(News)
For an example of the problems created by the city's abandoned houses, it's hard to top Jo Ann Slater's story.
Slater says her two-story frame home in the 1300 block of Locust Street needs $10,000 in repairs because of damage caused by the vacant houses on both sides.
"I've lived there for 20 years, and I'm in danger of losing my home," says Slater, who confronted city officials following Wednesday's council meeting. "I'm 62 years old. I have nowhere else to go, and I don't think I should have to lose my home because of two condemned houses."
. . .
The houses, built in the early 1900s, are one block off of Walnut Street in the city's Third Ward. Zion Baptist Church is a few doors away.
Slater, who works in a beauty salon, says the roof, porch and foundation of her home has been damaged by falling debris and other problems caused by the empty houses.
"The house at 1316 is a burned-out shell, and it's dangerous," Slater says. "I have great-grandchildren and nieces and nephews come to my home, and I'm afraid they're going to get hurt."
Slater, who says she has complained to the city on at least eight separate occasions, was told by a contractor that because the houses on Locust are so close together, repairs to her house would be more difficult and costly than usual.
. . .
County tax records indicate that 1316 Locust is owned by Eugene Williams of "no known address."
The home at 1312 is owned by one of Slater's neighbors.
Court records indicate that thousands of dollars in delinquent taxes --- some dating back to the mid-1980s --- are due to the city, McKeesport Area School District, Allegheny County and GLS Capital, which in 2000 purchased many older tax liens.
Both houses have been condemned by the city.
. . .
Mayor Jim Brewster says the city hasn't been ignoring Slater's pleas for help, but it has taken time to move the houses through the legal process required to demolish them --- and to find the money to pay for the work.
The city has spent $3 million in the last five years demolishing more than 400 vacant houses, Brewster says. Another 400 are slated for demolition.
On July 15, city officials will hold condemnation proceedings on an additional 65 houses.
. . .
The city has been trying to attack groups of abandoned houses simultaneously, Brewster says, but may be able to attack the two buildings on Locust Street because they're posing a danger to Slater's home.
The mayor says he spoke to Building Inspector Chris House on Wednesday morning to discuss Slater's case.
In addition, the mayor says, residents who want to have a house torn down at their own expense may borrow the money from the city, and make monthly payments on the balance.
City Solicitor J. Jason Elash told Slater Wednesday night he would contact local agencies, including McKeesport Housing Corp., that might be able to offer assistance to pay for the repairs her home needs.
. . .
Meanwhile, a request by Allegheny County for $22 million in federal money (including $800,000 for the city) to demolish abandoned houses was turned down, Brewster says.
However, the city and county plan to revise the proposal and ask again, the mayor says.

(Rants a.k.a. Commentary)



(Commentary/Editorial)

Why can't we take the money that the mayor literally begs from the state government and tear down everything that is uninhabitable? Do it all at once, call it the Summer of Love or something, I don't care. Maybe sell some T-shirts, hand out snow-cones and funnel cakes.
The reason these houses are bought up for cheap and rented out is because they're there. Get rid of the inventory, and they won't have anything to buy.
The mayor loves to complain about how 40 percent of the property in town is rental property, but I'm sick of hearing the complaints. If you don't want renters, get rid of the rental properties.

(Commentary/Editorial)
In case you missed it, Adam Fleming's cover story in the current issue of Pittsburgh City Paper is well worth reading.
(City Paper, despite being a "free entertainment weekly," does some of Pittsburgh's best reporting into urban living, and that includes issues in the Mon Valley.)
Fleming explores an increasingly serious problem in Pittsburgh, McKeesport and other older communities. Because real-estate values are so low for older single-family frame houses, people are buying them off of the Internet, sight unseen.
Most of these buyers claim they intend to "renovate" the houses and re-sell them, but that's generally speaking a load of bull.
In most cases, what they intend to do is rent them as cheaply as possible, usually to people on public assistance, until they're uninhabitable.
. . .
Do you want to see the results? Take a ride up Stewart Street in McKeesport, and weep.
When I was a kid, it was a proud neighborhood of working-class people from all nationalities and races. My aunt lived on Stewart, and my grandmother lived a few houses down on Maple Street. Now it's infested with crummy-looking rentals.
On the 2500 block of Stewart, for instance, all 10 houses are owned by landlords who live somewhere else, according to county tax records. One is owned by a Canadian real-estate investment trust. Three of the homes are condemned.
. . .
Eventually, when these houses can't be rented because they're falling apart, they're abandoned to the elements. Then they're torn down at the city's expense, to the tune of $8,000 to $10,000 each.
As Fleming notes, municipalities have almost no recourse when this happens. Even if you can find the landlords --- often they hide behind P.O. boxes or shell corporations --- courts don't extradite people for building code violations.
. . .
The municipality can file a complaint with the local magistrate, but when the property owner's in another state, the fines are unenforceable and uncollectable.
There's no "return for code enforcement," the mayor of Mount Oliver tells Fleming. "The time and effort we put in, they get a slap on the wrist."
Many --- not all, but a sizable number --- of the renters are people who have been evicted from public housing because of criminal records or drug problems.
The landlords are out of state, so they don't care if the tenants throw garbage in the front yard, have parties at all hours of the day and night, threaten or intimidate the other residents, and generally wreck the neighborhood.
. . .
And it's not always the tenants who are at fault --- even good renters have a hard time keeping up with the maintenance on a 1910-vintage wooden house, and these structures can quickly go to seed if the landlord doesn't help.
Entire blocks of the city are now infested with these kinds of houses, as are Duquesne, Braddock and Clairton.
Glassport, Trafford, Pitcairn and Wilmerding are getting slammed now, too, and Port Vue, West Mifflin and Whitaker are also starting to see the same problem.
. . .
If your neighborhood hasn't been hit yet, just wait. Eventually, one of your elderly neighbors will die or go into a nursing home. There's a reasonable chance that their heirs will sell the house cheaply to some budding, out-of-town slumlord.
Fleming talks to one of the "investors" --- Tami Twidwell of Beaverton, Oregon --- who recently bought five houses, including three in Our Fair City.
One of those is "gutted" and "abandoned" --- meaning "worthless." She claims the seller lied about the condition of the properties, which she never saw before buying them.
. . .
Twidwell, who claims her intentions were pure, tells Fleming: "I know this all sounds ridiculous, and I sound like the stupidest person in the world."
Yes, she does sound stupid. Here's why: She bought five houses that were 2,500 miles away without seeing them first.
And I have no sympathy for her, especially when Twidwell complains that Pittsburgh code-enforcement officers are harassing her with citations.
"Harassment" doesn't describe what I wish would happen. I wish Twidwell could be forced to live in one of her crummy houses, like Joe Pesci in The Super, but the law doesn't allow that in real life, just in bad movies.
The Mon Valley was knocked into a deep hole 25 years ago. It's damned hard to crawl out when the Tami Twidwells of the world keep throwing dirt on our heads.

