multiple times, that [a new child care staff worker] will show up and they’re gone by lunch because this is just not the job that they thought it was going to be,” Barber said. “They thought they were gonna play with kids and that’s not what it’s all about.”

Ramsey, who worked at Shady Lane as an educator before the arrival of COVID-19, returned as an administrator in the midst of the pandemic, while a budget deficit and record low enrollment prompted talk of closure.

Ramsey said Shady Lane received more than $200,000 in federal funds through the county to expand its programming for young children to accommodate eight new infants and 10 new toddlers. The grants sat on top of additional federal funds it used to subsidize employee wages.

“And that’s what really saved us,” Ramsey said of the Allegheny County grant. “We had a long infant-toddler waitlist. That gave us the ability to open more classrooms.”

How one of the county’s youngest departments distributed ARPA funds 

Allegheny County allocated $20 million of its $380 million ARPA allotment to organizations providing or advocating for child care under the designation “Healthy Childhood Environments,” according to the county ARPA spending dashboard. 

The county established the Department of Children Initiatives and assigned it to administer ARPA funds in December of 2021 following the recommendations in a report from the Allegheny County Children Fund’s working group.

So far, the department has disbursed a little over $6.1 million across 25 child care providers, advocacy groups and a consultancy firm, according to Mathew Singer, the chief of staff at the Allegheny County Controller’s office.

Rebecca Mercatoris, the department’s executive director since its inception in 2021, said the first goal when allocating the money was to build the capacity of existing part-time and full-time child care providers. 

Federal spending deadlines stipulate the county needs to allocate the remaining $13.9 million to organizations during 2024 and distribute it within two years.

Mercatoris said since the department’s establishment, it’s focused on mapping out the problems impacting child care in Allegheny County. Now, it’s trying to solve them. 

Minimal funds and shrinking staff make a ‘bad combination’

Mercatoris said one of the biggest problems facing child care — one described by many providers and advocates — relates to its business model. Parents across demographics need affordable child care to get back to work, while private child care providers need to turn a profit to retain staff and keep slots for children open. 

“I think one of our largest challenges is around family access and affordability and being able to support families in meeting their child care needs while also ensuring providers have the funds they need to be able to hire great staff and be able to keep them with them,” Mercatoris said.

Despite a constant demand for child care, there’s not enough people staying or going into the workforce due to low wages. This, coupled with a lack of financial support on the county, state and federal level, makes for what Ramsey describes as a “bad combination” that providers can’t keep up with. 

“[Providers] don’t want to price gouge families because they know families can’t afford it,” Ramsey said. “So in turn, they are taking the loss and this loss has impacted the sector to the point where we’re at the brink of collapse.”

According to Ramsey, even after the mandatory shutdowns ended, many facilities couldn’t open because all of their staff either had left for higher paying jobs or their older staff couldn’t come back to work due to risk of exposure to COVID. 

“People started to realize that they had to increase their wages to get people to come back to work there,” Ramsey said. “So those mom and pop centers and nonprofits struggled financially because they were having to raise wages with money that they didn’t have.” 

The Bhutanese Community Association of Pittsburgh [BCAP] provides free after-school programs to families and students in the Brentwood area, but had to close down a program it started in 2019 at Concord Elementary School.

Khara Timsina, BCAP’s executive director, said BCAP will need more funding to continue to operate its after-school and summer programs into next year.

Deborah Gallagher, the director of the Council of Three Rivers American Indian Center Early Head Start program, said it’s become increasingly hard to find people who are both interested and qualified to continue working in early child care facilities.

Gallagher oversees both COTRAIC’s Early Head Start program in Hazelwood and the partnerships the program has with several other day care centers.

According to Gallagher, Head Start and Early Head Start received ARPA funding in 2021 and 2022, some of which covered quarterly bonuses for staff. But when the bonuses stopped, Gallagher lost staff. Now she is paying “hefty substitute fees” for subs from a staffing company called Childcare Careers.  

“Parents can’t find care because we can’t find people,” said Gallagher, noting that if facilities had the funds to find and train people the industry would pick up. 

‘I’m just trying to get good care for my kid’

Parents said issues of affordability and long wait lists existed long before pandemic-era staffing shortages added to their woes..

For Shawna Ramsey, 28, of Baldwin Borough, the high cost of child care pushed her out of her career. 

A mother of three, Ramsey – who is not related to Lindsey Ramsey – said she had her first child while in college. In nursing school, she said she couldn’t find a child care facility with an open spot, let alone a facility that matched her budget stretched thin by student loan payments. 

She became a nurse, had another child and then a third — but her nursing salary remained the same. She carried a surrogate child to pay for her student loans, and ultimately decided to leave the nursing field to focus on motherhood.

“I think it’s really interesting that [child care] costs so much when workers get paid so little,” Ramsey said. “Private owners seem to be profiting off of people in need.”

The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, estimates that it costs the average family in Pennsylvania $987 monthly to keep one infant in child care. A median child care worker in Pennsylvania would have to spend more than half of their earnings to put their own child in infant care.

After serving in the Navy, Liz Sterrett, was wrapping up her degree and looking for a child care spot for her 3-year-old daughter. She found a facility that would let her do janitorial work in exchange for a spot, but after college she had to start paying $600 a month — a cost she can’t wrap her head around six years later.

“I’ve had to shape my life and career around the fact that I cannot afford child care by myself,” said Sterrett, 37, of Bellevue. “No matter how much I scream and shout and cry, it doesn’t become affordable.”

Sterrett’s current employer lets her work from home several days a week, saving her hundreds a month in child care. She said it’s not ideal, and her now 9-year-old daughter has “several meltdowns because I can’t give her my full attention,” but child care is still a luxury she can’t afford. 

“Access to child care is absolutely abhorrent,” Sterrett said. “There is no reason why I should be struggling … I am not living some fancy metropolitan lifestyle. I’m just trying to get good care for my kid.”

‘Band-Aid on a historical problem’

While funding initiatives like ARPA sought to help facilities that took a hit during the pandemic build back their staff and resources, providers point to broader inequities that contribute to the issues they are facing.

“[ARPA] was not enough, because it was a Band-Aid on a historical problem,” Lindsey Ramsey said. “The historical problem is that the field was never invested in enough because the work isn’t valued and that has further snowballed into an issue of staffing … of the field not looking attractive enough to join, of programs not being able to truly reflect the true costs of the work that they’re doing.” 

According to Ciminillo, the average hourly wage for a Pennsylvania child care employee is $12.43 — not enough, but hard to raise because doing so would increase the cost of tuition for parents.

“We’re competing for folks and we’re not being successful because we can’t get the wages up and it’s because we don’t have a larger government investment in the system,” Ciminillo said.

Ciminillo described the child care system as already “very fragile” prior to the pandemic given that providers were not compensated, valued, appreciated or invested in enough. 

Lindsey Ramsey added that historically women, especially women of color, are the ones who provide child care, which she said is likely the reason why there seems to be less focus on funding the field. 

Maria Manautou, a former worker at a child care center in Pittsburgh, said better pay would be the fast route to alleviating staffing issues.

“If you have two jobs, and the one offers you … $15 and you’re not having that kind of stress and then the one offers you $12 and you’re stressed all day, then you can see how people end up picking something different,” Manautou said.

Ciminillo said the federal government and local communities began to realize how much they needed child care once – after the initial weeks of shutdown in 2020 – essential workers needed to get back to work but couldn’t do so without care. 

 To build a sustainable future child care sector, Ramsey is calling for  a “change and shift in the narrative of how we are looking at the early childhood field.” 

“At a federal level, there needs to be policy put in place for true equitable wages that reflect the level and importance of the work that’s being done,” Ramsey said. 

Calling on Congress: Providers say short term funding is not enough

Barber said short-term funding initiatives like ARPA only address problems in the child care sector as they arise, failing to address the underlying problems.

She compares the influx of short-term funding to building with Jenga blocks that keep moving around.

“Then we know how that game ends, right?” Barber asked. “Everything falls apart.”

Ciminillo said Allegheny County needs to establish a recurring revenue stream to support early learning and out-of-school programming. And for that to happen, she said local officials must hear their constituents’ demands.

“Each of us, no matter our position, no matter our age, no matter whether we have children or not, play a role in affecting young children, their families, and their caregiver’s lives,” Ciminillo said. “So it’s just so important that everybody show up and use their sphere of influence in support of that.”

Democrats in Congress introduced legislation in September to supplement child care funding by distributing $80 billion over five years when ARPA expires.

According to a press release announcing the legislation, this funding request would support more than 220,000 child care providers nationally that serve a total of more than 10 million children. It has not yet received a vote.

U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Aspinwall, and U.S. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts, toured La Petite Academy, a new child care facility at Pittsburgh International Airport, earlier this month and spoke about the issues plaguing child care and what they deemed as largely partisan opposition to potential solutions.

Clark said that without Republican support, she’s “not very optimistic” Congress will be able to get the $16 billion in supplemental funding passed.

Deluzio, a father of three and member of the Congressional Dads Caucus, described the “death spiral” child care providers enter when they’re forced to increase rates to retain staff but, in turn, price out families, which lowers their revenues. It’s a problem, he said, that can only be resolved through federal support of the child care industry.

“This is about lowering costs. This is about giving folks the ability to work and earn and be part of society,” Deluzio said in regards to the $16 billion funding request, “The federal government’s got to be there to help strengthen [the child care sector], invest and ultimately bring down costs for people.”

Still, several child care advocates say even ambitious fixed-term funding initiatives won’t solve the structural problems plaguing the sector.

“This can’t be a one-time funding,” Lindsey Ramsey said. “This has to be funding that is ongoing [and] sustainable, that’s built into government policy.”

Correction: Shady Lane School is in Point Breeze North. An earlier version of this story included an incorrect neighborhood.

Betul Tuncer and James Paul are students at the University of Pittsburgh. They completed fall internships with the Pittsburgh Media Partnership. Tanya Babbar, a student at the University of Pittsburgh, and Erin Yudt, a student at Point Park University, completed fall internships with PublicSource. Juliet Martinez is managing editor of The Homepage, a community newspaper serving Greater Hazelwood and surrounding neighborhoods.

