PA House Housing and Community Development — 2026-09-16

I will take attendance.

Representative Abney. On a leave. Boyd. On a leave. Brown. On a leave. CJ. On a leave. Green. On a leave. Caducey. On a leave. Madsen. On a leave. Mayes. On a leave. Powell. Croats. On a leave. Smith Wade out. On a leave. I leave. I leave.

Representative Basline. Leave. Jones. Leave. McKenzie. Leave. Major. Leave. Rossell. Leave. Rossi. Leave. Schaefer. Here. Tworkfix. Here. Dervish. Present. Walsh. Leave. Leave. Thank you, Caroline.

Chairman, would you like to start with any comments?

Thank you Chairman Irvin.

Great. Thank you, Chairman Markozyk. And it's wonderful to see so many former Statehouse colleagues. Welcome to Allegheny County and welcome to the County Courthouse. We're so glad that you're here, especially to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is housing and ensuring that we have adequate and quality housing supply, not only in Allegheny County, but throughout the Commonwealth. And really, my administration has always been clear-eyed about the challenges to create and preserve stable quality housing throughout Allegheny County for our neighbors across the economic spectrum. I think that's a key point here where we're not just talking about the lowest of the low-income individuals. Really, when we're talking about the need for housing, it does span housing typology and all income levels. So we want all of our policy and investment decisions to be grounded in data, first and foremost. And to that end about a year ago I signed a Housing for All executive order and that laid out key steps so that we could have data that was readily available for us to make decisions at the county level, but to share with all of our philanthropic, nonprofit, government, and private partners. So one key aspect of the executive order was conducting Allegheny County's first ever countywide housing needs assessment. So the data I share with you today and that I provided to the committee as additional information has come directly from our Housing Needs Assessment, led by HRNA Advisors, and is part of our Comprehensive Plan, led by OHM Advisors. So what we are seeing through the Housing Needs Assessment and the Comprehensive Plan is that the housing supply challenge in Allegheny County differs from other areas in the U.S. where supply is truly constrained. The challenges here surrounding housing supply and access are in areas of opportunity and housing quality in the broadest sense, both for renters and long-term homeowners. We also, like many other regions, have a housing preservation problem that must be addressed. We can build all we want, but if we continue to lose units, we will still wind up in a negative situation. So here's what the data's telling us. Let's start with our rental housing market. First, between 2019 and 2024, Allegheny County lost more than 44,000 apartments that rent for less than $1,000 a month. At the same time, during that span, we gained nearly 13,000 apartments that rent for more than $2,000 per month. All while the total population of low-income and high-income households remained roughly the same. We see the effects of this throughout Allegheny County. More than 71% of single-family households who are renters are cost-burdened, and 60% of our senior households who are renters are also cost burdened, which means they're spending more than 30% of their income. The need is clear. We need more affordable workforce and missing middle rental housing in Allegheny County. The top of the market is being well served by our current level of production. The next part I want to focus on is access to home ownership. The supply of accessible starter homes for young families in Allegheny County is also severely constrained. In 2024, the median home in Allegheny County sold for $229,000. In the same year, the median renter could afford a home that costs $191,000. So that's a $40,000 gap that has been growing every year since 2021. With limited supply of these starter homes comes increased competition, which only makes accessing homeownership harder for would-be first-time home buyers. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of income-eligible would-be home buyers competing for the same share of homes priced under $250,000 has nearly doubled. So housing also needs to be accompanied with access to opportunity. So the reason we are all here is because of housing but we also know that housing is a critical component when we want to build thriving communities and stabilize our residents that we represent Housing is the foundation we grow from, and we want our region that can compete to retain and attract the jobs of today and the jobs of the future. So we must ensure that housing accessibility is rooted in areas of opportunity, and people have access to that opportunity. Some of the areas with our strongest job growth have been in the highest housing cost areas. The airport corridor, the city of Pittsburgh's downtown, and East End. These are areas where people can access jobs in transit, but we need more variety of housing to exist so they support the diversity of incomes and people who will take these jobs. Similarly, the vitality of our neighborhood, Main Streets, hinges on stable and affordable housing that doesn't cost burden our residents. I shared some of the cost burden stats earlier, and that means households are spending more than 30% of their income. When that happens, discretionary spending decreases. That discretionary spending is what our Main Streets and our small businesses rely on. The same small businesses also need a reliable pool of employees who can reasonably get to work every day. And if the affordability of our housing supply is out of balance with what workers can afford, those small businesses and main streets are really the ones who suffer. So when we think about addressing housing supply, it's not only about addressing people's basic needs and providing stability to the family, but it's also about providing stability to the community and supporting the growth of our small business sector. So with that, we gave you a lot of supplementary materials. Our housing needs assessment, that will be accessible broadly at the beginning of October. And thank you again for this opportunity to present on this critical topic. Thank you for the other folks who are on the panel, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Matt Singer, and I work as Deputy Chief of Staff to Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O'Connor. I'm grateful to the committee members for allowing me to testify on behalf of Mayor O'Connor to discuss our efforts to increase the housing supply in the city of Pittsburgh, and I also want to thank my fellow panelists for sharing their insights on how we can tackle the housing shortage on all fronts. The City of Pittsburgh is at an inflection point. We can reign a place where it is difficult to build new housing, repair and maintain existing housing, and convert new sites to higher and better uses, or we can become somewhere that is laser-focused on growth and a place that works for everyone by welcoming everyone. Increasing the housing supply is indisputably a necessary condition to successfully achieve that much-needed growth. We need more housing that is available for would-be homeowners to buy, more apartments from which renters can choose, and more options for seniors who may want to downsize and find smaller, more accessible homes. There should be abundant housing choices in every neighborhood and at every price point. We have growing housing demand, with the most pronounced impacts seen in dense transit-served neighborhoods that are in proximity to our economic centers and our anchor institutions. At the same time, we see continued disinvestment in other neighborhoods. Throughout it all, our permitting system has not kept pace with Pittsburgh's needs. It was not built for today's necessary pace of investment, and it's not flexible enough for uneven neighborhood conditions. So I, Mayor O'Connor, signed an executive ordinance first working day in office to initiate a comprehensive overhaul of our permitting and development review systems. Through process mapping bottleneck analysis deep coordination across multiple city departments engagement cycles and applicants and an iterative recommendation review process we able to produce the most comprehensive package of permitting forms in the city history To meet our goals for growth, economic development, and housing production, we're creating a predictable permitting environment in which investment can happen more quickly and with greater confidence for development of all sizes, not just large projects. When the permitting process is slow and unpredictable, the projects they've built are the one with the resources to wait. a 250 unit apartment building compared to a single duplex. That means that small businesses, small developers, affordable housing projects, and residents doing home repairs are the ones for whom the process works the worst, even though those are exactly the types of projects that we need for affordable housing, infill housing, transit-oriented development supported density, and neighborhood level investment. We outlined a phase approach to comprehensive reform. In phase one, we would tackle administrative improvements. In phase two, we would target operational improvements. And finally in phase three, we would shift our focus to long-term modernization efforts. Our choice to pursue a phased approach rather than one big overall strategic one. We could act to make administrative improvements sooner and build the necessary scaffolding to support deeper operational changes before moving on to other necessary modernization efforts. Most importantly, we could help residents and builders start seeing results more quickly when they're trying to build or improve housing. Right now we're nearing the end of phase one and I'm happy to share some of the upcoming changes. We're revamping our pre-application meetings for large and complex projects to align expectations from the start, while providing small-scale and unfamiliar applicants with an opportunity to seek and receive guidance from the city early on in the review process. We're strengthening our intake standards to catch