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Originally Posted by wpipkins2
What location would you dump these folks? Downtown is ideal for "affordable" housing because of access to metro jobs. All transportation routes lead to downtown Pittsburgh. For decades Pittsburgh has envisioned downtown as a neighborhood. I do not recall Pittsburgh limiting the new units to high income earners. A person working at the PNC call center or Highmark should have downtown options as well. Someone working at Five Below or Target should have a nearby residential option. Downtown living and building conversions is not new. I doubt that city leaders would turn downtown Pittsburgh into a housing project. That sounds ridiculous. Low income earners deserve safe and affordable housing in the city proper.
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The building in question is a senior tower. I hope that should make it clear I am not casting any aspersions about crime or whatever. Everyone knows that few senior citizens cause crime. That isn't my concern here at all.
But, is downtown the best place for seniors? Workforce-age people, yeah, but seniors? They need easy access to hospitals and doctors. Downtown lacks a hospital (though Mercy isn't that far away) and a number of doctor's offices have been closing in the last few years. Oakland is a much better location for seniors, for just that reason.
I think the city should be building more affordable units everywhere. But I check the URA agendas most months (and probably 80% of their work is promoting/financing affordable housing) and all of the projects of scale moving along post-pandemic seem to be in the Golden Triangle. Affordable units are getting announced elsewhere, but it's 10%-20% affordable units mixed into market-rate buildings, not mostly to entirely affordable development.
As I noted when we discussed this a month or two ago, Downtown needs not just more activity, but more $$$ being spent in local businesses, which are still hurting. The last coffee shop on Smithfield just closed up shop this week, as an example (there were three within a few block radius of me back in 2021). More affordable units are fine, so long as there are more market-rate units in the pipeline as well. But with private financing having died due to high interest rates, that well has run dry for now.