The post ‘Band-Aid on a historical problem’: Child care providers expect slow collapse of sector without long-term aid appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

For many around the world the images and reports out of Israel and Gaza since October have brought anguish and devastation. 

“It’s traumatic for both sides — Israeli or Palestinian,” said Christine Mohamed, executive director of the Council for American-Islamic Relations Pittsburgh. “The images and the things that you’re hearing are just traumatizing for all of us. I don’t even have loved ones in that area, but it’s traumatizing for me with some of the images, so I can only imagine what those members of our community are feeling.”

The news has led to an increase in reports of discrimination and hate directed at Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities worldwide. In Pittsburgh, faith and cultural communities are navigating sensitive discussions while also combating discrimination to ensure public safety. 

Attacks by the militant group Hamas, from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7, led to the deaths of 1,200 Israelis, with an estimated 200 taken hostage. Israel’s military response has brought estimated death tolls ranging from at least 11,000 to more than 14,000. Even as efforts to swap hostages and pause fighting continue, the enduring tension and violence in the area ripples outward.

“Just because the war isn’t directly happening here does not mean it does not have an impact here,” said Shawn Brokos, director of community security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

Instances of Islamophobia, antisemitism surge

In 2021, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh logged 82 reports of antisemitic incidents and safety concerns. This year, the number has almost tripled to 237 by the end of October. 

“It’s very easy to say that there has been a dramatic increase in antisemitic attacks in Pittsburgh since [Oct. 7],” Brokos said.

A Pittsburgh police spokesperson did not provide data on an increase in hate incidents, but said the bureau is working closely with the FBI and faith communities in the city to continuously monitor any acts of violence and hate that may stem from escalations in Gaza and Israel. 

“For obvious reasons, there is heightened awareness and fear in the community, both locally and nationwide, and police encourage everyone to report all crimes or anything of concern,” the police spokesperson wrote in response to questions.

Mohamed said CAIR has seen an increase in Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments across the country since the events of Oct. 7. Between this date and November 4, CAIR received 1,283 reports, a 216% increase since 2022. 

Mohamed said there has been a swell in verbal assaults and profanity directed at community members in public and at schools. She said while many area schools and universities have taken a neutral stance, some have only offered support for Israel, which has made Palestinian and Arab students feel disenfranchised. 

The majority of the recent safety concerns involving antisemitism have come from college campuses, according to Brokos, who oversees security for local Jewish organizations and places of worship. The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University have both seen on-campus activism in response to the war.

“I think there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation among college students, specifically more disinformation, which is intentionally inaccurate information to exploit something,” Brokos said. “But we work closely with Pitt and CMU student organizations and their police, and that has been really great.”

Brokos also said recent events can make it easy to pit groups against one another, but it is important to remember that we are all human.

It’s tempting to feel “that there should be one clear side to support when it is much more complex,” Brokos said. “We also need to all look out for one another, not just the Jewish community.”

The 10/27 Healing Partnership, an organization that provides support for individuals and their loved ones impacted by the October 2018 synagogue shooting and others who experience hate-induced trauma, has posted an anonymous survey inviting observations on respondents’ “internal questions and conflicts” and suggestions for what the organization can do to better support the community. 

“Some people may feel worried about antisemitism and personal safety, and yet try and dismiss it because it feels insubstantial compared to the worries of others,”  said Maggie Feinstein, executive director of the partnership, in a statement. “However, multiple truths can be true at the same time.”

Mohamed said CAIR has had an interfaith relationship with Pittsburgh’s Jewish community for many years and encourages people from all communities to check in on each other. She met with Rabbi Ron Symons from the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh and said their shared concern is “​​the security and safety within our own hometown.”

“Neither one of us wants to see violence, even if we have disagreements on how things should go on the geopolitical scale,” Mohamed said. 

Colleges implementing new reporting and resources

Pitt has noticed an uptick in reports regarding antisemitism and Islamophobia. In an email sent out to the Pitt community, Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Clyde Wilson Pickett noted this rise and encouraged community members to avoid letting “disagreements spill over into hateful rhetoric.”

According to Pitt spokesperson Jared Stonesifer, the university has received “approximately two dozen reports since October 7, many of which are still under investigation. Prior to October 7, we averaged one to three reports per month in 2023.”

Pickett said Pitt wants to emphasize a “proactive strategy and not be reactive,” noting that the majority of dialogue on campus has remained respectful to all communities.  

“We are not seeing an increase in ‘hate,’ but we are hearing elevated concern, and we are taking that seriously and being proactive,” Pickett said. Pitt offices, he said, are reaching out to faith communities and ethnic groups and listening to their concerns.

CMU Provost James Garrett Jr. and Vice President of Student Affairs Gina Casalegno released a statement to the campus community about art expression on the campus fence, which has stood as a self-regulating, student-governed space for open expression for over 100 years. Students have painted the fence with words in support of a free Palestine and against antisemitism.

“We acknowledge that, on issues that may divide us, the free expression of some may cause discomfort and concern for others,”  the statement read. “As an academic community committed to advancing our educational mission, we must grapple with these tensions.”

Some students say that they have faced discrimination and Islamophobic attacks at the fence and throughout campus. Several students were so concerned that they asked that their names not be published.

A CMU student who works with pro-Palestine student organizations on campus said their organization, which they asked PublicSource not to name, had never had reports of hate crimes from students until the escalation following Oct. 7. 

“There were lots of comments at the fence by considerably older men,” the student said. “They called us everything from baby killers to rapists, the most common is terrorist. … Our police had to escort them away. It was really scary.”

CMU has since created a Campus Climate and Bias Reporting Protocol for reporting incidents of bias, harassment and discrimination. 

Peter Kerwin, director of CMU media relations, said in a statement that the university is listening to student leaders and allowing faculty to extend deadlines for exams and papers for students struggling with the crisis.

Students express fear on campus 

Deena Eldaour, a Palestinian student at Pitt whose family is originally from Gaza, said she has noticed increased fear on campus among her peers, especially among other women who wear hijab. 

“They no longer can walk alone or they always feel like people are staring at them,” Eldaour said.

Eldaour, a board member of Students for Justice in Palestine [SJP], said the majority of the discrimination leveled at her community has taken place at rallies on Pitt’s and CMU’s campuses. She noted that during one such rally on CMU’s campus, an agitator approached the group yelling Islamophobic remarks and asking if protesters were going to “bomb” them.  

Another Pitt student, who is Jewish, said there has been a “tense vibe” on campus since the attack and expressed worry about saying anything about Israel. After attending a Jewish student organization meeting soon after Oct. 7, the student recounted, another student came into the meeting shouting and calling attendees “fascist and other names,” the student said.

“This was supposed to be a place for healing and connecting with other Jewish students when we’re in such a vulnerable position,” the student said. “I kind of wished someone had said something [to Pitt administration], but I think everyone was too afraid to.”

The student said that they have always been nervous in Pittsburgh.

“I chose to go to school where the most antisemitic event in [U.S.] history occurred,” the student said. “Until the actual conflict resolves, until there’s a ceasefire, I think it will be tense and simmering under the pot, making people feel bad on both sides.”

A Muslim student at Pitt told PublicSource they were “called terrorists, baby killers” while selling coffee at a Charity Week event for orphans and underprivileged children, and arrived at a meeting room for a gathering of a student organization only to find pro-Israel posters displayed.

“It has been very unsettling over the last few weeks,” the student said.

Pitt has worked to address student safety concerns by staying in contact with student and community leaders, speaking with concerned parents and religious and cultural leaders, coordinating with law enforcement and maintaining security at demonstrations and rallies, according to Stonesifer. 

Eldaour said Islamophobic and anti-Arab sentiments have been heightened by people in power who have propped up harmful rhetoric, including President Joe Biden and Pitt’s chancellor. Following the attacks in Israel, Chancellor Joan Gabel released a statement in which she condemned the actions of Hamas calling them “unconscionable, barbaric acts.” It did not mention Palestinian loss of life.

Eldaour said the word “barbaric” has historically been used against Muslims and Arabs, and could encourage harmful rhetoric directed at students on campus. 

“I think a lot of the negativity harbored came from that,” Eldaour said.

In response to the email, students at SJP sent the chancellor a letter on Oct. 18 criticizing her use of the word “barbaric” and demanding that Pitt “unequivocally recognize and name the suffering of the Palestinian people.” 

Dean of Students Carla Panzella addressed the violence and student concern on campus in an Oct. 13 email noting she serves “all students affected by these tragic and horrifying acts, including our Israeli and Palestinian students, some of whom may be uniquely affected.”   

Eldaour said it’s “really important” that Jewish, Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian organizations on campus connect. “Hostility,” she said, “is the antithesis of both our movements.”

Response includes increased funding, security

Hateful and threatening incidents have been documented throughout the country on college campuses. At Stanford, an Arab student was the victim of a hit-and-run that is being investigated as a hate crime. At Cornell, a student was arrested for making threats to Jewish students online. 

In Vermont, three college students of Palestinian descent were shot on Saturday.

According to a survey of 609 college students by Intelligent, an online magazine, one in five students feel less safe on campus since Oct. 7. Nearly one-third said their mental health has worsened.

The Biden administration on Nov. 14 announced new actions and resources for schools across the country. These include resources on promoting religious inclusion in K-12 schools and in higher education, and a series of webinars for schools. 

The Department of Justice is also awarding more than $38 million in grants to support the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes, increase hate crimes reporting, expand victim services and improve community awareness. This includes more than $8 million in grants to community-based organizations and civil rights groups, including awards to organizations serving Jewish and Arab American communities.

Incidents across the U.S., including the killing of a 6-year-old Palestinian boy in Chicago and an attack directed at a Muslim teen who wears hijab on the subway in New York, have left many Pittsburgh Muslims afraid to go about their daily activities, Mohamed said. 

“We have a lot of work to do to dispel the hate and the misconceptions that currently are happening,” Mohamed said. “It doesn’t help when there’s been so much dehumanizing rhetoric, through the media, through the press, not just over the recent times, but I’m talking about long periods of time, where Muslims and Islam and Arabs may be dehumanized in various ways.”  