missing materials before a formal review begins to reduce redundant back and forth. New guided workflows and visual submission tools are being added to One Stop PGH, our online permitting platform, to make the process more navigable for first-time applicants and repeat developers alike. Finally, we built and launched a permit tracker modeled off the simplicity of a pizza tracker so you know where your permit is from the day that your application submitted to the day that your permit is issued. By fixing the on ramp to the permitting process we're making building in the city easier especially for small developers, community builders, and affordable housing developers who do not always have access to the resources they need to wait out long and often redundant review cycles. We're also working to simplify and accelerate the process by which routine work is approved by creating a pathway way for minor, interior, non-structural, and low-risk work to proceed without being subjected to the full design review process. We're doing this by launching a fast-track pilot program that aimed at routine work that we saw often getting stuck in overly burdensome processes. We think this is really going to be a big help to folks just trying to make simple modifications to their home, like accessibility requirements, therefore allowing people to age in place in their home with more ease. Furthermore, we're launching a pilot for virtual inspections to make inspections more convenient and accessible, especially for those smaller-scale projects. where scheduling an in-person inspection could add days or weeks to the project timeline. We plan to prepare this pilot with a fast-track pilot as well, meaning that we could reduce the overall timeline of certain smaller projects from weeks to just one or two days. Concurrently, we've also proposed zoning reforms as part of our Phase 1 work. If constructed and used properly, the city's zoning code could be a strategic tool to encourage affordability, growth, and responsible equitable development all across Pittsburgh. However, right now our zoning code instead all too often effectively says, no, you cannot build that here. Instead, we wanted to start saying yes. And one of the ways we planned to get to yes was a package of pro-housing and pro-growth focused zoning amendments. We recognize that our zoning code is inconsistent, difficult to interpret, and based on a model from the middle of the 20th century that can no longer meet our needs. We're modernizing the zoning code's language, eliminating obsolete sections, and standardizing heightened dimensional standards in such a way that it's both attainable and consistent. We're updating height limitations, setback requirements, residential quality standards, and more to enable abundant housing production. These reforms will provide new housing opportunities across Pittsburgh while clarifying design expectations, make it easier to build out with greater density and height in and around our neighborhood commercial districts and transit hubs and promote the development of vibrant neighborhoods with mixed-use amenities. And it is just the first step. As we progress through the later phases of mayoral Congress initiatives to streamline our development review process, we plan to conduct a full-scale rewrite of our zoning code alongside further permitting reform measures. We've seen similar models of reform work throughout the country. Whether we look at nearby Rust Belt cities, comparable Midwestern jurisdictions, or mid-Atlantic peers, we know that the design and use of outdated codes and antiquated systems directly impara all housing abundance. Building more housing units leads to more housing options for our residents, and having more options benefits both homeowners and renters, just as it benefits both long-time residents and newcomers, all of whom should be welcome in Pittsburgh to find a place to call their own. As a whole, cities must make it easier to build, convert, permit, and repair new and existing housing units. But the same is true of countless other city needs. We need building and zoning regulations that make it easier to open up early childhood education centers, small retail businesses on our main streets, restaurants and cafes, and more. We believe that when we make it easier to build housing, we are also making it easier to build the rest of the amenities that make our communities vibrant and livable. As the City of Pittsburgh advances these critical initiatives, we are incredibly fortunate to be doing so at a time when there's alignment at multiple levels of government. At the state level, Governor Josh Shapiro has released Pennsylvania's first comprehensive housing action plan. There's an ever-growing coalition in the General Assembly of elected officials committed are doing what it takes to enable the creation of more housing. Regionally, Allegheny County Executive Saranamorado's Allegheny Forward Initiative is pursuing a new countywide comprehensive plan to align land use, infrastructure, economic development, and housing production priorities to the benefit of both Allegheny County at large and its constituent municipalities. This broad-based alignment makes it clear that we collectively understand that we must build more housing. As public officials, it's our duty and responsibility to get to yes in a way that is accessible for our residents and businesses. We expect more successful outcomes in the next phases of our permitting zoning reform efforts and hope that this model can be scaled for and replicated in other municipalities to encourage and inspire growth, more housing, more affordable housing, more transit-aligned development, and more economic development initiatives across the Commonwealth. I appreciate the opportunity to share the important work being done by the City of Pittsburgh with you. And I'll end there.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on increasing housing supply in Pennsylvania. My name is Elisa Balestra-Hamill, and I am the Senior Director of Economic Development Research and Strategy for the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. Although I have provided more detailed written testimony to you, I'd like to share with you a few housing priorities that have come from our work on this issue. First and foremost, a simple point. Housing is not only a household affordability issue. It is economic infrastructure and is vital to our region and state's competitiveness. Just as employers depend on transportation networks, utilities, broadband sites, and workforce pipelines, they also depend on housing that allows workers to live near jobs. Without that infrastructure, businesses are less able to expand, major projects are harder to deliver, talent is more difficult to attract and retain, and investment becomes less likely. Over time, those constraints affect economic growth, community vitality, and regional livability. Pennsylvania housing challenge is fundamentally a supply challenge The Commonwealth projects a need for 450 new housing units by 2035 and at current production rates a shortfall of nearly 185 homes Southwestern Pennsylvania reflects this statewide challenge, with housing production in the region trailing both the nation and more competitive benchmarks. In 2024, the Pittsburgh region permitted 5,576 units, or roughly 2.2 units per 1,000 residents. By contrast, the U.S. permitted 4.3 units, while nearby Columbus permitted 6 units per 1,000 residents. Supply pressures are further compounded by a structural cost imbalance for the region. Recent market reports show Pittsburgh area rents and housing values rising, but developers are also facing higher labor, financing, and construction costs, a combination that makes attainable housing projects difficult to finance and move forward. That delivery challenge is particularly acute for workforce-rate housing, or housing serving four-person households in southwestern Pennsylvania, earning roughly $66,200 to $132,500, especially those earning roughly $88,300 to $132,500, or 60 to 120 percent AMI, especially 80 to 120 percent. These households often earn too much for traditional subsidy, but not enough to support new market rate rents or sales prices. As a result, the housing needed to support the regional labor market is often the least feasible to deliver under current conditions. This spring, the conference held targeted discussions with private and public sector housing leaders across South Western Pennsylvania. Despite representing different parts of the housing ecosystem, participants delivered a consistent message. Projects are failing to move forward because the housing delivery system is too fragmented, too slow, and too difficult to finance. Capital gaps, infrastructure needs, and delays all undermine feasibility. Based on those discussions, five priorities emerged for southwestern Pennsylvania. The first, treat workforce-rate housing as essential economic infrastructure by strengthening affordable housing and preservation tools while also expanding production-oriented capital to bring more workforce-rate projects to construction. Second, reduce the friction that slows or stops housing projects by using funding preferences, technical assistance, model ordinances, and housing-ready criteria to encourage faster review, standardized approvals, predictable fees, coordinated reviews, reduced project by project discretion, and appropriate buy-write pathways that expand housing choice options. Third, make the housing toolkit more flexible and catalytic by making housing finance and economic development tools more flexible, stackable, and tied to units preserved or produced, especially in locations connected to jobs, infrastructure, and growth assets. Fourth, align housing production with jobs, infrastructure, and growth assets by ensuring infrastructure and site readiness tools support residential and mixed-use development, not only industrial or commercial sites And fifth use public resources to leverage private and mission capital and help close housing feasibility gaps not carry the full burden alone As I noted earlier, my written testimony contains additional detail on each of these priorities and the work that we have done to date on this issue, but I'd welcome your questions or comments. Thank you.

