pittsburgh planning commission rejects controversial penn plaza development
My adopted city, Pittsburgh, is on the cusp.
How do you have a city that welcomes all, regardless of income? How do you have a city where the poor and the rich can live next to each other, to interact with each other?
Penn Plaza is the site of a former apartment complex that had become naturally affordable housing in East Liberty, a neighborhood of Pittsburgh which has rapidly been developed in the past 5 years and has an influx of hundreds of luxury apartments built. In the meantime, rent in Pittsburgh has steadily increased, especially in the newly (re-)desirable East Liberty. The developers decided to tear down the apartments and replace with market rate apartments, displacing residents who were in a highly accessible and desirable location. In contrast to other development projects in the area, this one specifically tore down affordable (albeit naturally and not mandated) housing without any real plan of replacement.
This is a hallmark decision – a moment in our collective history that speaks to the hope of truly having a livable city for all. The challenge is for us to move and recognize that although capital may be a useful system, we must be willing to make sacrifices to emphasize human capital.
Maybe we won’t grow as fast; maybe it will take more work. But the journey is as important as the destination.
Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches?
Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives
or fall among the slain.Isaiah 10:1-4a (ESV)
Lord, I pray that we might be a city that is a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm, and a shade from the heat (Isaiah 25:4a).