Councilmen Burgess and Lavelle make final push for Affordable Housing funds

“This allows us to front-load the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and move on projects, instead of doing a little here and a little there as the transfer tax revenue to trickles in,” he said. “We’ll have a dedicated fund that the tax money replenishes.”
After multiple public hearings, City Council has scheduled a post-agenda hearing to get one last round of input from experts before voting on the financing package. Burgess said he has four Council votes, and is fairly confident he can get the additional vote needed to pass the measure.
He also noted that, because of possible reductions in federal monies, this may be the only opportunity to leverage the $1 billion in investments that could revitalize the entire city.
“The president and congress have both talked about eliminating Community Development Block Grants and the Choice Neighborhoods program—which is what is funding the Larimer redevelopment,” he said. “This may be our only shot at doing this.”
Burgess said on average, two families per week are leaving Homewood. Some are simply abandoning their homes, either because repairing them would cost more than they can sell for, or they can’t pay the taxes. The leveraged funds could be used to address both issues, as well as for subsidizing first-time home buyers, paying rent, buying and rehabilitating abandoned homes, and paying off liens and judgements.
Though the front-loaded nature of the fund would allow for public property purchases and development that lessens the impact of private developers increasing property values to levels that make affordable rents impossible, and thus drive gentrification, Burgess said it can’t stop it entirely.
“I’m more focused on economic diversity than racial diversity. We need mixed-income communities. My preference is 33 percent subsidized rental housing, 33 percent market rate rental and 33 percent homeownership,” Burgess said.
“The Black folks are already leaving—two families a week. I don’t care if the new residents are Korean. This is the only way to stabilize some of these communities. At the end of the day we’ll at least have something African Americans can come back to.”
The post-agenda meeting is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. July 18 in Council chambers. Although no public comment will be heard, Burgess and Lavelle encourage supporters of the legislation to attend.
“The goal is $1 billion worth of investment over 10 years, that’s 100 million a year for 10 years,” Burgess told the Courier. “If you put that kind of investment in these (Black) communities you’re going to see them starting to thrive. You’re going to see Black people moving back into Pittsburgh, and you’re going to start seeing places that look like Stanton Heights replicated.”
 
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