Recently, there have also been reports and investigations of graffiti which “can be characterized as antisemitic and political in nature” in Squirrel Hill, according to the spokesperson for the Pittsburgh police. The city’s Department of Public Works is assigned to remove the graffiti. 

Amro Elaswalli, the imam at the Muslim Association of Greater Pittsburgh, said the mosque has hired more security for gatherings such as Friday prayers, Sunday school and other large events.

In an effort to bring together grieving communities and call for peace, more than 100 students and community members from multiple faiths held a candlelight vigil on Nov. 13 at CMU’s campus, and listened to prayers given by Jewish, Muslim and Christian community leaders. 

Elaswalli, who recited a verse from the Qur’an, said it’s important that everyone, regardless of faith and background, come together against violence and war. 

“Whoever kills one soul it’s as if they killed all of mankind,” Elaswalli said during the vigil, reading the English translation. “And whoever saves one soul, it’s as if they saved all of mankind. … I hope we can all reflect on this verse. ” 

Elaswalli said it’s crucial to work on fighting misinformation and maintaining dialogue across marginalized communities.  

“We need to stand up for justice and do our best to make our voices heard,” Elaswalli said. “To be part of the solution and not to be part of the problem.”

A participant at the vigil read a translation of a Jewish prayer, saying it’s important for everyone to recognize the grief and emotions that many are facing right now. Her prayer called for peace and a path forward in which everyone is safe. 

“I think there is hope, but I think it’s going to take a very different approach than what we’ve seen,” she said. “I think that it will take a lot of innovative thinking and openness to do something you’ve never been able to do before in the world.” 

Resources

If you or someone you know has been a victim of an Islamophobic hate crime or an act of discrimination, submit this anonymous form to have your case reviewed by the CAIR-Pittsburgh civil rights department.

To report an antisemitic or safety incident, visit the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s incident report page.

Anyone is welcome to complete the 10/27 Healing Partnership anonymous survey. 

To report incidents of bias related to the respective universities, complete CMU’s report form  or  Pitt’s form.

Editor’s note: This article was updated to improve the accuracy of characterizations of the synagogue at which the 2018 shooting occurred and of one participant’s involvement in the Nov. 13 vigil.

Erin Yudt is an editorial intern at PublicSource and can be reached at erin@publicsource.org.

Betul Tuncer is a student at the University of Pittsburgh serving as a Pittsburgh Media Partnership intern this semester, and can be reached at betulstuncer@gmail.com.

This story was fact-checked by Tanya Babbar.

The post Amid antisemitism and Islamophobia, faith communities and students try to tamp down tension appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

For some young voters in Allegheny County, local elections are just as important as national ones – and perhaps even more important. 

Rafay Khan-Afridi, a sophomore political science and economics major at the University of Pittsburgh, believes that having a “livable environment” is among the main issues that young voters could have had an impact on through this year’s election, which took place Tuesday. 

“When it comes to things like rent … waste management … the quality of the public entertainment and options we have in Oakland, all these different issues play into having a neighborhood that’s livable,” Khan-Afridi said. “That’s something that is very directly affected by municipal elections by people who are in charge of the county, the County Council and [county executive].” 

Headlining this year’s election is a rematch between Democrat Matt Dugan and Republican nominee Stephen Zappala for district attorney and a faceoff between Democrat Sara Innamorato and Republican Joe Rockey to replace outgoing County Executive Rich Fitzgerald. Dugan bested Zappala, a lifelong Democrat, in the Democratic primary, prompting the career politician to run as a Republican instead. 

Voters also cast ballots for a new justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and a slew of  mayors, councilmembers and commissioners across the county’s 130 municipalities.

“When it comes to young voters there’s a lot we want to see and I think it translates into a general frustration with the lack of change,” Khan-Afridi said, noting that some of the candidates fall short in representing young voters.

One year ago, Pennsylvania’s youth turnout rate for the 2022 midterm was 31.7% — the sixth highest in the nation, according to CIRCLE. With Gen Z voters overwhelmingly boosting Democratic candidates, according to the Pew Research Center, they might have played a vital role in this year’s Allegheny County elections. 

Although he wasn’t passionate about many of the candidates on his ballot, Khan-Afridi said he felt it was still important to vote. 

“I voted more along the principle of harm reduction as opposed to being super passionate about any of the candidates,” Khan-Afridi said. “A lot of the candidates running on both sides were representative of what’s currently already [represented] in the system rather than something new or refreshing.” 

Grace Kozak, a first-year funeral studies major at Point Park University, voted using a mail-in ballot because she found it challenging to change her address from central Pennsylvania to  Pittsburgh. She said her focus this election cycle was on the school board race in her hometown and the magisterial judge race in her district. 

For the school board races in particular, Kozak said book banning was the main issue that informed her vote. The conversation around book bannings and censorship has remained at the forefront of many school board meetings and has been a contentious voter issue for many parents and students this election. 

“We’re trying to get some books unbanned just because I think it’s very important for everybody to have access to literature that they want to read, and literature that they can make informed decisions about,” Kozak said. “It’s not for a certain group or a party to decide. It should be up to that person to decide what they want to read.”

She added that local elections are especially important as they allow people to have a say in the political and government decisions that affect them on a daily basis. 

For some students at the University of Pittsburgh, the Allegheny County Council’s 10th District race stood out, with longtime activist Carl Redwood on the ballot. Matt Jurich, a sophomore political science and philosophy major at Pitt, said there aren’t many candidates who go against the grain of the two-party system, which is why Redwood’s independent candidacy and empathy-led policies resonated with him. 

“I think that [Redwood] represents what people in Pittsburgh really want to see get done and not just people who have been in the same position for like 30 years, so there’s been some good energy around Carl on campus,” Jurich said. 

Minimum wages, taxes, student loan debt and health costs are especially important issues for Jurich, who said young voters are “desperate for some kind of change outside of the current system.” 

“A lot of things were promised to our generation in previous elections and people have not followed through on them at all,” Jurich said. 

Although Khan-Afridi is not in the 10th District, he said he found Redwood’s candidacy interesting. He said Redwood’s vocal support for Palestinians during the recent escalation of violence in Gaza and Israel was especially important as it reflects what many young voters care about. 

“He has a lot of views that aren’t necessarily as popular among politicians but are super, super popular among voters, which is why I’m so passionate to see somebody like him run for election,” Khan-Afridi said. 

Today’s election was the first in which Grace Cuevas voted in Pittsburgh. Cuevas, a sophomore political science and philosophy major at Pitt, said she was excited to research each candidate and make a change in the community. Redwood was also one of the main candidates she was interested in because, she felt, he could make a “tangible change” in local government. 

With rising rent prices and poor housing conditions, Cuevas said Pitt students tend to express their frustration with life in Oakland. Despite this, too many students don’t see the value of voting in local elections, Cuevas added. 

“It’s really important for students to understand that there is a way for us to have a voice and for us to have representation that will allow us to feel safer and more comfortable and happier living in Oakland,” Cuevas said. “So I think that it’s really important for students to [understand] the issues that are presented in these local elections and [vote] for people that they think can make a change for them.” 

On Point Park’s campus, the lack of attention to local elections was also on younger voters’ minds. 

Madison Kline, a junior child psychology major at Point Park, said younger people typically don’t care as much about local elections as they do presidential elections, even though in some cases local elections are more important. Kline made a plan to vote later in the day at her polling place in Homestead, and shared that abortion rights and safety in schools would go into her voting decisions. 

“I feel like a lot of young people don’t follow local elections, since it’s not as big as a presidential election or the governor’s race,” Kline said. “They aren’t as informed and I feel like a lot of people don’t even know that it’s election day.” 

Carnegie Mellon University suspended all classes until 5 p.m. for its inaugural Democracy Day, which aims to encourage young voter turnout, according to the school’s website. Pitt, Chatham University and Point Park still held classes, meaning students had to find time within their schedules to vote if they hadn’t already sent in a mail-in ballot. 

Andrew Salzman, a sophomore business administration major at CMU, described himself as fiscally conservative but socially liberal, and said he typically votes with a split ballot. Originally from Southern California but voting in Pittsburgh, Salzman questioned whether college students should be allowed to vote in local elections because, in his view, they often don’t take time to learn about the candidates. 

“A lot of the time they’re not really engaged in local politics,” Salzman said. “It doesn’t really affect them because they’re only here for four years and like they’re kind of just voting for the party they usually agree with without even reading up on anyone or the positions.”

Anabella Arziate, a first-year information systems major at CMU, said she voted for Dugan and Innamorato, though she couldn’t recall the rest of her ballot. Still, she said every selection she made was blue.

Arziate said unlike left-leaning Hawaii, where she’s from, Pennsylvania can veer to either side of the political aisle, and she’s excited that the first vote she cast was in a battleground state.

“In Hawaii, I’m just adding more to the pile, and then here, the pile size actually matters,” Arziate said.

Like Arziate, Jackson Adkins, a junior management information systems major at Chatham and the executive president of the student government, came out ready to vote Democratic. He said as he was about to enter a polling place on Chatham’s campus, the issues of abortion access and gun control were at the top of his mind.

Adkins said following a 2016 shooting at his father’s law office in St. Paul, Minn., that left one person dead, he wants to see local officials take action on gun laws.

“I think guns are very dangerous, and I think that the more guns we have in circulation, the more dangerous our society becomes,” Adkins said.

Bennett Spencer, a junior interior design major at Chatham, voted using a mail-in ballot and said she had a particular interest in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race. She said she voted for candidate Dan McCaffery mainly because of his staunch support of abortion rights.

Spencer said in her three years at Chatham she’s seen voter turnout increase drastically, with most of the votes cast leaning blue. She said she hopes this will turn the political tide away from older politicians and replace them with fresher faces. 

“We want to keep our rights, and I think we also want change,” Spencer said. “Lots of the government leaders are pretty old and I think they don’t think as far ahead as we’re thinking because we’re going to have to deal with the repercussions of all the stuff going on right now.” 

Beyond just voting in every election, Khan-Afridi encouraged other young voters to do their research on candidates and get involved in politics year-round to advocate for what they care about. 

