The new downtown shelter in Pittsburgh was full the first day that it opened. So there is definitely a a need for more homeless services. That said, the corner of Smithfield and 6th in front of Burlington, and Market Square have become brazenly open drug markets.

It's $36 million/year in total untaxed property, including parcels owned by the City of Pittsburgh. The tax value of the parcels on this list isn't anywhere close to that amount.

Here's a link to a list of the properties being challenged. It's really small potato stuff like the clubhouse at the Village of Shadyside, a parking lot at AGH, and some private property that really shouldn't be off the tax rolls. The only high-profile properties are a parking garage attached to the CMU School of Engineering, and the UPMC-owned Iroquois Building on Forbes.

Pittsburgh's non-farm job growth was an anemic 1.8% in February 2023. One of the lowest rates in the country. Compared to other similarly sized cities, Nashville 4.5%. Austin 4.8%. Indianapolis 3.3%. Portland 2.9%. Charlotte 3.1%. Raleigh 3.9%. Seattle 3.7%. Jacksonville 5.6%...

Columbus was a surprisingly low .7%, but they also just landed the $20 billion Intel plant, so there's that.

Hilarious, downvoting actual stats from the US BLS. Pittsburgh's job growth rate is basically half the national average, and this sub thinks that's okay.

In terms of my biggest concern - housing affordability - Lamb is the best of the three front runners by a mile. Outside of that, Weinstein comes across as petty as hell. No thanks.

What the huh?

It’s a self created problem for city planning. They have made such a complicated, convoluted, and often arbitrary review process that they need double the staff time to review projects than previously required. What did they expect when nearly every project had to go to ZBA, design review, planning commission, multiple community meetings, reviews by non governmental entities like GBA and Riverlife (how is that even legal?)…

Goodness forbid they streamline the process and lighten their work load.

Agree, but counterpoint. Peduto focused far too much on national and international issues, where he had zero impact, at the expense of effective governance in Pittsburgh. Almost all of the anti-development policies in the city were implemented under his watch and zoning staff and planning commission were all Peduto appointees.

Gainey inherited a mess and has let it get worse.

>These buildings will stand for 50-100 years and should be reviewed thoroughly by the city.

Absolutely, which is what PLI does for building permits. Building permit fees can easily be in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousand because they are technical reviews for health and safety.

The zoning review process should be fairly straightforward and efficient. Unfortunately, the zoning code is so complicated and the review process so capricious that it takes the city many more months to complete than the building permit process.

So, of course, buildings should be reviewed, but the way Pittsburgh does it and the requirements within those reviews have serious negative impacts on housing affordability.

It's not a typo. The city used to have a site plan review fee that rarely surpassed $30,000, even for big projects. The new fee is based on a project value of $3 per $1000 of construction costs. That's a huge increase.

It's a mixed bag, and many of the NIMBYs are in the DSA/activist circles. Even those not outright anti-development advocate for policies and requirements that make building more time-consuming and expensive without considering the negative impacts. Take a look at the zoning code sometimes; there are some wildly impractical requirements that you can tell no architect or engineer, or even attorney, had any hand in writing.

East Liberty has more below-market housing units now than when the abysmal towers were there. No housing was torn down to make way for the "luxury" apartments.

Where in Pittsburgh have affordable houses been knocked down to make way for new apartments?

No. I believe that you can’t address the housing crisis by making it more time consuming and expensive to build and constraining the supply of housing.

The problem is that it isn’t rational in Pittsburgh. And what exactly do you support? Less and more expensive housing? Because that’s what’s the city is serving up.

The city adjusted the zoning fee schedule just a few years ago. No one is suggesting that the reviews should be fully subsidized. The problem is the city has spent the past decade making the code and reviews more complicated and time consuming all while complaining about being understaffed. Projects that used to take 3 months to review can now take over a year, and that’s before applying for a building permit.

The development review process in Pittsburgh is broken and is basically run by special interests and lefty activists. Architects, engineers developers and contractors do not have a seat at the table.

It’s not a typo. The city website says the fee for commercial projects is $3 per $1000 of project value.

The Planning Department is staffed by holdovers from the Peduto Administration. They have been implementing bad NIMBY, anti-development and anti housing policies for years. This is just getting press because it’s the most egregious.

I work as a designer in a firm with multiple offices and really got interested in the YIMBY movement after experiencing how awful and damaging zoning is in Pittsburgh compared to other cities where I was working.

I think that you’re onto something. Asbestos mitigation and demolition alone will be very expensive. And construction costs are up nearly 30% since 2020, so that’s a lot of it.

Also, the city put themselves in a bind with the net zero requirement. It’s one of those things that sounds good but is in fact prohibitively expensive to execute and, frankly, overkill in green building. It’s just another example of the city having outside organizations (GBA for example) and activists craft policy.

The city is currently parking ambulances and dump trucks on millions of dollars worth of Strip District property. How about start with the low hanging fruit and relocate that, and use the process from selling the land towards the training facility?

And $120 million!? Are they building a skyscraper?

>In the decades since, developers have erected numerous luxury apartment buildings and home prices in the neighborhood have soared, displacing residents who could no longer afford to live there.

Building more housing does not cause prices to increase. Lack of building and supply in high-demand areas is at fault. Also, market rate doesn't mean luxury.

I don’t know if that’s the big difference but South Fayette property taxes are significantly higher than Cranberry.

Autonomous, at least in the sense that this company and others are looking to do is purely highway driving, for now. Last mile autonomy is still a long ways off.

Locomotive shutdown because venture capital money is locking up due to interest rate increases. And there are dozens of other companies working in the same space that have better/more advanced tech. Volvo, Mercedes, and others are pouring billions into driverless semis so there’s little need for a CMU startup in Pittsburgh.

At this point it has become a state issue, which I’m sure they will ignore. You either require regular assessments to avoid the newcomers tax, or find other revenue streams. A land value tax would take care of this, but that will never happen.

>the city mistakenly issued a permit.

Well, that tracks. sigh...