Chairman Markosik, members of the committee and the panel, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this important hearing on increasing housing supply, which is vital to the success of our region and the Commonwealth. My name is John Knudson, and I'm the Development Director with Commonwealth Development Partners. We're currently working to redevelop the Grant Building at 310 Grant Street, just a few steps from where we are sitting today. The Grant Building is a 37-story historic office tower and one of the more recognizable buildings in Pittsburgh's skyline. Our redevelopment intends to convert much of the upper portion of the building into approximately 350 residential units while consolidating and modernizing office uses on the lower floors, bringing new residents, foot traffic, and sustained economic activity into the downtown core by activating a highly visible, centrally located, iconic skyline property. Major benefits of this development include immediate job creation via construction, long-term support for local businesses and retail, increased downtown population density, support of transit, restaurants, and services. The Grant Building is a useful case study because it illustrates both the enormous opportunity Pittsburgh has today and the difficulty of actually turning that opportunity into housing. There's no shortage of buildings that need a new purpose. Post-COVID, just about every designated office building in downtown Pittsburgh, with a few exceptions, has been or is being re-evaluated for residential or conversion of some kind. That doesn't mean we'll see a wave of conversions, but it is a fact that private and public sectors agree that a reimagining of downtown Pittsburgh is necessary. The problem is getting from where they are today to a point where someone can actually invest the tens of millions of dollars necessary to give them that second life. Development is difficult everywhere right now. Construction costs are high. Interest rates and financing costs remain challenging. Older buildings have unknown conditions. historical buildings add another layer of complexity. But Pittsburgh has an additional challenge. A significant number of large commercial properties are financially distressed or have debt that exceeds what those properties are worth in today's market. As a result, many of the buildings that are the best candidates for redevelopment are not available through a normal transaction between a buyer and a seller. They may be in receivership, foreclosure, special servicing or another distressed process. And buying through those situations can be extraordinarily difficult. There are lenders, receivers, courts, existing tenants, leases, title issues, and competing obligations that all have to be solved. A developer can be prepared to invest substantial private capital into a property and still spend months simply trying to establish a clear path to acquire it. That matters if our goal is to increase housing supply because we cannot redevelop buildings if private capital cannot acquire and redevelop the property easily. And once developers do get control of the building government partnership becomes extremely important That does not necessarily mean writing the largest check Commonwealth Development is also developing and pursuing projects in places like Chicago, Boston, and the Carolinas. We see firsthand how cities compete for investment, and increasingly that competition is not simply about financial incentives. It's about how easy it is to get a project done. Can planning, zoning, permitting, and economic development officials get around the same table? Can a developer get clear answers? Is there a predictable entitlement process? Can we reasonably understand how long a permit will take? How navigable is the existing code? All salient issues. Every additional month of uncertainty creates carrying costs, financing costs, and risk. risk. Capital can tolerate complexity. What it struggles to tolerate is uncertainty. Institutional investors look at the broader trajectory of a city, job creation, fiscal stability, population, political stability, and whether public and private leadership appear to be moving in the same direction. Capital is mobile. If a market is perceived fairly or unfairly as politically embattled or unpredictable, investors have other places they can go. That is one reason I think the focus on job creation is so important. Jobs create housing demand, housing helps attract employers and workers, both expand the economic base, and institutional capital tends to follow that growth. The city's fiscal challenges have also been well documented. I do not think we need to dwell on those numbers today, but they reinforce the importance of growth. One of the best ways to improve the long-term fiscal health of a city is to put underutilized properties, such as the Grant Building, back into productive use, create jobs, attract residents, and expand economic activity. And I do want to give the current city administration credit. There has been a real effort to examine permitting, development processes, and coordination within government. That matters. We should continue building on it. Because despite all of the challenges I have described, I am extremely optimistic about our region and Commonwealth. We have room to add housing and absorb it. We have extraordinary health care and educational institutions. We have technology, robotics, advanced manufacturing, and a deep employment base. We have neighborhoods with real identities. We have architecture, parks, rivers, bridges, and cultural institutions that other cities spend decades trying to create. And for me, this is personal. Over the course of my career, I've had the opportunities that could have taken me to places like Texas or Florida to work on housing. I chose to stay here. I stayed because Pittsburgh has character that is increasingly rare. It is not interchangeable with another city. Our neighborhoods feel different from one another. Our buildings tell a story. Our hills, rivers, and bridges make this place unmistakably Pittsburgh. My family is here. I've chosen to build my career here, and I want my children to grow up in a city that is stronger 20 years from now than it is today. Converting buildings like the Grant Building into housing is one piece of accomplishing that. The buildings are here, the demand is here, and private capital is available. Our challenge is to create enough certainty, coordination, and partnership that good projects can actually move forward. Thank you.

