Jake Pawlak

Happy Father's Day to those who celebrate

#pittsburghpride2025

Happy Pride!

It is the honor of my life to serve as Mayor of Pittsburgh.

We built and preserved over 1,600 affordable housing units, increased public safety, reduced homicides, reduced gun violence, and achieved 19% job growth

Vote Ed Gainey, and we will continue to grow. #WPXIDebate

No one should be able to cut corners in the building permitting process just because they have my phone number, and under the Gainey Administration, they aren't.

Following better now - still imagine that a significant number of parcels wouldn't qualify, though that will depend on the methodology of reassessment. Regardless, only a subset of qualified parcels will have qualified owners, making the program's reach, in our view, both targeted and justifiable.

We'd expect some assessments to go down, others to go up but by less than 25%, and others to go up by more than 25%; of those that go up my more, only those that meet income, duration of occupancy, and improvement criteria would be eligible, so no, we wouldn't expect all parcels to get the exemption

Finance Dept. staff explored deferral and exemption options, don't immediately recall the reason they ultimately recommended exemption but I can make sure we address this question as we discuss the bill in the coming weeks.

Should have noted earlier that you can't take advantage of the Homestead Exemption and LOOP at the same time; this is an alternative subsidy for homeowners facing a particular situation, not an additional subsidy.

Assessed value. How that maps onto tax liability depends on things like whether you were availing yourself of homestead exemption before, etc., but worth noting that the program is structured such that you can choose LOOP or Homestead, but not both.

- 10 years in the home (5 if you purchased with some form of public assistance)
- 120% AMI or lower
- current on all taxes
- assessment increase of 25% in a single year or 50% over 5 years, without additions or major renovations to the property

Subject to those limitations, 1) yes, a family of 4 at 120% AMI may be in legitimate need of relief if their valuation jumps 50%, while at the same time 2) the program criteria are targeted enough that the foregone revenue is manageable.

The goal is to isolate dramatic tax bill increases caused by adjacent development and provide protection from those, while still capturing more gradual market changes and/or assessment increases caused by direct investment in your property.

Context here is key: LOOP is only triggered if you experience a 25% increase in assessed value in a single year or a 50% increase over a 5 year period, and at the same time haven't made major investments in the property beyond regular maintenance.

Pittsburgh is facing an acute housing affordability crisis, and city, regional, & state leadership and responsible affordable housing developers are stepping up to the challenge.

Tell PGH Planning Commission: Keep PGH Home & Pass Inclusionary Zoning! · Pittsburghers for Public Transit ## Whether you are Black or white, wealthy or working class, Pittsburgh should be a place that everyone can afford to call home. The City of Pittsburgh Planning Commission is deciding whether to forw...

Join us at the Planning Commission to keep Pittsburgh Home:

How Lawrenceville’s Solving Its Affordability Problem - City Cast Pittsburgh Pittsburgh needs thousands of new homes to meet demand, and there’s a lot of local politicking behind potential solution...

Great interview with Dave Breingan of Lawrenceville United on how Inclusionary Zoning is working in Lawrenceville and why we need to expand it citywide:

Tell PGH Planning Commission: Keep PGH Home & Pass Inclusionary Zoning! · Pittsburghers for Public Transit ## Whether you are Black or white, wealthy or working class, Pittsburgh should be a place that everyone can afford to call home. The City of Pittsburgh Planning Commission is deciding whether to forw...

Join us at the planning commission to keep Pittsburgh home:

Agree! That's why we've proposed massive city-wide upzoning (to increase housing construction) alongside a 10% affordability requirement (with density bonuses to offset the cost) to make sure that not all of that new construction is market rate.

That's exactly why we can't rely on building more housing alone to address affordability; we need to ensure that working families (whether they're here now, or want to move here) can afford some of the housing that gets built.

My point was not that new residents are bad, it's that the trickle-down prescription to address rising costs relies on a closed market to work; anytime a new resident moves into a market rate unit, the chain of "filtering" breaks before the theoretical price drop reaches the people who need it.

I have nothing against new residents moving to Pittsburgh, they are extremely valuable to our City.

I do, however, have a big problem with the unchecked increase in housing costs that is driving working families out of Pittsburgh.

In instances like this, condemned means "cannot be occupied until the violations are fixed". The condemnation will be lifted when the elevators are repaired and certified.

Certainly agree with by-right duplexes in all residential districts; it's such a common building form here that was arbitrarily precluded when the Zoning Code was first adopted.

The single stair apartment form is something I'm only just starting to learn about but it's very compelling as well

Generally supportive - the code is definitely too complex and, in many places, too restrictive.

Broad changes like this require broad consultation and buy-in, so our goal is to solicit resident input on changes like this during the Comprehensive Plan.

To date we've used this strategy in response to ~5 incidents - most of the improvements deployed are changes to signage, pavement markings, removing parking to improve sightlines etc - hard infrastructure changes take longer to design and install, but these changes can be deployed quickly.

We formed a Fatal Crash Response Team for this purpose about a year ago - staff from multiple departments conduct a site visit within a week (after the formal police investigation is complete) to identify rapid safety improvements

Pittsburgh city councilor introduces alternate scaled-back inclusionary zoning proposal A new bill introduced by Pittsburgh City Councilor Bob Charland would scale back the proposed use of a zoning law to encourage more affordable housing — setting up a conflict with Mayor Ed Gainey.

“In reality, it's a taxpayer funded rent subsidy for individuals making as much as $85,000 per year. It's a very poorly disguised Trojan horse that does nothing but enrich developers on the taxpayer's dime.”

www.wesa.fm/politics-gov...

I can only tell you how the rule has been applied; bills making a series of interrelated changes to a single Title (in this case, Title 9) pass muster.

I have not read it, so I can't comment on whether it is mistaken or not.