Natasha Hicks poses for a portrait along Bennett Street in Homewood, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. Hicks and her two sons were displaced from El Court after Rising Tide bought the properties. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)
Touted by the city in May, the redevelopment of nearly 100 units in Homewood proves no simple matter for nonprofit Rising Tide Partners.
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When Alma Hicks stepped out of her place in Homewood, she was surrounded by properties cited as unsafe by the city. Most of them, including the brownstone in which she lives, are under new ownership: A subsidiary of Rising Tide Partners, a nonprofit with a mission of restoring communities.
Walking toward Hamilton Avenue, Hicks pointed out properties owned by Rising Tide. Last year, the nonprofit wrested control of 93 properties in Homewood through the use of the conservatorship law. The homes were previously owned by RFS Investments, a private company that Hicks worked for as property manager.
“Look at all the overgrown weeds here now, it was never like this when we had ownership,” said Hicks, now unemployed.
A few blocks away she passed a collection of residential buildings on El Court, from which Hicks’ children Natasha and Elijah Hicks were evicted by Rising Tide in April, after the nonprofit said they owed more than $2,000 in rent. Natasha’s two children were also evicted. The nonprofit’s Executive Director Kendall Pelling has said the former tenants didn’t communicate with his agency, which they dispute.
Rising Tide and partner organizations have said they plan to completely gut the houses they have acquired and demolish any unsalvageable structures. The El Court buildings have been selected for the first redevelopment phase, with nonprofit Pennsylvania Affordable Housing Corporation contracted to renovate 20 units there, and the work was reportedly set to start in late summer.
An October visit to El Court showed no visible work underway in the former residential stretch. The El Court apartments in which the Hicks siblings once lived are shuttered with plywood, but scattered furniture and clothing hints at the people who once lived there. Pelling said funding has been secured to begin renovations and that none of the buildings would be demolished.
Rising Tide encountered delays meeting its goals a neighborhood away, along Park Hill Drive in East Hills. Its Homewood effort is still in the early days, and neighborhood groups express a range of reactions to the nonprofit’s new, central role there. The Hicks family’s experience suggests that efforts in Homewood, like East Hills, could reflect the difficulty of reversing disinvestment without causing displacement.
“Rising Tide said they would fix my place up,” Natasha Hicks recalled. “The next thing I know, I got a letter in the mail directing me to the magistrate.”
Acquisition and eviction
RFS, based in California, originally acquired the Homewood properties in 2006 for around $2.4 million, according to county property records.
Rising Tide took control in September 2024 after lengthy litigation including conservatorship filings — in which a petitioner seeks stewardship over neglected properties — and a bankruptcy by RFS.
So far, Rising Tide received a $1 million loan from Bridgeway Capital, an equity-focused investment group, to buy 46 properties from RFS. Additionally, $500,000 from the Neighborhood Community Development Fund went toward acquiring 44 privately-owned structures, demolishing 19 vacant buildings and clearing 27 vacant lots.
Homewood by the numbers
- Population: 5,459
- Under age 18: 29%
- Age 65 or over: 20%
- Under poverty line: 31%
- Housing units vacant: 34%
- Occupied houses that are rented: 58%
Note: Includes Homewood North, Homewood South and Homewood West. Source: University Center for Social and Urban Research at Pitt analysis of Census ACS data 2019-2023
“We’re just getting blighted, dysfunctional properties under control so they can be redeveloped per the Homewood development plan,” Pelling said. “You can’t implement the plan when multiple blocks are being held by a distant developer. You can’t do anything without control of those properties.”
Pelling said there are still a few people Rising Tide is seeking to remove.
“There are a couple of holdover residents of a sort who are still ducking us,” and who haven’t let Rising Tide into their units, he said, adding they would go through the court process to evict them.
“They’re not paying rent nor utilities and they’re not under lease agreement,” Pelling said. “Squatting in an abandoned house isn’t affordable housing, it’s homelessness. It’s not safe.”
Since acquiring Alma Hicks’ place, the nonprofit has sent her recurring notices claiming she is behind on her rent.
Alma denied that she owes rent and said she should be able to stay. Her two children and grandchildren now all live with her.
Cited by the city
The city has filed 22 citations against Rising Tide in Homewood, 17 which are still active in the court system.
Pelling said that Rising Tide worked with the district judge to “be released from the old citations [issued] to the former owners.”
But since then, Pelling said the city issued new citations because the properties are not stable yet. As they address the citations, Rising Tide will periodically report back to the city and judge, ahead of summary trials scheduled for early 2026.
Pelling said the citations stemming from maintenance violations are meant to encourage abatement.
“So it’s focused on getting problems solved, which we’re also focused on so we keep going back and reporting progress and we’re hoping to demolish ones we can’t fix,” and put new roofs on those that can be salvaged, he said.
Hoped-for funding not coming yet
As the Hicks family determines their next course of action – fight the nonprofit in court or move out of the house – Rising Tide’s leadership seeks new ways to fund their plans for demolition and renovation.
