Children run along the Somers Drive section of Bedford Dwellings as Pittsburgh’s skyline rises in the background, on Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
A bid for federal Choice Neighborhoods aid would be the cornerstone – but far from the end – of an ambitious plan for some 800 new Hill District rentals.
by Eric Jankiewicz and Stephanie Strasburg, PublicSource
Pittsburgh’s housing authority is finalizing plans to apply for a federal grant to completely redevelop the city’s oldest public housing development.
The Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP] will be applying for a $50 million grant through Choice Neighborhoods, a program run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, to replace all 411 units of Bedford Dwellings with around 700 to 800 mixed-income units. Officials expect to submit the plan to the federal government by the end of this year after completing, among other things, a relocation plan and a public safety strategy.
If the federal government approves the grant application, private partner TREK Development expects the project to take eight years to complete. It would follow the use of Choice Neighborhoods funds to redevelop part of East Liberty and Larimer, and potentially the Allegheny Dwellings community in Fineview.
The emerging proposal calls for a mixture of public and private redevelopment of the Hill District complex, with replacement of all public housing units along with the addition of market-rate units. The plan reflects a larger trend of agencies developing housing through a mixture of private and public means. But some residents worry that including the private sector will lead to diminished tenant services.
Nadrea Crosby, 28, a resident of Bedford Dwellings for 5 years, flips burgers as a person is loaded into the back of an ambulance along the Chauncey Drive section of the complex, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022, in the Hill District. Crosby, a mother of two young daughters, grew up in St. Clair, another Pittsburgh housing authority community that was demolished. “I know when that place got knocked down I was really sad – I feel like I lost a lot of people,” she said. Her sadness doesn’t carry to Bedford Dwellings. “I wish they’d knock this down first,” said Crosby. “I don’t even feel like it’s a community, I just feel like it’s jail.” (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
“Absolutely it needs to be upgraded,” said Brenda Toley, a Bedford Dwellings resident for more than 10 years. “There’s problems inside with the toilet system, flooding, things break down. And it’s just old.”
The city’s housing authority received a federal grant of $500,000 in 2016 to work with Bedford Dwellings residents, the Hill Community Development Corporation and other groups on a plan to redevelop a site that dates back to the 1930s.
In 2018, HACP applied for funding from the Choice Neighborhoods program, which aims to improve both public housing and surrounding communities.
The federal government denied the application, which only aimed to redevelop the “lower” section, made up of a trio of three-story walk up apartments and four two-story townhomes on Somers Drive.
Now, the agency has expanded its redevelopment aspirations to demolish and reconstruct all 30 buildings. The new development would be managed by TREK.
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