I mean, I think unfortunately mismatches in someone's housing needs and the housing that they're in are unfortunately all too common. I think there are loads of reasons for that, one of which being even if folks do want to stay in their home and they may have the means to, accessibility modifications should be incredibly pricey. These are oftentimes seniors, retirees, their budgets are already stretched thin and the the cost of putting a ramp in can be pretty, pretty pricey. Even if they manage to find a contractor, the contractor's willingness or the cost they charge might vary, frankly, based on how much trouble it is to actually get that work done. When review processes like that add up, you have fewer people willing to do the work and the people that do do the work sort of, if they want to, could rip people off to be frank. I think that generally making it easier to have houses be changed, upgraded, modernized based on the current occupant's needs is a major component of increasing that housing supply. That way we don't see people who maybe are no longer in the housing that's the best fit for them. We also then run into situations where housing that would be good to build specifically for a certain population's needs are more difficult to come by. Ranch style housing is a fantastic candidate for older folks or anyone with accessibility needs given that they don't have to deal with stairs, it's not as much space to have to maintain. That type of housing diversity can often be very very difficult to build in several parts of our city and several parts of our region, meaning that the existing housing supply that we do have that falls in that category and meets that description is scarce and hard to come by. It either makes it more expensive or the folks that do have it are going to be very, very reluctant to give it up, whether they're a homeowner or a renter. I think that the example you provide is really a perfect one that really, really criticizes the need that we do have to create housing like this. I know that whether it's the county, whether it's city, there are fantastic programs to help people make those modifications, to meet those needs. Government has finite resources, though, so there are always far more people that we need to help and want to help than we can help. Government can only do so much without fighting that type of aid, unfortunately. So anything that we can do to get more options for people, period, it makes all those efforts go a much longer way.

