Affordable Housing for Whom?

As the loss of affordable housing in the city of Pittsburgh becomes more troubling, conflicts over redevelopment of the former Civic Arena site in the Lower Hill symbolize both the systematic economic disenfranchisement of African-Americans following World War II and the expanding crisis in housing for larger and larger segments of the population within cities with growing per-capita income and aging housing stock.

The city and the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey franchise, the primary developer of the Lower Hill site, both argue they can do no better for potential renters than setting aside 20% of the proposed 1,188 residential units for so-called “affordable housing,” which in this case means that 15% of the units would be “affordable” to renters making 80% of the area’s median family income (around $39,100), with another 5% available to renters earning 60 to 70% of that income. Rents for that 15% of “affordable” units would be a minimum of $750 a month for a one-bedroom unit.

The Hill District Consensus Group (HDCG) has argued forcefully for 30% of the units being available to those earning 50% or less of median income, a figure very close to the $20,946 median for African-American families in the city, and an amount the Penguins claim is just not “economically feasible.” How would the Penguins’ know, counters HDCG, as the franchise has never tested the proposition through a public bidding process. Given that the project has received public monies to the extent of “a $15 million acquisition/development credit, substantial parking revenues, and an estimated $21 million in abated property taxes,” the Group has complained to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that the developers are violating the Fair Housing Act.

The city of Pittsburgh would like the complaint to go away, and to have its Affordable Housing Task Force discover other neighborhoods where the kind of housing the HDCG is advocating could be placed. The city’s position demands a certain level of amnesia concerning what happened in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when 8,000 mostly African-American residents and 413 businesses were removed from the Lower Hill to make way for the Civic Arena. What the Lower Hill neighborhood once meant, and still means, to Pittsburgh’s African-American community stands in direct opposition to the concerns about developers’ profit margins that appear to motivate the Penguins.

More broadly, defining affordable housing as $750 a month for a one-bedroom apartment (hardly what one would call a family dwelling) suggests how threatening the city housing market has become for all people of modest means, apart from those struggling to escape poverty. Once praised for its affordable cost of living, finding shelter in Pittsburgh is becoming as challenging for the young, aging, and poor as it has already become in many other American cities. A quick survey of the Apartment Finder web site reveals older one-bedroom apartments in Squirrel Hill renting for over $1,000 a month, while a three-bedroom in a new Strip district development can cost as much as $3,700.

Nationally, the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies reports that rents increased by 3.2% in 2014, “twice the pace of overall inflation” at a time when wages remained stagnant and the apartment vacancy rate was the lowest in nearly 20 years. The reluctance or the inability of young people to purchase homes, and baby-boomers interested in downsizing, create further upward pressure on rents.

If you are 25 to 34 years old, the low possibility of long-term employment in our “globalized” economy makes taking on a 25- to 30-year mortgage seem quite daunting. In addition, the Joint Center for Housing Studies observes that currently nearly a quarter of people in that age group are already paying more than 50% of their income for housing, while those committing more than 30% of income to housing is now at 46%. Add the growing percentage of millennial renters (over 40%) carrying student debt, and the large size of that debt (current average of nearly $31,000), and the possibility of taking on a mortgage grows distant.

Mayor Peduto has proposed the use of Section 8 rent subsidies to allow low-income families to purchase housing that might otherwise become blighted. Under that federal program, tenants currently pay 30% of their rent while government vouchers make up the difference. Why not apply the same subsidies to mortgage payments? While praising the concept, critics fear such a program would lead to underfunding, and to participants losing their vouchers when their incomes increase, even slightly.

Alternatives to keeping affordable housing in the city include more and more of the people who make the city run moving to less expensive inner-ring suburbs, which will consequently stress our already stressed transit system. Given that outcome, and the housing burdens currently placed on a variety of populations, maybe the battle over Lower Hill housing costs no longer seems specific to the African-American community.

Neil Cosgrove is a member of the NewPeople editorial collective and the Merton Center's Board of Directors.

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