RANDALL TAYLOR, with Penn Plaza Support and Action Coalition.
by Rob Taylor Jr.
Courier Staff Writer
From summer weekends in Downtown Pittsburgh (pre-COVID), to the heart of East Liberty, to the Strip District, the trained eye has known for years what recent U.S. Census data just confirmed—less and less African Americans call Pittsburgh home.
Between 2014 and 2018, the City of Pittsburgh lost 7,000 Black residents, leaving the city, as it stands in 2021, with less than 23 percent of the city’s residents as Black.
Pittsburgh City Council held a special hearing about the topic on May 6.
“Black displacement has been going on for 20 years but has really picked up over the last few years,” voiced Randall Taylor, with the Penn Plaza Support and Action Coalition, in an exclusive interview with the New Pittsburgh Courier, May 11. “Shameful. We believe it’s due to rising rents. We know the people didn’t leave for Atlanta or Charlotte, we know they left for the eastern parts of the county. They could not afford to live in Pittsburgh.”
“One of my B-PEP Planning Council members received an increase in rent in Crawford Square (in the Hill District) and ended up moving to Wilkinsburg,” echoed Tim Stevens, Chairman and CEO of the Black Political Empowerment Project, in a letter to City Council, dated May 5. “She, however, wanted to stay in Pittsburgh, but she felt she could not longer afford to do so, even though she was a retiree from a supervisory position in her previous employment.”
Both Taylor and Stevens agree that a push to have permanent affordable housing within Pittsburgh is a must. Ride through East Liberty, a once-majority Black neighborhood, and there are new apartment buildings everywhere — Bakery Square, Walnut on Highland, Eastside Bond, to name a few. Rent prices for a one-bedroom average no less than $1,300 per month, which means that a person must make a gross yearly salary of $46,800 to qualify for an apartment.
“The public are often left in the dark about these negotiations which are made by developers and city officials and then often they’re presented to the public pretty much in completed form without much room for negotiation,” said Jackie Smith, a sociology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, during a WTAE-TV (Channel 4) report on May 6.
When the Courier asked Taylor, who has been at the forefront of fighting for the people who were displaced from their Penn Plaza residences so that an enlarged Whole Foods and other developments could be constructed, if some city officials and private developers knew that certain projects could displace African Americans, Taylor replied: “I believe there’s monied interest in the city, in partnership with political allies, who believe this city would be better off if you had to make at least $100,000 to live in the city. If that was not the case, there would be an acting policy to make sure people could afford to live in the city.”
Pittsburgh will be receiving $355 million in COVID-19 relief dollars in the coming weeks, and Stevens, in his letter, urged the city to use a significant portion of the money on “building high quality low- to moderate-income affordable housing throughout Pittsburgh, and particularly in historic neighborhoods which have been affected by gentrification, such as East Liberty and the Hill District…there has been a recent fear that gentrifications has even begun to take place in Homewood. In approximately five years the Lawrenceville community has lost half of its Black population. These trends are troubling and must be addressed and reversed.”
Taylor told the Courier he wants African Americans who grew up in certain communities to be able to return back to those communities. He wants the city to create permanent affordable housing in Homewood and “rebuild communities like them that have been neglected by the city for decades.”
Stevens added in his letter: “The City of Pittsburgh must seek ways to embrace and retain the emerging Black and brown young adults who may be of a moderate or higher income level, who in the past, have left our city going to other cities which may be viewed as having a more positive, diversified and welcoming environment. The City of Pittsburgh…cannot just be a city for those of a certain higher level of income. Pittsburgh must indeed be a city for all! We ask that you move immediately to make this goal, not ongoing conversation, but a meaningful reality!”
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