“Go vote and do more than that,” he said. “Get passionate about the issues and try and make a change.” 

Betul Tuncer and James Paul are students at the University of Pittsburgh serving as Pittsburgh Media Partnership interns this semester. James Paul can be reached at pjames@pointpark.edu. Betul Tuncer can be reached at betulstuncer@gmail.com.

The post Young voters cast ballots with abortion access, student loans and book bans on their minds appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

In the wake of the Tree of Life shooting in 2018, communities in Pittsburgh began looking for ways to heal from and combat hate-based violence. That search led community leaders in Pittsburgh to form a global conference that aims to “eradicate hate” through education and action.

“Eradicating hate, when you say it initially, sounds like something that is impossible to do. We’ve had hate as long as we’ve had human beings,” said Chuck Moellenberg, president of the Eradicate Hate Global Summit. “So the question is, ‘What can I do that will really make a difference?’”

Now in its third year, the Eradicate Hate Global Summit continues to bring together professionals and leaders from different fields to lead conversations grounded in ending hate-fueled violence worldwide. This year the summit will run from Sept. 27-29 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and includes a roster of over 300 academics, global leaders, law enforcement officials and more.

“The purpose of the summit is to provide a forum for leading experts around the world and for many different professions and sectors to come together, exchange ideas and then develop and deploy effective solutions to reduce hate-motivated violence,” said Moellenberg.

Meryl Ainsman, the secretary of the summit, said to confront hate-based violence, the summit aims to educate and inform attendants about hate in its many forms. This year’s summit will feature discussions on violence against the LGBTQ+ community, identifying red flag behaviors among youths and video game violence.

“The only way to combat anything is education,” said Ainsman. “Whatever the subject matter is, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no way you can talk rationally or do anything about it unless you really have intimate knowledge.”

Read more: Holocaust educator works to strengthen community resilience and tolerance amid rising antisemitism

Ainsman said outside of the plenary sessions hosted throughout the summit, over 20 working groups will meet in private to discuss targeted initiatives. Groups focused on education, sports, the military and more meet year-round to address hate in their areas, according to Ainsman.

The working groups are part of what goes into making sure the summit goes “beyond just talk,” Moellenberg said.

“The working groups are given a specific project, what we call a ‘deliverable’ to turn an idea into a practical, concrete action item,” said Moellenberg. “It could be a best practices manual, it could be some sort of program, but it’s a specific action item that communities or professions can then use back in their own communities.”

Following the Tree of Life shooting, which prompted a wave of community activism,  attorney Laura Ellsworth and University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Emeritus Mark Nordenberg, current co-board chairs of the summit, formed a group to discuss how to combat antisemitism. As Ainsman and many others joined the group, the ideas expanded into confronting all hate-based violence, which laid the groundwork for the Eradicate Hate Global Summit.

Read more: Uncovering Pittsburgh’s long-hidden Asian American history made me feel at home — and I learned I wasn’t alone

The summit first took place in 2021 and has since become a nonprofit organization as of January.

“Originally, at the very, very beginning, it was really to combat antisemitism,” said Ainsman. “But as we started meeting and talking, we realized that unfortunately, there are many, many identity groups that are victims of violence-fueled hate.”

When the summit first launched it featured 100 speakers — including George W. Bush — and hundreds of attendees, according to Moellenberg. This year he said there will be more than 350 speakers, with an expected “uptick in attendance” as well.

Ellsworth asked Michael Bernstein, who serves as chair of the interim governance committee of the reimagined Tree of Life, to participate in a steering committee to help shape the summit’s focus last year. He said hearing from survivors of hate crimes is among the most direct ways to educate people on the harms of hate-based violence.

Read more: ‘We were all blindsided’: Chatham University faces multimillion-dollar budget hole, lays off staff, cuts benefits

“The impact has to be how we change the world we live in moving forward,” said Bernstein, who last year participated on a summit panel addressing survivor testimonies. “So I think if anything, it gives heightened significance to turn the book, turn the page on this episode. Now, how do we really affect change?”

Moellenberg said unlike other conferences that tend to focus on individual sectors, the summit hopes to bring together people from all different perspectives and “put them all in a room together to exchange ideas, to come up with new solutions that we hope will make a difference and reduce all of this hate-motivated violence that we are seeing.”

Ainsman said she doesn’t want Pittsburgh to be defined by its darkest day.

“We want Pittsburgh to be known as the place not of the worst antisemitic act in the history of the United States,” said Ainsman. “We want to be known for the good work we’re doing and not for the terrible thing that happened here.”

Guests can purchase single or multi-day passes online at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit website. Organizers will also livestream the summit for free.

Betul Tuncer and James Paul are students at the University of Pittsburgh serving as Pittsburgh Media Partnership interns this semester.

James Paul can be reached at pjames@pointpark.edu. 

Betul Tuncer can be reached at betulstuncer@gmail.com.

The post Third annual global summit combats hate-fueled violence through education, community action appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Update (7/19/23): The Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas has increased the payment it provides to court-appointed attorneys for defense of indigent defendants, in a move that drew mixed reviews today from a lawyers’ group.

In a June 28 order by President Judge Kim Berkeley Clark, the court increased the hourly rate for court-appointed attorneys from $75 to $80 for some lower-court procedures and specialized court cases, $90 for misdemeanors and $100 for nonviolent felonies. Rates for violent felonies and homicides were already $110 an hour.

The order also raised the cap on payment for a single non-violent felony case that goes to trial from $2,000 to $3,000 for nonjury trials, and $4,000 for jury trials. Maximums for misdemeanors are lower, while they are higher for violent felonies, ranging up to $20,000 for capital murder cases.

The Allegheny Lawyers Initiative for Justice, a coalition of reform-minded attorneys, applauded the “first step” in a press release.

“But there is much more work to do. Even with the increase, the appointed-counsel system is still severely underfunded, and pay rates still lag far behind similar locales,” the initiative wrote in a press release.

Reported 5/15/23:

Allegheny County inching toward fix for cut-rate court-appointed lawyer system

When two parents faced child endangerment charges because of poor housekeeping, attorney Kate Lovelace was appointed by the court to represent them. Though they cleaned the house and the Office of Children, Youth and Families intended to withdraw from the case, according to Lovelace, the district attorney’s office filed felony charges.

A lawyer since 2005 and now a candidate for district judge, Lovelace’s approach to the case was rooted in her belief that a defendant “should feel like you can count on somebody, if you tell them your trauma and your story and you invest in that, that they’re going to be there with you every time that’s questioned and challenged.”

She worked with the couple and another attorney to beat the felony charges at the preliminary hearing — and the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas paid her $250.

Criminal defendants in the county who can’t afford private attorneys, known as indigent defendants, often find their fates in the hands of lawyers who get paid based on caps set in 2006. For a preliminary hearing involving anything from retail theft to a violent felony, these lawyers are compensated $250 regardless of how much time they spend on the case. Depending on the attorney appointed to their case, a defendant could face outcomes ranging from dropped charges to a life-altering felony sentence. 

According to Lovelace, the modest compensation can deter court-appointed attorneys from vigorously committing themselves to defending indigent clients.

“The whole way that this system is designed is so you should plead something out at the first listing [for a hearing] to make the most money,” said Lovelace. “That is the incentive and that doesn’t sit right.”

In response to questions from PublicSource, court officials wrote that they are on the verge of revising the rates.

“We recognize that the fee structure is out of date and needs to be changed — including the rates, maximums and overall structure,” wrote Joseph Asturi, director of communications and intergovernmental affairs for the Fifth Judicial District of Pennsylvania, which manages the Allegheny County Court. 

The court appoints attorneys to represent indigent defendants when the Office of the Public Defender can’t take on the case due to a conflict of interest. In 2018, the year cited in an Allegheny County Bar Association [ACBA] report on the system, court-appointed attorneys handled around 1,800 criminal cases.

Court-appointed attorneys are paid $75 per hour they spend on a case, but there are caps on the amount they can be paid based on the type of case or proceeding they are handling. If a non-homicide case ends in a plea deal, for instance, the attorney is paid a maximum of $750.

“The current structure of the court-appointed payment system is doing two things: One is discouraging competent lawyers from taking on these cases because the financial constraints are so tight,” said attorney Justin Romano. “And it is disincentivizing lawyers from really doing diligent defense work, doing zealous defense work because there are fee caps that are low.”

According to Romano, a lawyer of 13 years who often takes on court appointments, the modest financial compensation for the amount of work that comes with an indigent criminal case makes it so that “you’re really losing money in some instances”

The court revisited the rates.for homicide cases in 2022 given that so few attorneys would take them on for $3,000 (now $6,000). And hourly rates were lifted in 2013 from $50 to $75. But other caps haven’t been adjusted in 17 years.

“They’ve not increased with inflation. They’ve been totally static,” said Romano. 

Asturi wrote that the recent increase to rates for homicide cases is an “interim step to a longer-term solution” for making attorney compensation more comprehensive. He did not detail the emerging fees and caps.

According to Romano and other attorneys, the compensation they receive is not nearly enough, especially considering the amount of time it takes to meet with a defendant and gather information on the case. 

“It’s the most important justice issue in Allegheny County right now … the fact that we underpay and underfund this court-appointed indigent defense counsel system,” said attorney Rob Perkins, who has been an advocate for increasing compensation for court-appointed lawyers.

Attorneys are able to file motions asking the court to designate a case as complex to be compensated beyond the fee cap, but this process is sometimes not worth the additional work and attorneys learn to “just live within the fee cap structure,” according to Romano.

Asturi said such motions are often granted but agreed that the system must be adjusted so that attorneys won’t need to file a motion. 

“An attorney should only need to file such a motion in an unusual case — which is not currently the situation,” said Asturi. “The new fee structure should significantly reduce the need for attorneys to file motions to have a case designated as complex.”

Below-market rate is not viable for most 

Perkins started his career as a public defender in Allegheny County. After a short time working as a legal aid for nonprofits in Boston, he and his family moved back to Pittsburgh where he rejoined the public defender’s office. He later decided to leave, “for a variety of reasons, partly financial,” and open up his own private practice. 

“When I left the public defender’s office, to put it in context, we paid my babysitter more than my salary. So it was not a very long-term [job],” said Perkins. 