But what we have seen is that when affordable housing development comes to communities and they centered around providing housing for that 62 or older population it has been met with resistance from the community And so I think that there an opportunity around just education on who living in quote unquote affordable housing. It might be a rebrand of affordable housing. It might just be more connection with the community so they understand that this is actually for the people who currently live in this neighborhood to be able to stay in that neighborhood and age in place and age with dignity. So we haven't quite figured that out, but there's a component there. And on the other side is that first-time homebuyer support. So if you can get people living in their community, aging in their community, in a safe place, then how do you create the opportunity for that new homeowner to step in? So in Allegheny County, we launched our first-time home buyer program. We've helped almost 100 people buy homes across Allegheny County. We are really targeting 60% up to 120 AMI. So we are focused on that workforce housing as well because we know that is a critical component. And I just want to highlight again when we're talking about housing that our most, one of our most cost burden, rent burdened demographic here is our seniors in Allegheny County. So we do have to increase the supply of affordability. So we need to make it easier to build. So part of that's LIHTC. LIHTC is highly competitive when we're talking about 9%. At the county, we are trying to think creatively about how to create capital that moves more quickly, that is more flexible, exactly to the points that were made by this panel. So we are launching a fundraising effort to raise upwards to $100 million across two funds. One is a housing preservation fund that will preserve affordable units that are currently in the market for the long term. Like I had mentioned earlier, we have lost 44,000 units that rent for under $100,000. We know seniors especially are on fixed incomes. So it's much easier to preserve a unit and update it than it is to build it from the ground up. fund for that, our aim is $50 million, and then the other one would be a housing production fund. That would be seeded with public funds to de-risk it, but then we'd work with philanthropy and specifically our financial institutions who have CRA credits to fulfill. If they would invest in this fund, they would get a return. It would be below market, probably around, we'd land probably somewhere between 5 and 8% of a return, but that would allow for us to have a pool of money that could move more quickly and help build the type, be more responsive to the market and help us build the type of housing that needs to be built across typology and across the county. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us today on this important topic. I had a senior fair yesterday in Hampton Township, and literally I probably had 10 to 12 seniors come up to me and pleading with me about property taxes. And one of them literally in tears saying that she was probably going to have to move out of her house that she's lived in with her family because of the 36%, 37% increase in property taxes at the county level. Also, there was school district increases. I know in the city of Pittsburgh there was a 20 increase in property tax And then on top of that when people want to move between homes if you buying a two hundred thousand dollar house there a for any value it a five percent transfer tax so you're talking about ten thousand dollars before property taxes we are i think crushing our residents with taxes and that's one of the things it's one of the reasons why over the city of pittsburgh's lost over half of its population and the allegheny county's lost

Barobish?

It's okay.

I think a good starting point is maybe not even necessarily looking at changing the various processes, but rather defining them and having a single point of contact. We just broke ground on a significant historic conversion in Chicago, and they assigned a shepherd to us to walk through and guide us through all the entitlement process. They coordinated with the various agencies. we were able to pull all stakeholder parties together to sit at a table, go through and identify from the very start where we need some extra time. How long will utilities take? How do I coordinate? How do I communicate information from one department to another? So I think one thing that was extremely helpful for us and quite frankly put our capital at ease for the uncertainty of that. It was still a lengthy process. It was a 12-month process, but we knew exactly what and where we were going.

That was a city employee, yes.

And we have one final question on this panel.

Feel free to pick at that however you'd like. Yeah, sure. So just to, and thank you for the question. Just to clarify, when you say de-risk private capital, is your implication, how do we make private capital markets more comfortable with the investment into significant developments? Yeah, so one of the themes of my testimony is really understanding the process. You know, grant building, we have been under contract and in our various pre-development processes for going on 12 months. and it's been fine so far and we've been able to navigate this, though that impacts everything from interest rate, interest rate impacts rents that I need in order to clear hurdles. So I think making the process for entitlements and development clearer, less complicated to the extent is reasonably responsible to do so. and just having that plan defined so that we can have gates and check marks along the way and investors can remain interested. There are any number of projects that I've worked on in the city of Pittsburgh that have been under contract and something unforeseen comes up six, eight, ten months down the road and then you lose that capital source because there was an unforeseen cost. There are obviously other issues that are maybe not necessarily we can't really control in this room. We're battling that uncertainty of the development, pre-development process. We're navigating increased construction costs. We're navigating increased capital markets costs. So anything I can do, and I think starting with that, clarifying the path, making it easier, is extremely, extremely helpful.

