Among the dozens of recommendations released last week by a transition team for Mayor Ed Gainey was a suggested major overhaul at the city’s housing authority.
Calling for “transformational change,” the transition team’s report recommends Gainey ask all seven members of the Board of Commissioners to resign, and only reappoint members “who are dedicated to the Mayor’s vision, housing goals, and agenda for change.” Gainey took office in January.
All seven HACP board members were appointed by former Mayor Bill Peduto; two — Valerie McDonald Roberts and Majestic Lane — were officials in his administration. Two other members are tenant representatives.
Should all the current board members serve out their terms without resigning, Gainey would be unable to appoint any board members prior to 2024.
Former Mayor Bill Peduto tried to have board members on a number of city boards and authorities resign when he took office in 2014, but some refused to do so. Among them was City Councilor Rev. Ricky Burgess, who is still an HACP board member.
Several Housing Authority board members could not be reached for comment, and others declined to comment or did not respond to inquiries from WESA.
“[T]he status quo at HACP is not acceptable,” the Gainey team’s report stated, saying a citizen analysis rated the agency’s performance with a “D” grade.
The transition team’s housing and equitable development committee was led by advocates Bob Damewood, a senior staff attorney at Regional Housing Legal Services, and Monica Ruiz, executive director of Latino immigrant resource center Casa San Jose.
The report’s recommendations are not binding, but it asks, “board members of conscience” to voluntarily resign “so the new Mayor can build a team committed to his vision.”
The report was publicly unveiled last week; at the time, Mayor Gainey said he had not yet read it.
HACP appears to the be the only agency subject to such a request in the transition report.
“The mayor is currently reviewing all of the policies and recommendations from this independent community led transition report and we have no further comment at this time,” a spokeswoman said Monday.
HACP declined to comment.
The agency’s budget, made up predominantly of federal funds, is roughly $180 million for 2022.
While its board consists of locally-appointed commissioners, the agency is subject to federal oversight, namely from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. Officials at HUD could not be reached for comment.
Expanding the city’s supply of affordable housing was a major campaign theme for Gainey when he ran for office last year and the report calls for a large increase in other funding sources to create more new units of affordable housing every year.
“Operational challenges, particularly in the maintenance of HACP-owned family housing and the implementation of the Housing Choice Voucher Program, are aggravating the affordable housing crisis in Pittsburgh,” the transition report states.
Pittsburgh’s housing authority has a special federal designation known as “Moving to Work,” which gives it more federal funding per unit and more flexibility than many other public housing authorities.
The agency has faced criticism in the past for being more focused on redevelopment than aggressively utilizing or improving its housing voucher program, meaning many low-income tenants who receive Section 8 housing vouchers often have to return them unused because of a lack of landlords willing to accept them. HACP has taken steps to try to recruit more landlords and to increase subsidies in certain high-amenity neighborhoods to attract more landlords who can house tenants with vouchers. HACP has also faced criticism for the substandard quality of some of its housing and problems with maintenance.
In recent years, the agency has been involved in major redevelopment projects of its older public housing in the North Side, the Hill District, East Liberty and Larimer and elsewhere.
The number of public housing units HACP manages has declined dramatically in recent years from roughly 8,000 in the year 2000 to fewer than 3,000 today. The number of public housing units has declined nationally during that time partly due to federal underfunding, according to public housing expert Will Fischer, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, though he notes that trend has been more dramatic in Pittsburgh.