As recently as last year, base pay for early-career public defenders in Allegheny County was around $46,000.

Perkins chose to continue to represent indigent clients and take court-appointed cases because his “heart [was] still in social justice.”

He came to believe that he has been seriously undercompensated for that work and led the charge to document that.

In August, a subcommittee of the ACBA — chaired by Perkins — published a report titled Improving the Delivery of Indigent Defense Services to Allegheny County, which argues for the need to provide better compensation for court-appointed attorneys. 

The report suggested that current caps discouraged vigorous representation. 

“Doubling is not even good enough,” said Perkins. “It needs to be more than that.”

As part of the report, a survey found that more than 90% of attorneys found the caps to be too low. It recommended a series of caps, from $2,000 for defending a misdemeanor to $20,000 for a capital homicide case.

“No one’s doing court-appointed criminal defense work to get rich,” said Romano. “I think it’s important work. And you know, whether you’re indigent or whether you’re rich, you’re entitled to competent legal counsel.” 

The current compensation system for court-appointed attorneys also pays lower than local federal courts and similarly sized cities, according to Perkins. 

In federal court, court-appointed private counsel have a maximum fee cap of $12,800 for a case that results in a guilty plea, which is 17 times the $750 fee cap that the Allegheny County court provides for similar cases. 

Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, caps court-appointed lawyer compensation for defending an indigent client charged with murder at $9,000. That’s 50% higher than the $6,000 maximum now paid by Allegheny County for a murder defense. 

This issue is not just an Allegheny County issue, said Perkins. It’s a “Pennsylvania issue,” given that the state doesn’t fund indigent defense itself. 

“It falls to each individual county to fund indigent defense. And that’s a problem and that’s got to be fixed at the state level. And because each individual county is responsible for funding indigent defense, there’s a lot of inconsistency and inequity in how various counties do it,” said Perkins.

Allegheny County budgeted $90.4 million for courts this year and $11.8 million for the Office of the Public Defender. Court-appointed attorney pay comes from the court budget.

Philadelphia’s courts pay court-appointed attorneys at rates and caps similar to those in Allegheny County.

Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed that the state include in its next budget funding for public defense.

Lack of compensation is a ‘justice issue’

Attorneys including Perkins and Romano said the main roadblock preventing them from taking more court-appointed cases was the low compensation. 

Unlike public defenders, who work directly for a county-run office, private attorneys who do court-appointed work must pay rent for an office to work in, compensate any employees they hire and cover various expenses such as gas used driving to court hearings. Court-appointed attorneys must also petition the court for permission to hire investigators (capped at $500) or expert witnesses (capped at $2,000) that they’d like to use in a case.

“A lot of high-quality attorneys, they just stopped taking the cases because they don’t want to work for Allegheny County for free,” Perkins said. “And in fact, they lose money because they’re paying more overhead than they’re getting compensation from the county.”

Attorney Dave Zuckerman said he stopped accepting court-appointed cases after 2019 due to it not being economically feasible.

“You create a system where the pay is so low that it disincentivizes lawyers from fighting for their clients. I think it ultimately has an impact on outcomes and that’s an injustice,” said Romano. 

‘A warm body is not good enough’

Perkins was recently appointed to a case involving an indigent defendant facing a misdemeanor charge for retail theft. Perkins said the defendant was clearly guilty, but a misdemeanor on her record would have made it especially difficult for the pregnant woman to get a job. 

He drove to a magistrate outside of the city on three separate occasions for preliminary hearings — the first of which never happened as the defendant had just given birth. 

He said the fee cap incentivized him “to close the case the second time I went out there with a summary-level conviction and say, ‘Hey, it’s not a bad outcome.’”  Instead, he convinced the court to allow the defendant to take a retail theft course, which ultimately resulted in the court withdrawing the misdemeanor charges. He then got her record expunged.

Perkins said if it was his loved one facing criminal charges, he wouldn’t just want a “warm body” standing in to defend them but would “want the competent attorney who’s going to invest in the case and do their best.”

Those who take indigent defense can’t afford private representation. In cities like Pittsburgh, where Black workers have been found to earn roughly two-thirds what white men earn, this creates a situation in which lackluster indigent representation can exacerbate already existing racial disparities. 

“The system we’re all a part of disproportionately impacts poor people. And disproportionately impacts people of color,” said Perkins. So effective criminal defense for the indigent “is certainly an equity issue, a fairness issue and a social justice issue.”

“Whenever people accused of crimes have shitty lawyers, it decreases their trust in the [legal] system,” said Perkins. “If they don’t trust the system, then the consequences and the data shows that there’s actually an increased recidivism rate.” 

Attorneys call for change as updates near 

After tense negotiations last year, the United Steelworkers Union, which represents public defenders in Allegheny County, won a new contract that included, among other things, a $20,000 increase for those attorneys.

The court is set to announce a new compensation system for court-appointed attorneys within the coming weeks, according to Asturi, who added that it’s been in the works since before the ACBA subcommittee’s report came out. 

While it’s unclear whether the court will match the rates recommended by the ACBA report, Asturi said the court is considering the findings as it implements changes.

The report suggests a $110-per-hour rate with caps of:

• $2,000 for misdemeanors
• $5,000 for non-homicide felonies,
• $20,000 for capital homicides.

Some may view the fight to increase compensation as “a bunch of attorneys who want more money,” Perkins said, adding that the issue of underpaying attorneys is much bigger than just money. 

“The issue is that I want people that don’t have the means to hire the top attorney to have a fair and equitable defense and to get a fair outcome,” he said. “So it’s about results for poor people who get treated unfairly in the system when they don’t have adequate defense.”

Dakota Castro-Jarrett was an editorial intern with PublicSource from January to May and can be reached at castrojarrett.d@northeastern.edu.

Betul Tuncer was an editorial intern with PublicSource from January to May, and can be reached at bst9@pitt.edu. 

This story was fact-checked by Sophia Levin.

The post Updated: Attorneys applaud ‘first step’ toward fix for Allegheny County’s cut-rate court-appointed lawyer system appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

For Aaron Conrad, being able to attend the University of Pittsburgh as an in-state student meant having to work full time on top of his full-time studies. Some months, it even meant going to food banks. 

Conrad, who lives in Bridgeville, graduated from Pitt this spring. Before he enrolled, he had done “as much money-crunching” as possible to reduce his cost of attendance. He participated in an early college  program while in high school, allowing him to earn an associate’s degree upon graduation in 2019. 

Still, Conrad, who enrolled at Pitt in fall 2021, feels that the debt he has accumulated from his Pitt education is “daunting.” Over two years, he took out about $14,500 in federal loans.

“Multiple times throughout my college experience, I’ve had thoughts where I’d have to drop out because I wouldn’t be able to afford it,” he said.

Public universities provide lower tuition for in-state residents, but that discount doesn’t go as far at Pitt. The university’s average price of attendance for local families is one of the highest in the country, partly because of downward-trending state investment in public higher education.

Using data from the U.S. Department of Education, PublicSource and The Pitt News compared the cost of attendance at Pitt to the 34 other leading public research universities in the nation. Pitt’s estimated in-state tuition and fees were the most expensive, totaling $21,080 in the 2022-2023 academic year. That excludes the additional costs of textbooks, supplies, housing and food, which brought the total price to, at most, $37,028. 

While roughly half of Pitt families receive financial aid to reduce that sticker price, they’re still shelling out more than most. The university’s average net price of attendance – which factors in aid – was the second-most expensive of that group of leading public research universities as of the 2020-21 academic year, the most recent year for which data was available. The Pennsylvania State University was the most expensive.

These numbers can add up over four years. Families at Pitt pay, on average, about $23,000 a year. Those at other top public research universities pay less — at the Georgia Institute of Technology, for instance, families pay around $17,360 a year, on average. 

Public universities are regional economic drivers and gateways of opportunity, but rising tuition costs threaten that public good. They can prevent low-income students from enrolling or saddle them with debt. They can burden middle-class students, who must cover particularly high costs in Pennsylvania while typically receiving less need-based aid. They can leave the region searching for qualified, college-educated workers if residents choose not to pursue a degree due to the cost.

Nearly every public university is cheaper than Pitt for middle-class families looking to send their children to a college close to home. 

For a Michigan family making $60,000 a year, an education at Michigan State University is roughly half the price of Pitt. That’s true, too, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the University of Washington’s Seattle campus, the state’s families of that income level pay about 70% less than they would at Pitt. At Purdue University, families in Indiana pay about 80% less – only $4,645.

Low-income families also pay more at Pitt. An in-state family earning less than $30,000 a year pays $15,534 at Pitt but $11,559 at The University of Texas at Austin; $7,759 at The Ohio State University; $3,753 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and just $129 at Michigan State. 

Nearly two-thirds of undergraduates at Pitt’s main campus are from Pennsylvania, and about 20% are from Allegheny County. Public universities help make higher education accessible to residents, but unaffordable tuition costs can also strain that relationship, said Kimberly Dancy, associate director of research and policy at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. 

College towns “tend to be strong employers and provide significant opportunities in the community,” Dancy said. “It can really create problems in terms of the relationships between the residents of those states if they’re not … being provided with opportunities to benefit.” 

A cross-country switch to save money 

Kimberly Casella, of Bridgeville, took out a private loan to afford a semester at Pitt. Having first attended the Community College of Allegheny County to save money on tuition, Casella transferred to Pitt in spring 2019.

Casella did not receive any financial aid for her first semester. Her household financial situation had worsened, but financial aid did not rise to fill the gap. She took out a $14,000 private loan from Sallie Mae, hopeful that she would receive financial aid the following semester.

But once the fall semester rolled around, Casella again did not receive financial aid. She had to withdraw from the university, halfway through classes. 

“It was actually very heartbreaking. I kind of mourned that a little bit,” Casella said. “Being first-generation and not having the best health or track record with school, getting into Pitt was such a milestone for me, and I was extremely proud to attend the university.”

After leaving Pitt, Casella went to the public Oregon State University, where she will graduate this summer. She was able to receive financial aid, and even as an out-of-state student, Casella has found the university to be more affordable than Pitt. But she still bears the financial burden of the private loan she took out for Pitt. With interest, she owed roughly $18,400 as of late May, despite making monthly payments.