There is a report that was released in 2024 by the University of Pittsburgh, specifically on this topic. I would recommend that the Housing Committee pull that and pull some data from it. But I will say we've explored as a county tools that could potentially prevent private equity or make it harder for them to acquire these buildings. We don't have any tools. The local municipalities might have some in terms of zoning and enforcement, but really I think we would need the state and the federal government to think through kind of what tools they could put in place that would help, if not eliminate, definitely curb and disincentivize private equity from kind of gobbling up this very necessary supply of housing in our neighborhoods. It is something that we hear about time and time again and would be absolutely interested in being partners at the table and figuring out comprehensive solutions. So I think another aspect of some of the downsides of that, that private ownership coming in and not really using that property to its highest or best use or using it sort of like perniciously, I think that we also need to look a lot at municipalities or in this case the city's land recycling process. So in addition to folks kind of gobbling up housing in really hot markets, It's also very common to see markets where maybe things aren't heating up right away, but everyone might know that in 5, 10, 20 years, it's going to be like a go-to destination. What we often see happening is that whether it's a tax-delinquent property or something that's publicly held, whether it's by the city, the city's urban redevelopment authority, or the three taxing bodies trust, right now if the city and 3TB want to dispose of land, generally it goes to the highest bidder. Someone can come in and initiate that sale, and if they get the highest bid, it's theirs. They can sit on it, and a lot of time, LLCs, things like that, they have enough cash in the bank that they can ignore property fine violations. Maybe they fix it up once a year just to get them by, and they sit and sit and sit, and they plan to cash in one day, and in the meantime, the house or the property deteriorates. One thing that the city is really trying to get better on is the use of our land bank, where the land bank can really, really thrive, especially is in site assemblage because it can do direct sale. I think especially in neighborhoods that we have either seen a big loss of population or a lot of disinvestment, we do have several essentially scattered site opportunities there. What we don't want to see happen is as whether it's the URA or LAMIC is working on putting these sites together for a project and being able to do it at that scale can overall help reduce costs. We don't want to see someone be able to initiate a public sale process or pick it off at the highest price and ruin that whole project or essentially charge a public entity an arm and a leg. we really need to get better at our land recycling that land disposition process so they can move more effectively if something's tax delinquent There are times where a private buyer. They might be the best fit for it They might fix it up build a house there make a community garden if it's something like a sidewalk and that's all fantastic We also want to have there are avenues and ramps that we can take to avoid situations where someone just comes in Buys it up sits on it forever and could possibly sort of ruin long-term neighborhood or long-term housing development plans The ability to be able to do a direct sale or directed sales, excuse me, where we don't always have to go to the highest bidder. We can go to the most appropriate and most responsible bidder really is an important tool in our toolbox to try and make sure that the folks who are buying in our communities are doing it for what good for the community and what good for the city Thank you, Indar.

Thank you, Chairman. I snuck one in on him. He thought that was the last question. But I appreciate, I think we're all on the same page whenever it comes to housing and the fact that the government overbearing on permitting regulations and everything that goes along with the loopholes that you have to get through in building or revamping housing. I think one of the things that our committee is very, you know, tasked with is trying to reach a compromise between local government and state government on how to better foster that. And I think Allegheny County, City of Pittsburgh, from what you're saying, has really sort of stepped up to encourage or fast-tracking the permitting process. But that's not the case the whole way across the state of Pennsylvania. And something that, you know, I have struggled with on how to sort of not be heavy handed to local governments, but to try to encourage local governments to actually do exactly what you're trying to do here in the city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, and enabling housing to get through that long-term permitting process that really puts delays in there. So at the state level, any time we would put forward a bill, we're going to get a lot of pushback from your municipal governments. What would be your suggestion on how to encourage all your local governments, whether it be the class township to a first class city to do what you're doing.

the finish line, can you use carrots? And so we're trying that approach with our comprehensive plan. Our comprehensive plan in Allegheny County has not been updated for about 18 years. And so part of that exercise is working with our 130 municipalities and gathering best practices when it comes to land use, zoning and density, and making a library of those tools and saying, you know, this is plug and play for you municipality, because we know we have municipalities that are under 100 people to the city of Pittsburgh, which is north of 320,000 people. So capacity varies greatly across municipalities. And so having tools that can plug and play really easily will be helpful for folks updating their zoning code. And then what we're doing as a county, especially in our Economic Development Department, which is mostly a pass-through for dollars, especially CDBG federal dollars, new programs that we've started like Main Street Allegheny is that we prioritize applications that are multi-municipal and that adopted these types of best practices. So it doesn't mean you're eliminated from being able to access these funds, it just means that your likelihood of getting this money for your community increases if you've adopted some of these best practices. So I think when the state thinks about new funds, can you bake in some incentives for adopting these types of practices for multi-municipal collaboration for these types of development projects. That would be extremely helpful and a very encouraging incentive for our localities.

