A new report says Pittsburgh’s housing market is strong enough to support citywide inclusionary zoning – a policy requiring developers of new housing to set aside a portion of units as affordable housing.
The report comes as legislation is before Pittsburgh City Council that would expand the city’s existing inclusionary zoning district in Lawrenceville to include two additional neighborhoods, Polish Hill and Bloomfield; the legislation was approved by the city’s planning commission earlier this month.
Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, who took office at the beginning of January, has previously expressed support for citywide inclusionary zoning.
Some city council members in the past have said they don’t know if the concept would work outside of the city’s hottest real estate markets.
The report is authored by Bob Damewood, a senior staff attorney at Regional Housing Legal Services, and is an update of an earlier report from 2015.
The analysis notes the city’s housing market has grown considerably in just the last few years, with new housing and higher rental and housing prices. The city saw 7,750 new multifamily rental units built from 2010 to 2019, “roughly equal to the number of units built in the previous three decades,” it notes.
It cites “dramatic” increases in housing prices in several city neighborhoods – an increase of 55% in Beechview and 98% in Garfield between 2018 and 2020, for instance.
At the same time, the city lost more than 10,000 Black residents since 2011, “and the city’s affordable housing continues to be concentrated in areas that have low performing schools and few economic opportunities,” the document notes.
Inclusionary zoning ties the creation of affordable housing to new market-rate housing, and thus aims to create new affordable homes in neighborhoods with more amenities such as access to transportation, and good schools, Damewood says.
“If Pittsburgh is to retain its diverse, vibrant urban life, we must ensure that new housing is accessible to people of all income levels. One way to do that is through inclusionary zoning (IZ),” he writes. “The primary goals of IZ are to expand the supply of affordable housing and to promote social and economic integration. By linking affordable housing to market rate housing development, IZ laws leverage the private market to help achieve these goals.”
The city enacted inclusionary zoning in one neighborhood, Lawrenceville, several years ago. The report credits this with the creations of 40 affordable homes that will soon be available as part of larger market-rate developments: Arsenal 201 phase 2 (a 343-unit development that will have 35 affordable units) and Holy Family (a 45-unit condo project with 5 affordable units).
The report also contains an analysis of how a citywide inclusionary zoning policy could withstand any potential legal challenges. The city’s efforts to create more affordable housing have hit legal walls in the past; an effort to mandate that all Pittsburgh landlords accept subsidized housing vouchers was recently struck down by the courts.