“That is probably never going to get paid off,” Casella said. “I don’t want other people to get trapped into a Sallie Mae loan as I did.” 

A funding struggle in Pennsylvania 

Pitt is able to offer its in-state discount because it receives an annual appropriation of state funding. But from 2008 to 2019, Pennsylvania’s per-student funding of higher education fell by roughly a third, one of the sharpest drops nationwide, according to the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. 

University spokesperson Jared Stonesifer said the declining state appropriation – which made up 32% of Pitt’s budget in 1975 but accounts for less than 10% today – has contributed to the tuition increases. “Along the way, Pitt and Pennsylvanians have been left to make up the difference,” he said.

The state appropriation isn’t guaranteed either and was threatened last year. Some state House Republicans attempted to force Pitt to end its research using fetal tissue from elective abortions to receive the funding, and the university engaged in advocacy to preserve the in-state tuition discount. Ultimately, Pitt received its appropriation. 

Tom Harnisch, vice president for government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, said the governor and state legislature must invest in the public universities to keep tuition low, make higher education more accessible and signify “that higher education is a public good that provides public benefits to the state.”

“It’s one of the most unaffordable states for public higher education in the country,” Harnisch said of Pennsylvania. “Most students don’t go beyond an hour’s drive of their house for college, so it’s vitally important that we make college affordable and accessible in all corners of the state.”

In 2011, former Gov. Tom Corbett slashed the state’s funding of Pitt (as he did with other state-related universities) by 19%, down to $136 million from about $168 million. The state has never restored those lost dollars, said state Sen. Jay Costa, who serves on Pitt’s Board of Trustees. 

“We have a long way to go before we get back to where we were,” Costa said. “And even then, we were not very good at funding higher education in Pennsylvania.”

This year, Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget, if passed, would allocate about $162 million to Pitt. The university received $151 million last year.

Stonesifer said that any decision on tuition that might follow an increased appropriation would be the responsibility of the Board of Trustees. Pitt froze tuition during the 2020-21 academic year, at the height of the pandemic, but tuition costs have largely continued to increase over the last decade.

For some students, financial aid makes all the difference

Over roughly the last decade, Pitt has doubled its own spending on financial aid. At the same time, though, the average price families pay climbed 14.5%. While more than half of Pitt undergraduates received federal, state or institutional financial aid in the 2020-21 academic year, the average Pitt family still had to pay between $20,000 and $30,000 to attend.

That’s forced some Pitt families to close the gap by taking out private loans, which offer fewer protections for borrowers and can be pricier. About 20% of Pitt families took out these loans for the 2021-2022 academic year, compared to 2% at the University of Washington, 5% at Georgia Tech and 10% at the University of Maryland. 

At some of the other top public universities in the country, increases in institutional aid have supported long-term decreases in the average cost of attendance. The University of Florida nearly doubled its spending on aid from fall 2010 to 2020 and decreased the cost for families by about 15%. Michigan State nearly tripled its spending on aid and shrunk its cost of attendance by about 30%. 

Students everywhere, though, can pay radically different prices depending on their academic record and family incomes. The increases in aid have made a real difference for some Pitt students, like rising junior Ciara Gordon, who received enough aid last academic year to cover all but $6,225 in estimated direct costs.

Pitt was Gordon’s top choice for college, as she hoped to attend the university as an undergraduate and eventually enroll in its medical school. When she was accepted to the university in 2021, she had nearly all of her expenses covered through scholarships and grants, including the Pittsburgh Promise. 

Gordon, who grew up in Homewood, said her family wouldn’t have been able to help her pay for college. “It just helps a lot knowing that, ‘OK, you’re at a good school, you’re somewhere where you like, and it’s free,’ and it leaves the stress off of them,” she said. She participated last year in Pitt’s efforts to protect the in-state tuition discount, sharing that she’d likely struggle to attend if she had to pay the out-of-state price.

The university has also launched a variety of initiatives in the last decade to tackle affordability, Stonesifer said. One initiative is the Pitt Success Pell Match Program, which doubles the aid low-income students receive through federal Pell Grants. Pitt has invested $139 million in the program, providing financial support to nearly 13,000 students since launching in 2019. 

Isabel Lam, a rising senior from Scranton, received additional aid through the program, as did Gordon. A first-generation college student, Lam said price was the largest factor in her decision to attend Pitt – and her Pell funding and need-based aid largely made her education possible. 

Though she has also taken out student loans, Lam described her financial aid package as “phenomenal.” But she acknowledges that not all of her classmates share her experience. 

“For my family, it has been the best choice by far,” Lam said. “It’s very affordable for me, but not affordable for all.”

Conrad received about $34,400 in aid to cover roughly $52,000 in tuition and fees. To pay for the remaining costs, he had to take out loans. “I feel like I did every possible thing that I could to get the cost down,” Conrad said. “And it’s still way more than I could reasonably afford.” 

Creating a more affordable Pitt 

Along with boosting the state appropriation, Dancy at the Institute for Higher Education Policy said lawmakers should increase funding for state need-based financial aid programs. She added that public universities should prioritize low-income students when dispersing institutional aid and ensure that families are aware of their options for financial support. 

Some students believe Pitt could spend its money better, too, investing in financial aid instead of administrative salaries and construction projects, said Lam, who served as the Student Government Board’s vice president of operations last academic year. The incoming chancellor’s $950,000 annual base salary, for example, is 36% higher than outgoing Chancellor Patrick Gallagher’s. 

The Board of Trustees chair has said Gallagher’s salary fell below some of Pitt’s public university peers in the 63-member Association of American Universities. In 2021, Gallagher’s $669,738 salary fell below about half of universities in the association that reported salary data to The Chronicle of Higher Education. (More than a third did not provide data.) His salary was higher, though, than about 85% of the 196 public university presidents on the Chronicle’s list. 

The university is also working on multi-million-dollar construction projects, including the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center and Victory Heights project.

“Why are we making these unnecessary changes when we could be allocating these resources to continuing to recruit and get students that are such a perfect match for our school?” Lam said. 

Beyond lowering the cost of tuition, both Gordon and Casella said the university should be more transparent about the cost of attendance and aid that’s available, as well as provide greater scholarship opportunities to Pittsburghers. Pitt offers two merit-based scholarships specifically for Pennsylvanians, which cover tuition for a total of 10 students. 

“One of the things that I loved about Pitt, going in, was that they seemed proud to be part of the City of Pittsburgh and proud of their location with us and their relationship with the city,” Casella said. “For them not to be accessible to the people who live there, I was almost blindsided.”

Clarification (6/9/23): This article was updated to provide more detail about the 2022 state appropriation to Pitt.

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

Betul Tuncer is a former PublicSource intern and a student at the University of Pittsburgh. She can be reached at bst9@pitt.edu.

This story was fact-checked by Alexandra Ross.

The post The high cost of higher ed: Pitt is one of the nation’s priciest public universities for local families appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

The ministry’s director went from food stamps to a professorship to running an essential resource in times of rising food prices.

By Betul Tuncer

There was a time when Ruth Kittner only had $600 for the entire winter — an amount that was very little money even in 1978. With that money, she was able to pay her rent in Denver, utilities and phone but needed some extra support to pay for groceries, so she applied for food stamps. 

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“I could buy 6 ounces of beef, a bunch of rice and potatoes, a bunch of beans. And that 6 ounces of beef would last me 10 days,” said Kittner. “And I got criticism at the checkout because I bought beef on my food stamps.”

Kittner is now the executive director of the Wilkinsburg Community Ministry [WCM], which operates as a food pantry aiming to provide people with access to fresh and healthy foods. 

On an April weekday, a line stretched down the block as individuals and families patiently waited to visit the pantry with reusable bags in hand. According to Kittner, that’s the norm: The pantry provides food to about 60 families every day and averages about 40,000 pounds of free food every month.

Located at 704 Wood St., the pantry is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and allows community members to visit twice a week to shop for groceries. 

The pantry aims to provide fresh, healthy foods and help alleviate the problem of hunger and food insecurity that many people face. 

“Our motto is, we share food. So basically, if somebody’s hungry, we share food,” said Kittner.

As the cost of groceries continues to increase, the ability to afford and access food decreases for many people. 

In America, 10.2% of households experience food insecurity, according to a 2021 report by the Department of Agriculture. And that percentage increases to 12.5% for households with children. In the City of Pittsburgh, one in five residents struggle with accessing healthy and affordable food, and the Greater Pittsburgh Community Foodbank estimates that 13.1% of Allegheny County residents contend with food insecurity. 

“I don’t expect to solve world hunger, much less hunger in Western Pennsylvania,” said Kittner. But she does believe that the efforts of WCM can at least help feed neighbors. 

“We can address a daily problem daily and make somebody’s life a little easier and a little less frustrating,” said Kittner. 

WCM, established in 1968, has been around since before the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. Today, the pantry has 10 employees and about 20 volunteers who help operate the physical pantry, the various mobile pantries and their community garden to provide community members with easy access to fresh, healthy foods. 

Kittner first got into this work through her mother, who began volunteering at the food pantry in 1999 and eventually “dragged” Kittner in to help WCM write grant proposals. A couple years into proposal writing, the previous executive director retired and Kittner stepped up to fill the position while simultaneously teaching history at Carnegie Mellon University. She is now fully dedicated to the food pantry and no longer teaches at CMU.

Having experienced the hardship of trying to afford healthy foods and witnessing it through the people who visit the pantry, Kittner said many people don’t understand the problem of hunger. 

“You don’t notice it until you see it, until you see the people who are suffering from it and what it does to their overall attitude toward society,” she said.

In an effort to make their service even more accessible, WCM also operates a mobile food pantry that visits locations in Wilkinsburg throughout the week. According to Kittner, this allows people to utilize the pantry at their convenience, especially given that “transportation is a huge problem” for many. The mobile pantries operate from 3 to 6 p.m. Thursdays at Douglas Plaza (2405 Laketon Rd.) and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays at Covenant Fellowship Church (1300 Swissvale Ave.).