Good morning, Chairman Markosik and members of the House, Housing Community Development Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. As you know, I am I'm David Dean, the 2026 president of the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors. I have been a realtor for nearly 25 years, and I am an agent with the Howard Hanna Real Estate Office in Collier. I'm here today to discuss the challenges consumers face when trying to purchase a home. As you know, real estate plays a vital role in our state's economy. The real estate industry contributes more than $177 billion to Pennsylvania's gross state product. And each typical home sale has a $91,000 impact on Pennsylvania to say nothing of the benefits of home ownership for consumers. But we are here today to talk about access and affordability. For many people, home ownership seems further out of reach than ever before, and as someone who knows this market and industry inside and out, I can tell you why. In one word, inventory. Our state simply does not have enough inventory. As you've heard prior to me speaking, estimates vary, but our research suggests that Pennsylvania has a housing stock shortage of roughly 98 to 137,000 units. In July, our state housing report showed that nearly 46,000 listings on the market, down about 4% from July of 2025. We've been fortunate over the past year to see a slight increase in listings, but the number is still significantly lower than in 2018, down about 40%. While Pittsburgh is often cited as the affordable place to purchase a home, we know that this inventory issue has led to drastic shortages, which affect countless potential buyers, particularly first-time buyers. However, inventory in general was still running at less than five months' supply. For context, a healthy real estate market generally has a six-month supply. This lack of inventory not only reduces sales, but also keeps the median home price high. In Pennsylvania, the median sale price was $330,000 in July, after hitting an all-time high of $340,000 in June. And the price is up about 5 from the previous year Compare that to the state median sale price in 2018 which was just That more than double in eight years These factors lead us to note that the greatest shortage of homes is in the lower price range. Listings under $500,000 have an average of 4.5 months of inventory well below the six months considered healthy for a market. Our lack of inventory has turned this into a crisis, and until we fix that, we cannot truly address affordability. Allegheny County's real estate market is also facing an emergency situation with criminal activity and deed theft. PAR has seen similar fraudulent activity across the state, and the Association has supported every bill that addresses this issue. We appreciate legislators working to address this threat to property owners. In looking at the affordability housing issue, those who work in new home construction will tell you that the cost preparing and permitting a site to build often run between $75,000 100,000. With base prices up to $100,000 and the cost of materials and labor at record high, builders are essentially forced to build more expensive properties to recoup their costs. These increased costs are sometimes coupled with overly restrictive zoning ordinances that can limit housing options or mandate unnecessary features which further complicate the new home construction process. We would encourage lawmakers to investigate ways to reduce regulatory costs for building new homes. The Commonwealth can encourage or even require municipalities to review their zoning laws to determine if they are significantly hindering development. We would urge all state departments, such as the Department of Environmental Protection, to expedite and streamline permitting. To be sure, governmental red tape is costing us housing units, and we need an outside-of-the-box thinking and fortitude to find ways to incentivize development and adaptive reuse. Finally, we need a commitment from legislators on both sides of the aisle to address this crisis as a crisis, which means that we cannot simply triage our way out of it. The truth is that all Pennsylvanians are suffering from affordability issues. We are encouraged and have been honored to work with this committee. It is clear that Chairman Markosik is trying to heed the call to action to find a solution for the Commonwealth. As we search for innovative solutions together, we must be mindful not to write off the concerns of those we may disagree with. I am always a bit leery when we talk of affordability seems to devolve into a demonizing developers, builders, or housing providers. We do a disservice when we convince ourselves and others that ideas like rent control or any single bill or idea will magically end our affordability woes. This problem is much bigger and requires a wide range of changes in policy. Keep focusing on the root cause of our lack of inventory continuing to work with stakeholders and having the courage to pursue big ideas are some of the things we have to do to address affordability And I welcome the opportunity to continue working with the Pennsylvania House Housing Committee and the entire General Assembly to do so. Thank you again for your time.

Hello and good morning and thank you. Thanks, Mara. Thanks everyone for allowing us to speak with you today. My name is Jen Shuhart. I'm the director of Meeting Basic Needs. And on behalf of United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania, I appreciate the opportunity to provide insight

