A toddler peeks beyond the blinds of their family’s McKeesport Housing Authority-managed apartment, Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024, in McKeesport. The authority filed a landlord/tenant complaint against the family for unpaid rent, potentially leading to eviction. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
Local programs to help troubled tenants are largely unused by the McKeesport Housing Authority, which last year filed complaints against 1 in 4 tenants.
On a Tuesday afternoon in December, around a dozen public housing tenants facing eviction filled a waiting room in McKeesport, where Magisterial District Judge Eugene Riazzi asked each if they could pay their delinquent rent.
If so, the tenant agreed to pay the amount owed, plus court costs of more than $150. Unless they pledged to pay, Riazzi ruled in favor of the McKeesport Housing Authority, starting a process that can lead to the tenant’s removal within weeks. Tenants who said they couldn’t pay were referred to a county human services worker who waited in the lobby to help them apply for rental assistance.
A similar scene plays out on many Tuesdays in McKeesport.
Since the end of the pandemic-era moratorium on evictions in 2021, all three housing authorities serving Allegheny County have filed numerous eviction cases, but none has done so with the same vigor and frequency as the McKeesport Housing Authority [MHA]. These legal actions come as county human service officials and advocates cement a rental assistance network created through pandemic-era federal funding that’s helping tenants of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County Housing Authority.
The McKeesport authority, by far the smallest of the three agencies with the fewest number of housing units, has filed 562 landlord/tenant cases against its tenants from the start of 2021 through early December. Pandemic-driven curbs on most evictions ended in 2021.
The Allegheny County Housing Authority [ACHA] filed 131 cases and the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP] filed 263 in that same time period, according to court data gathered by Anne Wright of Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab, who tracks eviction cases.
Jala Rucker, education outreach manager with Rent Help Pgh, tries to coordinate help for a person facing eviction at the Housing Stabilization Center, Jan. 18, in downtown Pittsburgh. The center’s staff helps renters find legal avenues and other means of support to stay in their homes in the face of eviction. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
Wright noted that tracking eviction filings for Pittsburgh’s housing authority can be difficult because the organization often uses various names when filing evictions against tenants. Eviction filings also do not necessarily correlate with actual evictions, as some tenants are able to gather the money and stay after a filing.
McKeesport Housing Authority solicitor Jim Creenan wrote in response to questions that the three housing authorities are structurally different. The MHA, he said, has limited resources, so it needs a consistent stream of federally required rent from tenants. He also noted that the authority has a “substantial waiting list” of families wanting to move into its communities.
Pittsburgh’s and Allegheny County’s housing authorities also have waiting lists for the units they manage.
County human service officials said that the Pittsburgh and county housing authorities are using partners including Just Mediation Pittsburgh to prevent evictions, while MHA has largely declined to use these resources.
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