Inside WCM’s building, people are able to pick up anything from canned goods, produce, bread, eggs and milk to toilet paper, cleaning supplies and, when stocked, feminine hygiene products. According to pantry coordinator Melissa Wilson, they hope to make the experience of visiting the pantry as close to that of a grocery store as possible and make sure “that we are presenting in a dignifying way.”

The grocery store-like set up of the pantry is especially important to Kittner. 

“One of the things we try to do is we give people a choice,” said Kittner. “There’s dignity in choice.”

As pantry coordinator, Wilson greets pantrygoers and helps them register in the system if they are a first-time shopper. WCM serves not only Wilkinsburg — where an estimated 23% of people live in poverty, including 43% of children — but also all of the borough’s neighboring communities. Registration is meant to track the number of customers of the pantry.

Wilson guides people through that week’s selection of foods, encouraging people to take what they need. She also helps pick out items for the pantry from the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, which supplies most of their food. 

Anything that the pantry doesn’t get from the food bank, they get — sometimes for free — from nearby grocery stores like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and Giant Eagle. For items the pantry can’t get through donations, they fill the gaps with funds they receive through the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture or through individual donations, according to Kittner. 

The pantry served record numbers of people in the first three months of the pandemic, like many other pantries and food banks in the country. Kittner said the pantry serves fewer people now but that it hasn’t dropped to pre-pandemic levels, which she said speaks to major issues within society. 

“How can we have a society as rich as ours in a county as rich as Allegheny and have people go to bed hungry? Have children go to school hungry? It’s crazy,” said Kittner. 

“My biggest thing I tell people is that it’s not a lack of food,” said Wilson. “You know, there’s food available. It’s a matter of how it moves around in the system. … It’s just a matter of getting it out there.”

Kittner said she believes the general public isn’t fully aware of the issue of food insecurity.

“If you haven’t worked with people who are hungry, you don’t know what the problem is, you don’t understand the problem. Recognizing it for what it is is the first step,” said Kittner. 

Community members can keep up to date with WCM’s programs and the location of its mobile pantries through WCM’s Facebook page. Those wishing to donate items or money to WCM can find out how to do so on their website. 

Betul Tuncer is an editorial intern at PublicSource and can be reached at betul@publicsource.org.

The post ‘We share food’: Wilkinsburg Community Ministry works to address hunger, food insecurity through pantry appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

As he poured an even layer of batter into a waffle machine, Jacob Heinzl explained how having his student loans forgiven would be a “big weight lifted.” Moments later, the waffle machine steamed. He grabbed a spatula, scraped the freshly made, wispy waffle out of the machine and quickly shaped it into a waffle cone. 

“I have my fingers crossed, but my hopes aren’t too high,” said Heinzl, 31. He estimates that he took out about $20,000 in loans for college. He works at Scoops in Bloomfield and drives for DoorDash with a car he purchased during the ongoing student loan payment pause. 

Heinzl attended Slippery Rock University for three semesters, beginning in 2010, and transferred to the Community College of Allegheny County. He has an associate’s degree in psychology and estimates that he has about $7,000 left in loans to pay off. 

“I didn’t really know what I was signing up for when I initially went to college,” he said. “I just went to college because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.”

The weight of his debt seems to be “slowing everything down,” he said. He’s put off his dream of going to nursing school partly because of his loans. He doesn’t want to accumulate more debt.

“I have my fingers crossed, but my hopes aren’t too high.”

Jacob Heinzl, 31, estimates that he took out about $20,000 in student loan debt.

As Heinzl defers his plans, thousands of Pittsburghers like him are waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is constitutional. The court is mulling two legal challenges to Biden’s proposal, which would cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for individuals earning less than $125,000 a year. The justices are expected to rule in late June or early July, almost a year after Biden announced the relief. 

Pittsburghers were able to apply for forgiveness from October to November 2022. At that point, the Biden administration stopped taking applications after a federal judge in Texas deemed the plan unlawful. In Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district, which includes Pittsburgh and parts of Allegheny and Westmoreland counties, an estimated 64% of eligible people — 78,800 in total — applied, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. 

In all, more than 2 million Pennsylvanians hold student loan debt. They may have to soon start making monthly payments on their federal student loans again, after a three-year reprieve. The Department of Education has stated that those payments will resume 60 days after June 30 or the Supreme Court’s ruling, whichever is sooner. 

‘Fingers crossed’ for loan forgiveness

First-generation college student Paloma Del Toro transferred to Carnegie Mellon University from community college on a federal Pell Grant, which provides aid to low-income students. She expects to take out about $20,000 in loans. Her debt would be entirely wiped away under Biden’s forgiveness plan, as it would for nearly half of borrowers in the United States. She’s counting on that relief. 

She hopes to work for a nonprofit with her degree in international relations and politics, but without forgiveness, she said she may need to move back home to Illinois or find a less-fulfilling, better-paying job. She’s unsure what repaying her debt would entail, and her parents, who are immigrants, lack experience with the process. 

“I don’t really have much to fall back on,” said Del Toro, a junior. She added that her family doesn’t “have that type of money to be paying these loans right off the bat when we graduate.”

While a college degree is associated with substantial increases in lifetime earnings, the cost of that education has nearly doubled at four-year institutions over the last 30 years. The value of the maximum Pell Grant, meanwhile, has diminished over time. Student loan debt disproportionately burdens people of color, with Black graduates owing $25,000 more on average than their white peers, according to the Education Data Initiative.

“I don’t really have much to fall back on.”

Paloma Del Toro, a junior at cmu, expects to borrow about $20,000.

This debt can impact not only a borrower’s future — making it more difficult to buy a house or save for retirement — but also limit their ability to invest in their communities, said Kat Welback, director of advocacy and the civil rights counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center, a national nonprofit that aims to alleviate student loan debt. 

About 16% of borrowers were in default as of March 2022, a percentage that the federal education department has said could spike significantly if the Supreme Court strikes down the forgiveness plan. The plan would serve as “a critical lifeline” to borrowers as repayments begin, Welback said.

“For many people, it was just keeping them afloat,” Welback said of the payment pause. “For others, it may have been the first time where they’re able to say they had some sort of breathing room.” 

“That’s money that I can’t get back.”

Taylor Stessney, 31, has about $100,000 in student loan debt.

Taylor Stessney, 31, has about $100,000 in federal and private loans. Stessney knew they’d have to repay their debt, but they’d also planned for their education to bring greater earnings. Since graduating, they’ve worked in the government and nonprofit sector, taking on jobs in restaurants to supplement their income. 

Stessney, who works full time as a bartender, was able to purchase a house with their partner partly because of the pause on payments. While they’ve made progress on tackling their debt and have generally been able to cover their expenses, Stessney said they could’ve put past payments toward their retirement or emergency savings.  

“That’s money that I can’t get back,” said Stessney, who qualified for $20,000 in forgiveness. 

The debate over forgiveness

The two legal challenges that the Supreme Court is hearing come from six Republican-led states and a conservative advocacy group, respectively. Both argue the president acted beyond his authority. 

The six states claim that Biden needed approval from Congress to cancel the debt, and that the plan would cause their states financial harm and reduce the profits of federal student loan servicers. In the second challenge, lawyers assert that because the Biden administration did not allow public input on the plan, the plaintiffs were partially or fully excluded from accessing relief and denied their procedural rights.

Loan forgiveness has been the subject of criticism beyond the two challenges. Critics have said the plan — estimated to cost about $400 billion — is too pricey. Some say that the debt relief could deepen inflation and burden taxpayers without improving college affordability. And others believe that forgiveness is unfair to those who paid off their debts or made sacrifices to avoid taking out loans. 

“There’s no part of me that would not have borrowed that money. There’s no part of me that didn’t think it was worth it.”

Tracy baton, 59, social worker

While he supports forgiveness, Nate Kegel, a third-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania, dislikes how the plan determines eligibility. He’s accepted employment at a law firm in Pittsburgh and expects to earn about $230,000, with signing bonuses — almost double the limit for an individual to receive relief. But because the plan determines eligibility based on income in 2020 or 2021, he qualifies.

The $10,000 in forgiveness he would receive would not significantly impact him, as he said he could pay off his debt relatively easily within a few years. But he recognizes that other borrowers aren’t in the same position. 

“It’s regrettable that it seemed like something that was going to happen, and now it’s being taken away, but I think America is hyper-politicized right now,” he said. 

Tyler Raub, 24, said the government should allocate taxpayer dollars to social programs that can “foster economic growth for everyone.” He returned to Pennsylvania after graduating from the University of South Carolina in the middle of the pandemic and said he has about $28,000 in loans.

“Just because one has to go through it doesn’t mean that all have to go through it,” Raub said. “Not everybody has the means or the equity to be able to support themselves. There’s nothing wrong with helping one another out and supporting one another.”

“Just because one has to go through it doesn’t mean that all have to go through it.”

Tyler Raub, 24, said he has about $28,000 in student loan debt.

Despite the debt they now hold, several borrowers who spoke with PublicSource said they don’t regret their college education. Tracy Baton, 59, said she believes that taking on student loans is “a good bet,” given the typical return on investment. As a social worker, she could see her remaining loans wiped away through Public Service Loan Forgiveness. 

“There’s no part of me that would not have borrowed that money. There’s no part of me that didn’t think it was worth it,” Baton said.

First-generation college student Inês Borges, 23, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, finds it important to break down educational barriers in her family. Still, the loan forgiveness plan would keep her from spending years worrying about debt. 

“If students are able to either have no loans, or their loans are significantly reduced, then you can contribute more to the economy,” Borges said. “When you allow opportunities for all people to get education without being so tied down by financial issues and barriers, it’s just the  contribution of knowledge to all the different fields.”

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

Betul Tuncer is an editorial intern at PublicSource and can be reached at betul@publicsource.org.

Photos by Stephanie Strasburg, Lily Kubit and Emma Folts.

This story was fact-checked by Kalilah Stein.

