Pittsburgh City Council members exchanged sharp criticism Wednesday over controversial proposed changes to a zoning policy meant to encourage affordable housing. And after two hours of debate, the only agreement between them was to revisit the issue next week.
The debate focused on two different approaches to inclusionary zoning — a policy which requires developers make a certain portion of units in their new buildings affordable. The city has experimented with the approach in Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, Polish Hill and parts of Oakland.
A proposal from Mayor Ed Gainey’s administration that is currently awaiting approval in City Planning would apply the requirement citywide. An alternate bill introduced by Councilor Bob Charland would let each neighborhood decide for itself whether to apply the zoning rules.
Charland’s bill also expands the definition of “affordable” to include more expensive rents — and it requires the City of Pittsburgh, the Urban Redevelopment Authority or the Housing Authority to compensate developers for additional costs that inclusionary zoning could cause them.
Charland did seek to pare back some parts of his bill to address misgivings about such provisions. But there were doubts about whether those fixes would work … and some on council showed little interest in pursuing inclusionary zoning at all.
‘I am for blocking what’s coming’
Gainey’s proposal, which is currently before the Planning Commission, would require 10% of the units in a development to be affordable to people at 50% of the area median income. According to Deputy Mayor Jake Pawlak, that corresponds to people making about $17 an hour.
Affordable housing advocates say that inclusionary zoning helps build a mixed-income neighborhood, particularly where there’s access to shops, restaurants and public transit.
But developers and some pro-housing advocates argue that the best way to make housing more affordable is to make it more available — even at higher prices. They contend that inclusionary zoning makes building new housing more expensive and would result in fewer units overall. Charland noted that Pro Housing Pittsburgh, a local organization that has criticized inclusionary zoning, helped him compose his bill.
Some council members were all for that approach. Among them was Councilor Anthony Coghill, who said he would support Charland’s bill even without reading the amendments — simply because it would prevent IZ from taking hold in his South Pittsburgh constituency.
“I am for blocking what’s coming to the planning commission from the administration, all day long. That’s what’s important to me,” Coghill said. He said he would have voted against establishing inclusionary zoning in any part of the city if he knew that the mayor would later try to apply it citywide.
Councilor Theresa Kail-Smith said she too worried that her district could be harmed by policies that others decided should happen citywide.
“At this point, leadership needs to come together with everyone, including our residents, including council, all of council members, and with advocates and everyone else, so that we can have a better understanding of what's happening,” she said. “I'm going to be supportive of what Councilman Charland is doing, because I think at this point it at least holds up some things.”
Councilor Erika Strassburger indicated she would like to see more robust discussion about inclusionary zoning. She said she had concerns about Gainey’s original proposal and Charland’s counterproposal — and forwarding the latter measure to the planning commission would allow for more debate about each approach.
“For me to support this today isn't to negate any of the work, or to agree with (the bill) as a vehicle,” she said. “It’s simply as negotiation points, to be able to discuss some of the merits of this versus the mayor's inclusionary zoning bill.”
‘More harm than good’
But Charland’s bill garnered criticism from some council members and housing-affordability advocates during public comment. Among those misgivings: The original version of the legislation would count as affordable housing a unit whose cost would be affordable to those earning up to 120 percent of the area’s median income.
Chris Rosselot of the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group criticized the bill for providing additional subsidies to developers, especially for apartments that would be available to higher-earning households.
“Subsidizing market-rate units with taxpayer dollars undermines public trust,” he said. “Pittsburgh’s housing crisis demands solutions that address the root cause of affordability challenges, not policies that inadvertently exacerbate inequalities.”
Councilors Deb Gross and Barb Warwick were the bill’s strongest detractors, arguing that Charland should withdraw the bill entirely.
“I think this does more harm than good and does more disrespect, certainly, to many neighborhoods in the city who already had their conversations,” Gross said. “The language in this bill that I see upends all of those years of work, disrespects all of those citizens’ time and effort, at the whim of someone who’s talked to a few people who thinks he knows better.”
Charland sought to address those concerns with a number of amendments. One set a tougher standard for “affordable,” only applying the label to housing that could be paid for by people making up to 99 percent of area median income
He also added language intended to grandfather in the neighborhoods that already had inclusionary zoning. That language was added, along with changes that would require units to remain affordable for 35 years rather than 20.
Some on council expressed uncertainty about whether the language he proposed would achieve that goal. Council will seek a legal opinion on that question before discussing the legislation again next week. But Council President Dan Lavelle worried about whether the city could afford to pay for open-ended housing support — and Charland admitted that he didn’t know how much the subsidy might cost.
Paying for every affordable housing project “would literally almost bankrupt us, and that is literally the opposite of what our job is,” Lavelle said — especially at a time the city faces a scheduled hike in debt payments that will constrain its finances.
But Charland said that because including affordable units is more expensive for developers, the added expense is often passed on through rent to tenants — and it was unfair to expect them to bear the burden for the program alone.
“Our inclusionary zoning practice looks at making renters pay for the affordable units in their building,” he said. “It does not make property owners [or] anyone else pay for it other than the renting class.”
Councilor Khari Mosley said he too opposed the bill, and noted that the debate around it exemplified “the silos that have been operating in discussion of inclusionary zoning” on Council.
“I know there's been tons of conversations, but I don't know how many conversations we've had where we've had all of the necessary stakeholders around the table to do the hard work that a lot of my colleagues are talking about doing,” he said.
“I think there's a perception in the public that we're a lot further along in this process.” Mosley added. “But I do think that we're really in some ways at the beginning of that journey.”
