“When we think about affordability,” Presley Gillespie says, “it’s not just median income, or the housing cost burden on individuals. We factor in debt, credit cards, cars. Because of housing cost burdens, for example, people are putting off going to the doctor. So it’s important to start defining what affordable housing really means. Once we do that, then we can address strategies.
Who’s doing what about affordable housing in Pittsburgh
“The problem we have now,” says Bill Generett of Urban Innovation21, “is that things are out of control. We need 20,000 units of affordable housing—housing for people on fixed incomes, for people making $30,000 and less—and we need them now.”
Generett, whose Urban Innovation21 creates successful partnerships with some of the region’s most successful players in some of the city’s most impacted neighborhoods, is used to articulating challenges and finding ways to create workable, win-win solutions.
“In the past,” Generett points out, “we didn’t look for ideas. Now we have to. Because this is the issue for our times. How serious do we want to be? Pittsburgh is a fast market now. We could have put in safeguards all along. Should have. Now we’re going to have to.
“Some 30 percent of people live below the poverty line—or straddle just above it,” he says. “To ameliorate their needs we’ve got to make some big moves and make them quickly. By now, however, the problem is so complicated that it’s going to take all of us—all of us—putting our heads together to fix it.”
To address this significant challenge, NEXTpittsburgh assembled a virtual roundtable of some of the region’s leading players—public officials to foundation professionals, developers to designers—in an effort to define the challenges and seek viewpoints and solutions. Read more.
