Pittsburgh City Councilors on Wednesday voted unanimously to support a major housing initiative in the Hill District. Council members approved legislation to apply for a $50 million federal grant and to invest an additional $31 million in the neighborhood if the initiative is selected to receive the grant.
The Choice Neighborhoods implementation grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would allow the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh to replace 411 affordable units at Bedford Dwellings, one of the oldest public housing developments in the country. It opened in 1940.
“It’s about time,” said Caster Binion, the authority’s executive director. “It will [be] a transformation of the Hill.”
Councilors passed the measure without comment, but JW Kim, the authority director of development and planning, called council’s support “unprecedented” and necessary.
Bedford Dwellings is more than 80 years old, and both its design and physical condition are distressed, Kim said. Meanwhile, the Hill is seeing significant development pressure from activity on the Lower Hill and in Oakland.
The Choice grant “will preserve … historically, the most important neighborhood in the city, and in the region and country,” he said, adding that Bedford Dwellings needs a complete overhaul, and not “piecemeal rehab. That’s not good for the residents and then for the neighborhood.”
After receiving a planning grant in 2016, HACP submitted a more piecemeal plan in 2018 that HUD rejected; the agency wanted to see the authority tackle the whole development, Binion said. Trek Development Group of Pittsburgh served as the planning coordinator for that effort, and it would be the master developer if the Choice grant is awarded. Trek CEO Bill Gatti said the company took HUD’s 2018 feedback to heart as it prepared the current application.
“It’s much more ambitious … and a much more comprehensive plan,” he said.
In addition to replacing the existing affordable housing at Bedford, the project invests in the adjacent Middle Hill. The Choice Neighborhoods implementation grant would allow HACP to add, throughout the area, another 412 units: roughly half would be affordable and the other half market-rate, with some homes offered for sale. But the grant explicitly requires applicants to go beyond housing and to create plans to invest in people and neighborhoods.
The investments range from things such as street infrastructure to creating more quality early-childhood education opportunities and access to employment.
The $50 million grant would allow HACP to draw in an additional $350 million in public and private funding, Gatti said.
“A total $400 million investment could be a generational game-changer for this neighborhood,” he said.
The housing authority will submit its new application by Jan. 11, and it expects a decision this summer.