Pelling said the organization needs $500,000 to $1 million for predevelopment efforts that would help stabilize the houses. After that, Pelling said they need about $300,000 per unit for development.
The nonprofit sought, but was unable to secure, $1 million in pre-development funding from the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority [URA].
The URA noted that Rising Tide engaged them about pre-development funds but the nonprofit never submitted a formal application. The URA also said the request exceeded the maximum amount and eligible uses outlined in its program guidelines.
The agency has a robust residential development pipeline that attracts a high number of projects, requiring them to be discerning in what projects they fund, focusing on those that are “both near completion of fundraising and that are shovel-ready,” said Dana Bohince, the URA’s communications manager. “In other words, the URA prioritizes projects that can bring units online quickly.”
Rising Tide is getting $250,000 from Allegheny County under its Act 152 program, specifically to be used for demolition. Pelling called that “a godsend” allowing Rising Tide to clear the “worst units” and make way for something better.
Community buy in and an ‘Afrocentric’ paradigm
Every month, the Homewood Community Development Collaborative, the neighborhood’s registered community organization, holds a meeting at the University of Pittsburgh’s Community Engagement Center to review developments planned for the neighborhood.
Rising Tide’s building and renovation efforts are part of long-term development envisioned in the Homewood Comprehensive Community Plan, a union between several community organizations including the Community Engagement Center, Operation Better Block and the Community Empowerment Association.
One of the collaborative’s members, Walter Lewis, president & CEO of Homewood Children’s Village, said he supported Rising Tide’s efforts.
While many organizations welcome the work of Rising Tide, the Community Empowerment Association is more skeptical.
The Homewood-based organization seeks to shift the current paradigm of white-led organizations helping a Black community to an “Afrocentric paradigm.” The shift seeks to empower “African and African American people as doers, builders and subjects in their own rights and not victims on the fringes of the history of others,” according to Rashad Byrdsong, the founder and chief executive officer of Community Empowerment Association.
Rising Tide’s name is a reference to President John F. Kennedy’s remarks that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Byrdsong worries that economic growth alone will leave many residents adrift in the swirling currents of economic activity.
“Economic development has to be more broad than brick and mortar. History tells us that gentrification happens if you focus on brick and mortar without focusing on the social issues,” said Byrdsong.
“That’s what happened in the East End,” Byrdsong said.
Pelling previously worked for the East Liberty Development Inc., which assisted the 20-year-change in that neighborhood from a largely Black community into a hub for Pittsburgh’s tech scene.
Rising Tide’s model emphasizes community involvement and buy-in before the nonprofit will get involved in a neighborhood. But Byrdsong worries that there aren’t many people left in Homewood to get involved in these decisions.
“What’s going on is, they can’t maintain housing in communities they live in so they’re sent out to Natrona Heights and further out,” he said.
Homewood sees emerging plans
Rising Tide’s efforts are among several developments in various stages in Homewood. During a collaborative meeting earlier this month, a handful of members from the community heard about upcoming housing and retail developments.
- The URA previewed plans to issue a request for proposals to redevelop a building at 710 North Homewood Ave., specifying that they are looking for a developer to purchase and renovate the three-floor building into a mix of residential and commercial uses. URA Project Manager Gordon Hall noted that the agency already did much of the stabilization work, including adding a new roof. Hall also previewed future projects from the 600 to 800 blocks of North Homewood.
- McCormack Baron Salazar will build two apartment buildings along North Homewood Avenue, from Susquehanna Street to Hamilton Avenue. The buildings will hold 44 apartments of various sizes, mostly within affordability requirements as low as 20% of the area median income. Seven units will rent at market rate. A representative for the developer said the plan is to begin construction in six to eight months, subject to necessary additional funding.
- Amani Christian Community Development Corporation was selected to build affordable for-sale homes in the ongoing Hamilton Avenue-Sterrett Street development. Rev. Lee Walls, Amani’s executive director, said their mission is to create opportunities for Black homeownership by building 12 modular homes. Walls said each house will cost about $450,000 to build, though they will sell for $150,000 to 200,000.
Could the projects mark a change in fortunes for a neighborhood that lost around 16% of its population in a decade?
“There has been a huge period of depopulation, not many houses being built here,” said Laier-Rayshon Smith, a housing and development coordinator for Operation Better Block. He said the organization welcomes the work Rising Tide is doing and sees it as a salve to costly economic forces involved in development.
“There’s a lot of variables up in the air and it’s very challenging to do [affordable housing],” said Jay Gilmer, executive director of Operation Better Block. “That’s why we have a role to play, because the market on its own doesn’t care.”
Correction (10/24): The location of McCormack Baron Salazar’s apartment development was inaccurately characterized in an earlier version of this story.
Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.
This story was fact-checked by Tory Basile and Rich Lord.
This article first appeared on Pittsburgh’s Public Source and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.