Affordable housing leads a building boom in Homewood

After listening to an update on construction plans in Homewood during a February meeting at the Homewood Community Development Collaborative, Elwin Green, a longtime neighborhood resident and author of the Homewood Nation Facebook page, raised his hand.

“What’s happening right here is going to make Homewood look different in the next two years,” he said.

The plans would put the neighborhood on track to have 38 units of affordable housing, new office space and new trees.

Robin and Adrian Young, the owners of the development company Run the Block, intend to ask Pittsburgh City Council to rezone a section of Hamilton Avenue as Local Neighborhood Commercial so they can convert the former New Life African Methodist Episcopal Church into an office building. The area is currently zoned for residential use, though there are already businesses there.

Run the Block also owns the parcel behind the church and vacant properties to the west of the building. The rezoning would include all of the developers’ property, plus the former carwash, parking lot and Bakers Dairy convenience store that were owned by the late William D. and Patricia Baker. 

Adrian Young said that the zoning change would run from North Dunfermline Street to Zenith Way along the south side of Hamilton Avenue. The north side of the street already is zoned as Local Neighborhood Commercial.

In addition to the church, the Youngs plan to build an office building. They expect to rent a portion of the development to the district magistrate who needs new office space and to the POGOH Bike Share program, which needs storage and repair space.

The new affordable housing would come in part from the second phase of a project by Tina Daniels, owner of Concrete Rose Construction, who wants to build 16 units of affordable housing in Homewood.

She is already building four units on the 6900 block of Bennett Street that she expects to be completed in the spring.

Now she is planning to demolish row homes on Hermitage Street and replace them with four duplexes that will each have two-bedroom and four-bedroom units. The duplexes will have a walkway between each of the buildings.

Daniels purchased the property from the estate of Leatha Anderson, but it was encumbered with back taxes, which she also paid off. To honor the memory of the former owner, Daniels is calling the development Anderson Estates.

The financing through federal affordable housing grants demands that the property remain affordable housing for the next 15 years.

Ryan England noted that Daniels needs to obtain a variance for the parking requirement. While the current homes have no parking and are grandfathered in, Daniels is adding another unit and so she needs a variance. She will also need variances for the size of the buildings and the setbacks from the lot lines.

Vernard Alexander, a serial entrepreneur, called Daniels “the leading foremost Black woman developer in this region.”

He pointed out she builds affordable housing for women and veterans, and that she uses mostly Black contractors.

Another development will reopen 30 apartments that were shut down suddenly by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2017. About 100 families in the Bethesda-Homewood Properties were forced out of their homes when housing inspectors found the properties to be too blighted for habitation.

On Feb. 8, the Urban Redevelopment Authority agreed to provide $2 million in 40-year interest-free loans to Pennsylvania Affordable Housing Corp., a nonprofit run by Shawn Taylor, to rehabilitate 30 units that will be available for rent using federal housing vouchers.

URA Chair Kyle Chintalapalli said the buildings have been a source of blight in the neighborhood and added he was glad to see the project address “the scar that the whole ordeal with Bethesda really left in Homewood. So it’s great to see you advance this project.”

When completed, the four buildings, all in Homewood South, will have six one-bedroom units, 21 two-bedroom units, and three three-bedroom units. The total cost of the renovations is estimated to be $6.5 million.

The Homewood Community Development Collaborative also heard how the tree canopy in the neighborhood could be improved.

Clara Kitongo of Tree Pittsburgh said the organization is working with the Treevitalize partnership of the city and Western Pennsylvania Conservancy to plant 13 trees in Homewood: one on Race Street to replace a hazardous tree and 12 others along North Braddock Avenue.

Those changes combined with the new football field and swimming pool that are under construction at Willie Stargell Field on Hamilton Avenue across from the Homewood Branch of the Carnegie Library will make the neighborhood more welcoming.

Elwin Green was right. Homewood will look different two years from now.