Pittsburgh leaders encouraged by Biden memo to correct Black housing inequities

When Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District was redeveloped to make way for the Civic Arena more than 60 years ago, thousands of people and hundreds of businesses were displaced.

More recently, people have been displaced by upscale development in the city’s East Liberty and Lawrenceville neighborhoods, partially spurred by demand from workers in Pittsburgh’s burgeoning technology sector.

A national legacy of discriminatory housing practices and policies are addressed in a memo that President Joe Biden released Tuesday. The Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh says it plans to heed Biden’s note.

“While we can never fully repair the damage done, as inequities in one generation compound in the next, we must break the cycle by making intentional investments in communities most impacted by those harms,” URA Deputy Executive Director Diamonte Walker said.

Biden vowed to end federal support of “discrimination and exclusion in housing and mortgage lending.”

“The Congress enacted the Fair Housing Act more than 50 years ago to lift barriers that created separate and unequal neighborhoods on the basis of race, ethnicity and national origin,” Biden wrote. “Since then, however, access to housing and the creation of wealth through home ownership have remained persistently unequal in the United States.”

Biden wrote that his new mandate is an effort to go further than correcting the inequities.

“It is the policy of my administration that the federal government shall work with communities to end housing discrimination, to provide redress to those who have experienced housing discrimination, to eliminate racial bias and other forms of discrimination in all stages of home buying and renting … to secure equal access to housing opportunity for all,” the memo states.

It aligns with the URA’s present goals, URA Executive Director Greg Flisram said.

“It sends a powerful message about the need to address past actions and mistakes that inform today’s reality in the national housing market,” Flisram said.

Pittsburgh City Council in 2016 created the Housing Opportunity Fund to address the city’s affordable housing needs. The ordinance requires the city to set aside $10 million each year for the fund, which is administered by the URA.

Last year, council members discussed borrowing more, about $60 million in a bond issue, for housing issues. It ultimately wasn’t approved, but council members are again considering the idea this year.

The deferred loans the fund provides for first-time homebuyers have increased the number of Black, minority or low-income homeowners since the program start, the URA said.

The city is also working on an Avenues of Hope program to revitalize Black business districts in Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. Council extended a pilot program in Lawrenceville that uses zoning laws to require a portion of new multi-unit developments be affordable to families who make at least 50% of the area’s mean income (about $38,000 for a family of four).

“The work to acknowledge and dismantle historical barriers that have disenfranchised our Black communities is critical to move forward a Pittsburgh for all,” Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said in statement. “With our partners in the federal government and at the URA, we will continue to work with our Black communities.”