Sweet success…

Housing makes up, for many people, the largest chunk of the monthly budget. We are advised to spend no more than 30 percent of our incomes on housing, but many around the country have no choice but to spend more. If I was a single person, bringing home $25,000 per year, I should spend no more than $695 on monthly rent to be able to meet my other monthly expenses (hopefully, I have health insurance). Living in Pittsburgh, I would have no trouble finding such an apartment. In fact, I wouldn’t have much trouble paying a mortgage.

A transplant to Pittsburgh myself, I often reflect that I would be paying the same amount for a two-bedroom apartment in my former life as I am for my mortgage now. I have always seen Pittsburgh’s moderate cost of living – largely due to the low to moderate cost of housing – as one of its great assets. At the same time, I realize that much of that cost-of-housing difference is due to Pittsburgh’s economic downturn. I think one of the most important planning efforts our City must undertake in the near future is to prepare for the hoped-for future success of a better job market that will attract population and increase our tax base. If our City’s small successes in attracting new businesses continue to rack up and our population grows enough, so housing costs will inevitably rise. Young working professionals will do just fine, and newcomers will add to the already substantial middle class here in Pittsburgh. My worry is around those who will be left out of any growth in good high-tech or retail headquarters positions. We should start creating an affordable housing plan now while growth is still slow and we have time to steer and prepare for the consequences of success. We have already seen change over a decade or so in a handful of our neighborhoods.

The other glaring piece of the housing policy puzzle that I have omitted up to this point is that housing is still inaccessible to the poorest of people under current housing market conditions. If I were the same 25K earner, with one or two children my budget would be tough. Decent quality housing, particularly, is in short supply at the lower end of the rent scale: leaking roofs, rats and other animals in adjoining abandoned row buildings, windows painted shut or drafty – reader, you know these conditions are common in this City and that the problem is complicated in some neighborhoods by a high percentage of absentee landlords. Right now we have community development corporations, often working in separate neighborhoods, fighting this fight and picking away at the mountain of housing rehab needs. We need an onslaught coordinated at the City level.

So, planning to maintain housing affordability and socio-economic diversity in the face of any upswing in the housing market in a given neighborhood (quality of life) and boosting the quality of housing stock in lower income neighborhoods, as it’s urgently needed right now – those are the two major prongs of housing policy that need some very smart and hopefully powerful people’s attention. In the coming weeks I hope to start a dialogue on this page around some of our housing-related issues here in Pittsburgh. What positive changes have some of our mini neighborhood market upswings wrought and what unintended consequences? Is it realistic or wise to believe that we should intervene where the housing market is concerned? Are we getting all we can out of the mechanisms that exist to fund rehab of our aging housing stock? Are we doing all we can to protect the integrity of the historic built environment along the way?