The post Student loan forgiveness faces an uncertain future. What does that mean for Pittsburghers? appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

On a Sunday around September of last year, just as Erica Givner’s husband was getting ready to throw something into a dumpster, local muralist Kyle Holbrook parked in a clearing on the side of Givner’s property. According to Givner, Holbrook had paint in the back of his truck and was preparing to “tag” a mural on the side of her building, and told her husband that they couldn’t touch his artwork without his permission. 

The encounter took place some time after Givner painted over one of Holbrook’s old murals that was on her recently renovated building at the intersection of Wood and Franklin streets in Wilkinsburg.

Coincidentally, the police happened to pass by during the encounter and helped manage the dispute. The police took Holbrook’s information down and he left, saying that the property owners will be “getting papers in the mail.” 

While the murals were painted more than a decade ago, Holbrook is citing the Visual Artists Rights Act and contending that the property owner can’t modify his murals in any way — even if it means bringing the building up to occupancy standards to provide services to the community. 

Givner received a cease and desist letter from Holbrook’s lawyer, Andrew Rozynski, in December. 

Holbrook declined to comment on the encounter with Givner’s husband or the cease and desist letter, saying it is a matter of “ongoing litigation.”

Addressed to Givner and her colleague Felicia Robinson, the letter notes that Holbrook has rights to the murals on 620 and 613-619 Wood St., and by “destructing” the murals, the property owners have violated the Visual Artists Rights Act [VARA]. The letter also called for a halt to any “additional destruction” and for Holbrook to receive, “monetary compensation for his emotional and reputational damage caused by your destruction, mutilation, and modification of his Murals.”

Meant to educate and inspire, murals faded

Holbrook, a Pittsburgh-born muralist with artwork around the city and the world, in 2002 founded the Moving the Lives of Kids [MLK] Mural Project with a vision to engage youth of different backgrounds by working with them to create vibrant public art. For Wilkinsburg especially, the project initially aimed to provide safe spaces for young people who may otherwise engage in gang activity. 

“It’s using art as a tool to be able to educate, inspire, work with a lot of different special needs populations like autism, victims of domestic violence or gun violence,” Holbrook told PublicSource. “Public art is public and it’s visible. … It gets a maximum amount of viewers, which could be millions every year.”

In the summer of 2007, youth and community members gathered together to paint the collection of murals on Wood Street in Wilkinsburg. Created through the Community Mural Project, the colorful murals depicted the faces of young people and historical figures.  

That summer, the mural project also had community members paint a collection of murals along the Wilkinsburg busway. When painting of the murals wrapped up, the project hosted an unveiling event by an outdoor gazebo at 613-619 Wood St., which government officials and community leaders attended.

While the murals at the intersection of Wood and Franklin were once vibrant and bold, by the time the current property owner, Givner, bought the buildings in 2015 and 2017, they had faced much wear from time. The buildings were in uninhabitable states, according to Givner — with the windows and doors boarded up, damaged bricks and chipped paint. 

Now a section of one mural is completely painted over while the other is partially modified as a result of exterior changes to the building. 

Murals as community expression 

Thomas Mitchell, the vice president of the Wilkinsburg Sanctuary Project for Peace, didn’t know much about the murals created in 2007, but noted the benefits of projects like the MLK Mural Project, including offering young people safe and legal ways to express themselves. He added that the Sanctuary Project, which aims to end youth and gun violence in Wilkinsburg, has worked with the mural project several times to offer summer programs to young people. 

“The young people can express themselves in different ways. They can express their artwork more legally,” said Mitchell. 

Holbrook said one reason he founded the MLK Community Mural Project was to allow youth to express themselves and to reduce gang graffiti in the neighborhood.

“[In] Wilkinsburg, where I grew up, all the walls where there’s murals now used to be gang graffiti, and none of them … have ever been tagged [since the murals were painted] and so I think it’s a way to enhance communities, and to be a voice for the voiceless.”

Public artwork like murals also often raise awareness for issues that a community may be facing. 

“Most of my childhood friends … are in jail. A couple are doing life, but most of them have been victims of gun violence. And I’ve been shot at myself several times,” said Holbrook. “I feel like, because of the circumstances in the life that I’ve seen, I think it’s my duty as an artist and a public artist, to share the importance in this epidemic that’s going around all around the country.”

Even for community members who may not know a particular artist’s inspiration, public art still has the ability to engage and contextualize communities. 

“A couple of the faces [in Wilkinsburg’s murals] remind me of people I know. I think it looks great. And now it puts the community in context as well,” said Ruth Kittner, executive director of the Wilkinsburg Community Ministry, a nonprofit food provider located on Wood Street. 

“There’s so many of these buildings, the paint is peeling and the brick is shredding and it’s just, it looks decrepit and dilapidated,” Kittner said, “and by putting the murals on, it gives the community an expression of its colors, art … It puts a different value on the place and it makes the built environment look less worn down.”

Do renovations collide with federal art law?

Givner bought 620 Wood St. back in 2015 and completely gutted and renovated the building over the course of four years. After the building met the borough’s occupancy standards, Givner and Robinson started running the nonprofit organization, A Peace of Mind, in it. Founded in 2014, the nonprofit aims to improve community wellness through programs like yoga classes and hip-hop aerobics, and provides 20-hour-per-day childcare services. 

After finishing work on 620, Givner began renovating 613-619 — a process that took over three years and was slowed by the pandemic. While exterior renovations on 620 only partially modified the murals on the building, that wasn’t the case with the 613-619 as Givner had to replace many bricks, windows and doors and then point the brick on the exterior walls. 

By the time renovations and exterior modifications were complete, much of the original mural on 613-619 Wood St. was damaged from mortar pointing, so Givner decided to just put a fresh coat of paint on the building. Givner now operates Vision Towards Peace out of the newly renovated building, where she provides mental health and counseling services. 

Prior to her husband’s encounter with Holbrook and receipt of the cease and desist letter, Givner knew no reason she wouldn’t be able to paint over the murals. But according to the federal statute that Hobrook is using as his main argument, artists sometimes have certain rights over how their public-facing work can be touched or modified. 

The Visual Artists Rights Act was enacted in 1990 and aims to protect the rights of artists for “visual art” meant for public display, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs and — if they meet certain requirements — murals. 

Holbrook also cited VARA in 2018 when he sued the City of Pittsburgh and a developer after they destroyed a mural the city earlier commissioned him to paint. The case ended in a settlement in 2021, and Holbrook declined to comment on the matter. 

“In American law, the VARA is a very limited, narrow form of moral rights,” said Michael Madison, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who focuses on copyright and intellectual property law. “So these rights to prevent damage and destruction, the right to get appropriate credit, only applies to a very small category of creative things.” 

Madison noted that in order for a piece of art, especially a mural, to fall under the VARA’s protection, it must meet certain criteria. 

“The right to prevent it from being destroyed only applies if the visual work is a work of recognized stature. So this right to prevent something from being destroyed does not apply to every artwork, does not apply to every painting, does not apply to every mural, it only applies to a very small number of things that meet this legal phrase,” said Madison. 

Holbrook’s cease and desist letter argues that the artist has a “notable prominence” in the Wilkinsburg community as a muralist and his murals have gained recognition from “noteworthy” individuals including other muralists, the former U.S. Secretary of Housing Alphonso Jackson and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum. It also notes that the late Pittsburgh-born rapper Mac Miller did a photoshoot in front of the murals on Wood Street. 

Madison said most murals in Pittsburgh likely do not meet the criteria to be considered a “work of recognized stature.” He said it’s hard to claim that a work is of recognized stature if it’s not well known in the art world “beyond Pittsburgh, even if they’re known beyond the neighborhood.”

Madison said that applying VARA raises questions about the relative weights of the artist’s copyright and the owner’s rights. 

“This is where things get very, very tricky and they get very, very difficult for the artist: This right to prevent something from being destroyed, where the physical object is owned by somebody else,” said Madison.

One case from 2018 suggests that public art on a building can have recognized stature. The 5Pointz case from New York, which Holbrook’s lawyer cites in the cease and desist letter, involved a collection of murals and graffiti art that was on several buildings owned by the same property owner. The artworks were done by a group of artists, and were internationally recognized by the art world. After a developer bought and demolished the building, the artists sued the developer under VARA. A court ruled in favor of the artists, and the developer had to pay the group of artists $6.75 million.

Madison noted that the New York case is different from any case that may exist in Pittsburgh. 

“Everybody in the art world, and especially everybody in the graffiti world in New York, knew about 5Pointz,” Madison said. That isn’t likely to be true of Pittsburgh-area murals, he said.

While declining to comment on the situation with Givner, Holbrook said that even though some of his murals in Wilkinsburg are decades old, his past work becomes more valuable as he becomes better known in the art world. 

“The murals are worth more than the buildings they’re on,” said Holbrook. 

Why is VARA emerging now?

While VARA does protect the rights of artists up until their death, Givner wondered why Holbrook decided to take claim to the artworks only years after she had started exterior work on the buildings, and when she had already painted over one of them.

“Both buildings had been worked on for literally this last seven years and permits had to be issued. And all of a sudden he pops up and has this type of ownership,” said Givner. 

Holbrook said he wants more people to be aware of artists’ rights, especially property owners who may buy buildings with murals on them but don’t know about the federal statute. 

“I’m doing this really because I have some notoriety and especially in the field of public art, where I can be the person to draw attention for the rights of all artists,” said Holbrook. 

Givner agrees with Holbrook on one thing: That there’s not universal awareness of VARA.

She said property owners may buy buildings with murals on them not knowing that the artist could potentially make a claim. 

“It could financially harm or ruin a business that’s really trying to make an impact to a vulnerable population,” said Givner.

She said she “would have never thought it was a problem,” given that the previous owner never mentioned the mural when she bought it, and there were no notes about the artist’s rights in any of the sale documents.

Givner called for state legislation that would require commissioned murals and the artists’ rights to be noted in property documents. 

Givner said that while she sees value in art curbing violence and bridging communities, she wishes she had known about VARA and what it might mean for her property earlier. 

“And as you can tell, I wouldn’t have painted it, because I’ve got the other buildings, I only did what I needed to do to bring the building up to occupancy and build it up to code and … to be able to provide such a needed service in the community.”

Betul Tuncer is an editorial intern at PublicSource and can be reached at betul@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Sophia Levin.

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