Mayor Gainey Unfiltered…Addressing the affordable housing crisis

Affordable housing is a major problem in the City of Pittsburgh. Many African Ameri­cans who once lived in East Liberty, Uptown, the South Side Flats area and parts of the Central North Side have been uprooted, with sparkling, flashy new apartment developments that, if the developers had their way, would have all the units priced at mar­ket-rate. But in the words of Pitts­burgh Mayor Ed Gain­ey, the city’s first Black mayor, “if you’re coming to ask me for city subsidy, I’m gonna tell you what I need; I need affordability. In providing affordabili­ty we are re-establishing neighborhoods,” the may­or told the New Pitts­burgh Courier during his 75-minute exclusive sit-down with the Courier ed­itorial board, Jan. 23. This article is the third installment of the Couri­er’s series, “Mayor Gain­ey Unfiltered.” The first two reports focused on the mayor’s “culture change” that he brought to the City of Pittsburgh Mayor’s Of­fice, including making the workplace safer for many of its Department of Pub­lic Works employees and establishing a new con­tract with the city’s police officers and firefighters; and the mayor’s strategy towards fighting gun vio­lence. More than 10,000 Black people left the City of Pittsburgh between 2010 and 2020, according to U.S....