(Cartoons)

News Item: Residents of Clairton and Glassport are exposed to toxic air pollutants that make their risk of getting cancer around 20 times greater than the national average, according to a report by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. (Don Hopey, Post-Gazette)

(Mon Valley Miscellany)
Legendary WMCK and WIXZ DJ Terry Lee has found another nugget in his archives and posted it online for your entertainment. It's video from a dance show taped in Pittsburgh in 1977.
A lot of the male dancers are sporting the look that retired Post-Gazette columnist Peter Leo called "the Full Cleveland" (and he meant that only in the pejorative sense), while the women are rocking those pantsuits and velour dresses.
Terry is a lot smoother than "Rockin'" Mel Slirrup (Eugene Levy), host of the SCTV dance show spoof "Mel's Rock Pile" ... but since Pittsburghers Joe and Paul Flaherty worked on SCTV, was any resemblance purely coincidental? Hmm.
(Update: Hey! I just noticed that Sunday was Joe Flaherty's birthday. He turned 68. In honor of Joe, I'm going to put on a white suit and a Panama hat, and sit in a wheelchair --- to earn people's respect, of course.)

(News)


(News)
An "exhaustive" analysis by the state Department of Environmental Protection has found no chemicals, poisons or manmade contaminants in Renziehausen Park's Lake Emilie.
However, the 16-page report, released Tuesday, does indicate the presence of fecal contamination --- animal droppings --- in the lake, DEP spokeswoman Katy Gresh said.
That's very likely caused by the geese that inhabit the lake each spring and summer, Gresh said Tuesday, and is not a health hazard.
"It's about what we would expect for an urban pond," she said. "The fecal matter is definitely not the cause of the fish kills."
. . .
Lake Emilie's water quality became an issue several weeks ago after Councilman Paul Shelly Jr. reported he had found 75 fish dead at the man-made pond over the span of several days.
City officials said they had found only about a dozen, and speculated the fish were injured by rough handling during a fishing derby.
Shelly accused Mayor Jim Brewster and other administrators of covering up a public health hazard, and speculated sewage was getting into the lake.
. . .
Gresh said the fecal contamination is "not a high enough level" to kill fish.
DEP's tests, she said, cannot conclusively determine whether the contamination is from geese, human waste or pet droppings.
But she said the geese are a more obvious source than sewage runoff.
"We conducted an exhaustive amount of sampling," Gresh said. "It's most likely a result of having geese on the pond."
. . .
According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, fecal coliform bacteria are not harmful, but can indicate whether other harmful bacteria are present. Besides human and animal waste, coliforms are naturally present in the environment.
The DEP found 440 coliforms present per 100 milliliters of water in samples near Lake Emilie's spillway, and 1,200 coliforms per 100mL at the north end of the lake.
Federal and state guidelines consider average coliform levels above 126 units unsafe for swimming, according to public documents posted at the EPA's website, but swimming is not permitted at Lake Emilie, which is a stormwater retention area.
The same reports indicate that coliform levels below 2,000 units are safe for recreational uses other than swimming.
. . .
Persons who catch fish in Lake Emilie should wash their hands thoroughly, she said. Consuming fish from the lake is not unhealthy, Gresh said, as long as the fish are cleaned and cooked thoroughly.
In a statement emailed Tuesday to the Almanac and Daily News, Shelly said county and state agencies are not taking the issue seriously enough.
"I need more information on their data and opinions to form a strong opinion on the safety of the lake for humans and the cause of death of the catfish," he said.
. . .
Shelly added he had "bigger city and personal issues to deal with" --- a reference to his June 13 arrest on charges he pulled a gun on a Downtown business owner during a argument.
A preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Eugene Riazzi, originally scheduled for Monday, has been moved to 9 a.m. July 13. Shelly remains free on $10,000 bond.
Gresh said DEP did not attempt to determine the cause of death of the fish. Fish kills are the purview of the state Fish and Boat Commission, she said.
. . .
A message left for a spokesman at the Fish and Boat Commission was not immediately returned Tuesday.
Anyone who has concerns about the water quality of Lake Emilie can call the DEP's SouthWest Regional Office at (412) 442-4000, Gresh said.
"If people do find more dead fish, or if there is anything awry, we do want to hear about it," she said.