Hello. Good afternoon, I believe. And it's nice to see some of you again who joined us yesterday and to meet new faces today. My name is Maura Jacob. I am the Policy and Community Impact Officer with the Pittsburgh Foundation. And I would like to close our panel today by centering our current residents and speak to you about housing, not in the abstract sense, but the real living version. There have been some great examples given here today. Um, I'd like to speak to you about the version where a family in East Liberty packs up 10 years of memories because their rent increased without warning, where an elderly couple in Vandergrift juggles a fixed budget, trying to stay in their home, as well as the need to make repairs and utility bills that just keep rising. And those stories aren't outliers, as we've heard. There is a pattern, and addressing it requires both the will to build more housing and the commitment to ensure that that growth serves everyone, including those who are already here. What everyone gets right, and what you've heard many, many times, is that we need to build more housing. The demand is real, the shortage is real, and building is absolutely part of the answer. But experts like the National League of Cities have offered a critical caution. expansion, expanding housing supply without a concurrent plan to prevent displacement is in their words like filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom. The number of units may rise while housing instability continues to erode the gains. And that risk is not theoretical. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is clear no matter how many units we build, supply side strategies alone will never make housing affordable for households with very low incomes, and that population is rising. In 2024, the median extremely low income renter household could afford about $308 a month in rent. The median national rent was close to five times that. No amount of construction closes a gap that wide without sustained targeted support. Home preservation and home ownership preservation is increasingly urgent, as many homeowners struggle to keep up with rising property taxes, insurance premiums, utility bills, and repair costs especially in older homes where deferred maintenance can quickly threaten health and safety Expanded supports for repairs energy upgrades tax relief and emergency assistance can help vulnerable homeowners remain safely housed and protect the homes they have worked hard to keep. And foreclosure pressures themselves are intensifying. According to data reported by the Post-Gazette last May, foreclosure filings in Pittsburgh rose from 82 in April of 25 to 215 in April of 26, which is a 162% increase, while 570 properties across Allegheny County were scheduled for sheriff's sale. Encouragingly, our leadership is moving in this direction. Pennsylvania's Housing Action Plan calls for building and preserving housing simultaneously, along with specific commitments to tenant protections, eviction prevention, and expanding housing access across all income levels. Executive Inamorato's Housing for All executive order signed this year aligns supply expansion with tenant protections, affordable housing preservation, and long-term investment in our eviction prevention system. These are the right instincts, and they're exactly what the research supports. The conclusion this body should draw is straightforward. Housing supply and housing stability are not competing objectives. They are two dimensions of the same imperative, and they must be pursued together. That means pairing every effort to build with the following commitments. Direct financial assistance that reaches families before a small debt becomes a courtroom proceeding. Tenant protections so people understand their rights and aren't blindsided by a notice on the door, anti-displacement planning woven into how we grow, not added as an afterthought, and preservation of existing affordable housing so we don't lose ground faster than we can build it back. Community foundations like the Pittsburgh Foundation have seen eviction prevention and targeted anti-displacement efforts keep tens of thousands of households whole, including right here in Allegheny County. We've seen what becomes possible when tenants, landlords, advocates, policymakers, and philanthropic partners commit to reforming a broken system together. And that work requires sustained investment. For example, housing stability providers and advocates are gathering here next month for the One Ruth Housing Resource Fair and Provider Summit, an event that underscores the need for preservation and safety net support while we build. And we have seen and are thankful for the committee's actions furthering these commitments. It was this committee that passed House Bill 1095, sealing eviction records to protect tenants and communities. It was this committee that passed HB 1650 for a Pennsylvania home preservation program. These important pieces of legislation recognize that addressing our housing crisis comes at the intersection of several complex systems. It is the work of this committee to drive housing production, and it is the work of this committee to also preserve the homes that we have and to protect the people living in those homes. So let's build. Let's build with intention. Let's build in a way that brings our current neighbors along and welcomes new ones too. Supply and stability together. because when we keep a family stably housed, we're not just saving a lease or a mortgage, we're protecting a child's education, a parent's job, a neighbor's health, and the whole fabric of our community. Thank you, committee members, for your work and for the opportunity to provide this testimony.

I will just reiterate that the Pittsburgh Foundation has a particular investment in eviction prevention and other housing stabilization work. We convene a local group of providers both around eviction prevention and now also around homeownership preservation. So those numbers that I gave around foreclosure rates and the increasingly unavailable affordable units for renters are deeply felt by us. So we greatly appreciated the actions around eviction sealing in particular because we know that there are just a large number of reasons, things like medical debt, the unexpected loss of income that can really just result in a snowballing impact on a household. and that that one event could then lead to housing instability in the long term when eviction records follow someone every single time they try to achieve new affordable housing. So we greatly appreciated the support of that bill in particular. But I will just also emphasize again at that intersection that we are experiencing a lot of different affordability pressures. And so in your role outside of this committee, as you are thinking through other supports within human services, understanding that by supporting other aspects of human services, you are supporting housing. It is part of what allows people to stay in their homes is helping them manage all these other constraints upon their budgets. So thank you.

Yeah, I would totally agree with those comments as well. And I think this is more of a budgetary discussion than a legislation discussion, but we've heard a lot about the importance of preservation and of home ownership, and Action Housing administered the whole home repair program in Allegheny County. And the impact of that program was incredible, and when we first got those funds, we were able to fund 3% of the applications that we got. And the stories that came out of that program of senior citizens being able to stay in their homes and families staying in their communities were just so moving. And we're trying to fundraise for continuing that work, and we're piecing together local sources of funds. But the state investment in that program was just hugely important. So I would encourage this committee to think about that, and I'd be happy to share more about the outcomes of the program and sort of where we are with it today. But it was really an impactful program.

Thank you. We have a question from a representative towards the group.

Representative Shaper.

Do you want me to start?

Thank you for that question. That has a lot of, it has, it's a challenging one. Living in the city proper, I have dealt personally with the issue of vacant housing. and how to make it more marketable and to salvage the housing stock that we have. For instance, on my street, we have four houses that are abandoned. I've tried for years to try to turn those abandoned houses into market-rate housing. That's been a struggle. However with the new administration in place in the city we have a lot of hope that we going to see a quick turnaround not only in converting these vacant homes into market housing but also sustaining affordable housing options for people who might not have considered living in the city itself. So, while the city's land bank is a great start and the mayor's initiative to tearing down blighted property, which also has a deleterious effect on our community, I think that the proof is in the new administration right now we need to give it time and I think that once the administration has the tools in place, I think we're going to see significant changes in our housing.

I'll just also highlight that you're pointing to a really important issue in terms of we've had a lot of outflow from the city of Pittsburgh into surrounding municipalities, suburbs, and further. and that puts a lot of stress on those welcoming communities for folks who have left the city. I would highlight that there are a large portion of folks that had been pushed out of the city that was based around affordability concerns and looking for housing or other opportunities outside of the city. So as we're trying to address the issues within the city limits, there may be many folks who want to come and return to those communities that they knew very well and for one reason or another were pushed out of those communities. And so the pressures you're experiencing in those outer communities by addressing some of those issues here in the city, we might alleviate some of that burden, for lack of a better term at the moment, that is being placed on municipalities that maybe aren't quite as well situated to take in folks. Thank you.