A “Perfect Storm” for Affordable Housing in Pittsburgh

photo GB – stock.adobe.com

Last December, Andrea Matthews, executive director of The Brashear Association serving neighborhoods in the southern part of Pittsburgh, was asked how she felt about the incoming second Trump administration.

“Terrified,” she replied.

Seven months later, after President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4, 2025, her assessment hasn’t changed.

“Things are just as terrifying,” she said. “I didn’t think it could get any worse, and it did. Right now, we’re seeing a perfect storm for extreme homelessness.”

Like any perfect storm, affordable housing in Pittsburgh is extraordinarily complex, with national currents mixing with the local environment in unpredictable ways. Matthews offers a distinctive perspective on the problem—and what it takes to respond to it.

Affordable Housing in Pittsburgh: A Perfect Storm

At first glance, the housing situation in Pittsburgh seems better than in major U.S. cities like Philadelphia. Here, the median home costs about $270,000, while the average 1-bedroom apartment is about $1,383 per month. Those figures are up only slightly from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s findings in its 2024 Comprehensive Housing Market Analysis, which declared the rental market “balanced.”

Yet, the relative affordability of housing in Pittsburgh and the tenuous “balance” in the rental market masks a more complex picture. A 2022 housing needs assessment by the City of Pittsburgh found that city households are becoming wealthier, not through economic growth but through socioeconomic displacement.

According to the report, gross rents rose 16% between 2015 and 2019, outpacing income growth in households without college degrees. Investor-driven “flipping” activity has also surged, with many properties sold at prices out of reach for working-class residents.

The needs assessment found the impact on Black residents to be especially stark, particularly in neighborhoods marked by historic disinvestment and poor housing conditions. Pittsburgh lost nearly 700 Black homeowners between 2015 and 2019, a 7% drop, while over 1,000 Black renters earning under $50,000 a year also left the city.

The result is a city becoming steadily wealthier and whiter, with fewer options for low-income Black households to remain.

And then the One Big Beautiful Bill Act happened.

National Currents, Local Conditions

Though deeply controversial, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act appears to have many provisions that might help the situation in Pittsburgh. The bill expands the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), makes it easier for low-income housing projects to receive permits, and changes the Qualified Opportunity Zone program to encourage investments in low-income communities.

Yet, the impacts of these changes could be limited in Pittsburgh for two reasons.

First, these federal programs require a unified plan and vision at the local level. And in Pittsburgh, neither a plan nor a vision is coming anytime soon.

Mayor Ed Gainey, whose administration had championed an ambitious citywide inclusionary zoning program, was defeated in the May primary.

Beginning in September 2024, Gainey advocated requiring any new residential development of 20 or more units to make 10% of those units affordable for those earning 50% of the area median income. But the initiative stalled over uncertainty regarding the true effects of the plan’s provisions, which one study suggested actually reduced housing production in a pilot neighborhood.

Now, with Gainey’s defeat, the debate is on hold until his successor assumes office in January 2026. In the meantime, the city’s housing policy will likely continue to drift.

Second, while the One Big Beautiful Bill Act may have some helpful things to say about the supply of affordable housing, many of its other provisions make it even harder for people to pay for a home, regardless of price.

Matthews of The Brashear Association is seeing this second aspect of the housing problem first-hand.

Serving some of the South Pittsburgh neighborhoods at the center of the 2022 housing needs assessment, she leads a broad-based community center offering programs for youth, employment, food assistance, community development, and utility and rent assistance. Matthews also happens to be a landlord, enabling her to view housing affordability from both directions.

For her, housing affordability is a multilayered problem that’s about more than just high rents. It reflects a community-wide crisis that has only intensified since January.

“I felt so abused when Trump left office the first time,” she said, but the current administration feels much more organized and effective, driven by people who seem to want change at any cost.

The effects in her community have been profound, she said. “It will take us ten years to recover.”

The Brashear Association’s food pantry, she reported, now serves 400 people per month—a 50 percent increase—and even more people come knocking on the pantry’s door even when it isn’t open. Rising food prices have also led the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank to begin charging for basics like milk, cheese, and eggs it used to supply for free, increasing pressure on the program.

Brashear Association’s food pantry,  photo courtesy Brashear Association

And in a community where the opioid crisis still hasn’t abated—people have overdosed in her nonprofit’s back alley, and during the interview for this article, someone collapsed on the front sidewalk—families are worried about losing Medicaid for their children, and cancer patients are already being told their health benefits will be cut.

Young Adults Falling Through the Cracks

But the people Matthews worries about most are young adults, whom she sees as bearing the brunt of everything, but especially the housing crisis.

Many of the young people she sees graduated from high school just before or after the pandemic and entered college unprepared academically and socially. Many dropped out, while those who completed their education are finding it difficult to achieve the financial stability their parents were able to achieve at their age.

With crushing loan debt, no clear professional options, and stiff competition for jobs, she said, they struggle with chronic unemployment or underemployment and often live without a stable address. They get by through having multiple roommates, couch surfing, or living on the street.

These young people, she emphasized, are a forgotten population, crushed by a system that—as the city’s infighting and confusion over housing affordability demonstrates—no adult in power seems capable of understanding, let alone fixing.

These experiences create a sense of disenchantment among youth, an omnipresent feeling of betrayal, cynicism, and despair that Matthews concedes may never go away.

Rebuilding Trust Starts with Leaders

When it comes to social trust and hope for the future, she says, “I’m most concerned that the future of the leaders of the world—those in high school during the pandemic—will have a very different perspective” on both their own possibilities and society as a whole.

This realization is changing how she leads, encouraging her to see her work as making and maintaining commitments that support others.

As an executive director, she says, that means paying benefits and a living wage to her staff so they don’t have to be clients, even when her board pushes her to balance the budget.

And as a landlord, that means making sure her rents are just, even if it hurts a little.

Because if we want young people to be able to trust themselves, each other, and the world around them, she said, leaders need to demonstrate what trust looks like, how trust feels, and why trust matters.

“How will they know if we don’t teach them?”