Pittsburgh is a step closer to expanding affordable housing mandates throughout all of its neighborhoods.
After a marathon 10-hour hearing, city Planning Commission members on Tuesday backed legislation proposed by Mayor Ed Gainey that would extend inclusionary zoning requirements citywide.
The decision sends the bill to city council with a positive recommendation, meaning that it will require only a majority vote by that body to approve it. It came after Mr. Gainey himself urged the commission to support the proposal, saying that many residents still feel left behind.
“When do we change the tide? The time to change the tide is now. The time is to look at this legislation and make sure we’re building a city where everybody feels safe, welcomed, and believing that they can thrive,” he said.
He added, “We must deliver for the residents of our city. Everybody deserves the right to have affordable housing.”
The commission made the positive recommendation in an 8-0 vote, with member Steve Mazza abstaining. In his remarks, Mr. Mazza, who’s affiliated with the Greater Pennsylvania Council of Carpenters, said he feared that the expanded zoning would hurt his industry.
“It hurts my membership in slowing down development. That’s my opinion,” he said.
Commissioner Phillip Wu described himself as “agnostic” in terms of expanding inclusionary zoning citywide but ended up voting in favor of the proposal.
“I’m not going to say that I endorse the inclusionary zoning aspect of this package. It is still largely unproven. But I think it’s probably okay for us to forward this to council and let them hash it out,” he said.
Commission Chairwoman LaShawn Burton Faulk noted that the vote provides only a recommendation to council, setting the stage for perhaps additional discussion, debate, and possible amendments.
“I feel that I’m very comfortable and assured that whatever additional steps need to be made can be made there,” she said.
Under Mr. Gainey’s proposal, developers who build 20 or more units of housing must set aside 10% of them as affordable to households at or below 50% of the area median income, or $40,500 for a family of two.
Both bills now go before City Council for final action.
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The commission backed his proposal after rejecting a plan by Councilman Bob Charland that would have derailed the mayor’s initiative and left it up to each neighborhood to implement inclusionary zoning requirements.
As a result, Mr. Charland’s amendments go before City Council with a negative recommendation, meaning that it will require the votes of at least seven of the nine members to approve them.
Both votes came in a grueling meeting during which roughly 100 people testified for or against the proposals. The vast majority of them spoke in favor of expanding affordable housing, arguing that people are being forced out of the city because of rising rental costs.
Chris Rosselot, policy director of the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group, said that expanding inclusionary zoning and other reforms proposed by Mr. Gainey represented a “bold and forward thinking approach.”
“We have seen firsthand how the lack of affordable and quality housing impacts historically underserved communities, pushing people out of their neighborhoods and increasing housing costs for everyone,” he said.
But opponents of Mr. Gainey’s legislation argued that inclusionary zoning hasn’t worked in the four neighborhoods where it has been implemented – Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, Polish Hill, and Oakland.
Representatives of Pro-Housing Pittsburgh, a nonprofit that advocates for abundant and affordable housing, said that existing policies have created only 35 affordable units since first being implemented in 2019.
Rather than creating more affordable units, expanding affordable housing mandates citywide will do the exact opposite and hinder development, opponents maintained.
Tom Frank — chapter executive director of NAOIP Pittsburgh, a regional association of developers, owners, investors and commercial real estate professionals — said the mayor’s proposal doesn’t provide the incentives necessary to do affordable housing.
He predicted that developers “will simply flee to other areas” to get better deals.
But proponents of the legislation pushed back against some of the assertions.
Emma Gamble of Lawrenceville United community group said that inclusionary zoning has not been “a hold-up to development.” The group’s executive director, David Breigan, said that total housing production is up 96% since the policy took effect in 2019.
And while some feared that extending inclusionary zoning citywide will make it harder to drum up development in smaller, less booming Pittsburgh neighborhoods, Deputy Mayor Jake Pawlak said that is not likely to be the case.
He explained that many of those markets currently don’t have the density to do 20 or more units of housing. If anything, the inclusionary zoning mandate will serve as a protection to prevent displacement if development in those neighborhoods skyrockets as it has done in areas like Lawrenceville and East Liberty.
Although the commission ended up rejecting Mr. Charland’s proposal, some members were sympathetic to some elements of it and urged the councilman and planning staffers to continue to discuss it to try to find a common ground.
In addition to leaving it up to the neighborhoods to decide whether they want inclusionary zoning, Mr. Charland’s bill would have required the city, its Urban Redevelopment Authority, or Housing Authority to “fully fund” any financial gaps in projects involving the creation of affordable housing — a proposal that Mr. Gainey decried as amounting “to writing a blank check of city tax dollars to corporate developers.”
First Published: January 29, 2025, 6:27 a.m.
Updated: January 30, 2025, 8:06 p.m.