LaSaine Latimore, of the Hill District, shares during public comment on City Councilor Bob Charland’s inclusionary zoning bill during a packed meeting of Pittsburgh’s City Planning Commission, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025, in Downtown. “We want to be that livable city again,” said Latimore, who grew up in a changing Hill District in which development led to displacement. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
Pittsburgh’s City Planning Commission endorsed Mayor Ed Gainey’s proposal to require affordable units in larger, new housing construction, after rejecting a less comprehensive version.
“PublicSource is an independent nonprofit newsroom serving the Pittsburgh region. Sign up for our free newsletters.”
Citywide inclusionary zoning won an important endorsement from the City Planning Commission early Wednesday morning after the panel narrowly opposed a competing plan that would be less comprehensive in requiring affordable housing.
With the packed hearing with an estimated 100 public speakers and two votes, debates in Pittsburgh to institutionalize affordable housing reached a new pitch of tension.
“Everybody in this room is frustrated for very, very important reasons,” said Connor Hayes of Lawrenceville during the 11-plus-hour commission meeting to consider Mayor Ed Gainey’s inclusionary zoning proposal and Councilor Bob Charland’s competing version. Hayes argued that city officials should slow down when considering the competing zoning proposals. “This could have the same harmful effect as running highways through Black and brown communities in Pittsburgh. We should make sure we’re doing this correctly.”
And take their time they did as the nine-member panel heard from scores of residents, government officials and academics from across the country on proposals to rewrite the city’s zoning codes to spur more affordable housing. Gainey now looks to expand inclusionary zoning to the rest of the city while Charland’s version would reduce the affordability mandate and allow neighborhoods to opt in.
The city’s current inclusionary zoning requires all new developments with 20 units or more to set aside at least 10% of units for lower-income residents at affordable rates. It applies only in Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, Oakland and Polish Hill. Critics of the zoning overlay argue that it depresses new development and scares away developers. Supporters argue that an expansion is the most effective way to guarantee that Pittsburgh can provide “deeply affordable” housing for lower income families making less than half of the area’s median income.
“I don’t want us to have a city where some people feel like they’ve been left behind, where some people feel they’ve been left out,” Gainey said around 8:45 p.m., when his proposals finally came up for discussion as the meeting approached the seven-hour mark. “It’s up to us to be able to provide that type of housing for everyone that lives in this city.”
Gainey’s package of zoning proposals also includes allowing accessory dwellings units, eliminating minimum lot sizes and removing the mandate to include parking with new construction. Many of the public commenters noted their approval for these other proposals while calling inclusionary zoning a “poison pill.”
Nonetheless, the commission voted eight to zero with one abstention for Gainey’s proposals. That came after the commission issued a negative recommendation on Charland’s bill, with one member voting against the negative recommendation and three abstaining.
Not new, but controversial
Inclusionary zoning is hardly new, with more than 800 American cities adopting inclusionary housing policies since the 1970s in an attempt to create more affordable housing, according to the National League of Cities. But in Pittsburgh, the concept is relatively novel with a 2019 pilot program introducing the zoning overlay to Lawrenceville before expanding to three other neighborhoods.
The tone of Tuesday’s marathon meeting was set early on when Corey Layman, the city’s zoning administrator, was booed by one resident, Carmen Brown, who suggested he be jailed.
Brushing off the comment, Layman presented Charland’s bill, laying out that both Charland and Gainey’s versions “agree on the premise that the private market alone will not provide housing needs but they differ on methods to achieve for greatest need.”
Layman noted that the Department of City Planning met with councilors Charland and Erika Strassburger on two occasions this month to discuss a possible compromise between the two competing bills. Ultimately, the differences between the two bills couldn’t be reconciled and Layman concluded that, “Charland’s bill does not equitably distribute affordable housing throughout city.”
Charland presented his plans to the commissioners, arguing, “my proposal is different. It’s enhanced and shares the cost of building affordable units. It’s modeled after reform policies that look like the mayor’s proposals after they were reformed.”
What are the details of Pittsburgh’s inclusionary zoning proposals?
Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and City Councilor Bob Charland have authored different takes on inclusionary zoning — a tool for requiring that developers include affordable housing in significant new residential developments. Here are key provisions of both proposals.
| Proposal introduced on … | Sept. 5 | Dec. 3 |
|---|---|---|
| First introduced to … | City Planning Commission | Pittsburgh City Council |
| Neighborhoods covered would include … | All city neighborhoods | Neighborhoods that opt in, following a council vote |
| Covers developments with … | New construction or substantial improvement to a building with 20 or more units | Same |
| Requires affordability in … | 10% of units | 20% of units, but includes several bands of affordability |
| Defines affordability as … | Affordable to households earning up to 50% of AMI | Affordable to households in various income bands ranging from 50% to 99% of AMI |
| Requires affordability for … | Life of the structure as long as it’s used for housing | 20 years |
| Developer exemptions? | Developers cannot get exemptions. | A developer may choose to pay a fee of as much as $50,000 per unit in lieu of creating the required number of inclusionary units. |
| Is the city required to help with financing? | No | The city and its agencies must fill financial gaps resulting from required, inclusionary units. |
| Sweetens the pot by … | Giving developers the right to increase the height of buildings with affordable units. | Same, but bigger height increases. |
| Exempts … | Dormitories, fraternity and sorority houses | Same |
| Full text can be found … | https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25502882-draft-for-mayor-gaineys-citywide-inclusionary-zoning/ | https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25502754-cm-charlands-inclusionary-zoning-text/ |
The two sides have plenty of supporters and detractors, each with statistics and studies to back up their arguments.
“We should not pretend that inclusionary zoning will radically or meaningfully change overall affordability in a city,” said Shane Phillips, a researcher with the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, who Charland invited to speak. “That’s not a knock on inclusionary zoning, you can say that about almost any program. There is not one solution to the housing crisis. The limits of inclusionary zoning are pretty narrow just based on how much housing gets produced a year and how little a share can be set aside without making projects impossible to build.”
As Phillips began to expound on studies in Helsinki and increasing costs in land value, commission Chair LaShawn Burton-Faulk asked him to limit his presentation to Pittsburgh.
“The challenge here is, what he’s presenting here is data that may not apply locally,” Burton- Faulk said, with many in the crowd applauding. “I want to be respectful but it’s a little unfair to ask everybody to sit through a hundred slides.”
Charland responded, “it’s unfair to make a ruling on zoning legislation without full context of what we’re looking at.”
Charland asked the commission to allow Jack Billings, a Squirrel Hill native with Pro-Housing Pittsburgh, to present but Burton-Faulk denied the request. The exchange led to accusations throughout the meeting that the commissioners were censoring Charland’s bill and arguments. David Vatz, also with Pro-Housing Pittsburgh, took it a step further and accused the commission of being “a kangaroo court.”
After Charland’s presentation, a large number of people formed a line to voice their thoughts on Charland’s bill.
“Pittsburgh needs a strong inclusionary zoning policy that would require developers to create units for all,” said Alisia Grisham of Uptown. “Charland’s bill is a mockery of what inclusionary zoning should be.”
City Controller Rachel Heisler said that after studying the issue she concluded that there isn’t enough data to come to any conclusions about inclusionary zoning. She cautioned against using any available data on the city’s pilot inclusionary zoning program to come to a conclusion on the topic.
“Our initial work suggests there isn’t a large enough sample size presently available to reach a clear conclusion about inclusionary zoning’s local efficacy,” Heisler wrote in a memo to the City Planning Commission.
Heisler’s forthcoming report identifies Pittsburgh’s decades of disinvestment and population loss as “a core driver of the unreliability of this data.”
Heisler continued “Our baseline of housing construction is low, which makes the sample size too small to make a legitimate analysis. While new unit construction has accelerated in the past decade, particularly in high-demand neighborhoods like Lawrenceville and the Strip District, we remain outpaced by peer cities overall.”
Heisler’s office will continue to work with the planning department to complete their report.
“Like all parties involved in this discussion, we believe the City must work collaboratively to foster robust housing development that not only supports and protects our current population but also future growth,” Heisler wrote.
Questions of legality and a coming council vote
Words of caution also came from development interests. Bakery Square’s developer, Walnut Capital, issued a letter to city planners through lawyer Jonathan Kamin, a familiar face at city planning meetings.
Kamin urged commissioners to consider the legal entanglement around inclusionary zoning.
“The legality of the City’s current IZ is currently subject to challenge in federal
court, and has been litigated for more than two years,” Kaiman wrote, citing the ongoing case of Builders Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh v. City of Pittsburgh.
The bills now go to Pittsburgh City Council for final votes.
Because Gainey’s proposal won a positive recommendation, it only needs five votes on the nine-member council to pass. Charland’s bill, carrying a negative recommendation, needs seven votes on council to go to the mayor for signature or veto.
Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
