housing Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

On a July Pittsburgh afternoon, temperatures soared into the 90s. Public pools were dry, closed by pandemic restrictions. But for mask-wearing residents trickling out of Eastside Bond, a high-end East Liberty apartment complex, their private outdoor pool offered relief. There are new rules: Masks when not swimming; stay six feet apart in and out of …

Pittsburgh Renters Have Kept up Their Payments—So Far Read More »

Regional News

Pandemic Heats Up Housing Market

by Julia Fraser

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted business as usual in the residential real estate industry as it swept through the Pittsburgh region in March. It shut the doors on open houses, cancelled showings and stifled home inspections. But it failed to curb demand. A Howard Hanna real estate agent helped a seller stage a home via Facetime …

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Regional Annual Report

Cleveland 11,000 – Pittsburgh 1

by Jeffery Fraser

The housing bubble had burst and the nation was reeling from recession. The City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County were feeling the pain more than most places in 2009. Foreclosures were mounting by the thousands, and Fannie Mae and other lenders were desperate for a way to off-load the abandoned properties filling their books. They …

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Regional News

The Pittsburgh Flip

by Julia Fraser

Tom Maiden has been renting in the city of Pittsburgh for decades. He has a well-paid job as manager of user services at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and while he’s never shut the door on the idea of buying a home, the ease and convenience of renting is too compelling. “While renting might be slightly …

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Spotlight

Mandating Affordable Housing: A Complex Zoning Challenge

by Jeffery Fraser

One Pittsburgh neighborhood could soon test a brand of zoning that requires developers to include affordable housing in new market-rate projects as a way to build the inventory of units available for residents earning less than the city’s median income. Pittsburgh recently joined cities in 25 states that have adopted some form of inclusionary zoning, …

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Spotlight

Desperate for Affordable Housing, Cities Try Rewriting Zoning Laws

by Jeffery Fraser

The last Penn Plaza apartments were vacated on a cold February day in 2017, ending an exodus of 200 tenants from one of the largest complexes of affordable housing in Pittsburgh. News that the private owner planned to raze the apartments to accommodate upscale development caught the city off guard a year earlier and taxed …

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Regional News

Housing Prices Rise

by Julia Fraser

Housing prices in the Pittsburgh region continue to climb, but not at the same rate as the hot real estate markets in some of Pittsburgh Today’s benchmark regions. Houses in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area appreciated 6.23 percent from the 3rd quarter in 2017 to the 3rd quarter this year, according to data from …

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The Pulse

Scrimping to Get By

by Jeffery Fraser

Paying their housing costs is a struggle for an alarming number of Americans across the country and Allegheny County is no exception. Nearly one-third of Americans spend at least 30 percent of their income on housing. The number of households dealing with such costs has risen from 16 million in 2001 to more than 38 …

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Region

Austin’s Conundrum of Success

by Paul Scripko

Austin, Texas is one of a handful of cities in the world currently blessed in reputation—big enough to have almost all the cultural amenities of cities twice our size, yet small enough to be tops on any of those innumerable “livability” lists. A recent cover story in “The Economist” looks at the Silicon Valley and …

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History

New Housing, 1951

by Jennifer McNulty

Photographer Clyde “Red” Hare moved to Pittsburgh in 1950 to work on the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, covering the city’s Renaissance I, with noted editor Roy Stryker. Hare had his own car and camera and Stryker offered to pay him $50 a week to photograph the city. During that time, Hare made this photograph of new …

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Sustainability Watch

Regional Housing Trends

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

More southwestern Pennsylvanians have been able to find housing that fits their budgets in the past decade, despite steadily rising home values and rents. But there are stark disparities in the affordability of housing across income levels. Although housing values and rent have experienced peaks and valleys over the last 10 years, both have increased …

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Region

The Cost of Blight

by Jeffery Fraser

The Helen S. Faison Arts Academy, Pittsburgh’s newest elementary school, was built with the hope it would help kindle the revitalization of Homewood, which has long been one of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods. With its modern red brick and glass facade, innovative interior design and grassy five-acre campus, it’s clearly an asset any community …

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Region

The Truth Can Be A Good Thing

by John G. Craig, Jr.

Let us take a few moments to ponder the corrosive nature of pessimism and its companion, bending over backward in the face of bad news to put the best face on things. Both are civic diseases of significance in our corner of the world. This is not merely anecdotal testimony from someone involved in public life …

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