Category: News || By

City officials will likely sign a consent agreement with the federal government in order to receive $750,000 in promised community development money. But they aren't happy about it.

"This is blackmail," City Administrator Dennis Pittman says. "Come December, if this moratorium is still in effect, we will be laying off employees, or unable to make our bond payments. But it's blackmail."

Blackmail, perhaps, but Mayor Regis McLaughlin is recommending that council agree to terms being dictated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and several council members seem inclined to agree.

. . .

"My suggestion is that we sign that paper," Councilman Darryl Segina says. "The consequence of not receiving any community development block grants would be grave. We'd be reliant on the county for them. We'd lose our community development department and the ideas that come out of that department."

HUD is currently withholding $750,000 in already approved community development block grants because it says the city hasn't done enough to create "fair housing opportunities" for minorities and low-income residents.

In recent years, McKeesport has used those federal grants to tear down abandoned houses, purchase fire equipment and hire community policing officers. HUD says the city should be spending 3 percent or more of the funding to counsel residents about housing vouchers, provide small grants and loans for people to do renovation and remodeling, study the needs of poor and low-income residents, and perform environmental assessments on areas with high concentrations of public housing.

HUD also wants McKeesport to hire a "fair housing officer," says Bethany Budd Bauer, the city's community development director. HUD would set the role's qualifications.

Programs done by third-parties such as McKeesport Neighborhood Initiative, McKeesport Housing Corp. or McKeesport Housing Authority don't count, HUD says, and neither do programs funded by other government entities, such as Allegheny County.

. . .

HUD has repeatedly singled out high rates of poverty in the city's Third Ward --- which includes the Harrison Village public housing complex --- and Seventh Ward, which includes the area around Cornell Elementary-Intermediate School.

In an email to city officials on Sept. 22, a HUD administrator called the city's existing efforts "half-hearted" and "smoke and mirrors" that have "achieved almost nothing."

The city's existing fair housing programs have "a history of failure or near-failure," said Michael Jansen, regional director of HUD's office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, "with absolutely no targeting at the desired locations."

. . .

At least one member of city council agrees. "I really think he has a point," Councilwoman Fawn Walker-Montgomery says. The city's community development money seems to be spent on third-party agencies, with little directly reaching neighborhoods or residents, she says.

"A lot of activities are being done by volunteers --- which I support, and I am a volunteer," Walker-Montgomery says. "But the money doesn't go to those volunteers --- it goes to the YMCA or some other group."

But Pittman says that demolition of abandoned houses in the Third and Seventh Wards has improved the surrounding neighborhoods by removing blight and crime.

He adds that the city has provided grants and low-interest loans for residents and specifically targeted the Seventh Ward for new housing development, including the new homes on the site of the old Menzie Dairy Co. and the old reservoir along Union Avenue. In fact, Pittman points out, HUD officials participated in ribbon-cuttings for those homes.

. . .

The demand that McKeesport counsel residents on how to use housing vouchers is absurd, Pittman argues. Two out of three city residents already receive some form of public assistance for housing, he says.

"Somebody is trying to make a name for himself at HUD, and they want to make an example of us," he says. "It's absolutely unfair."

If the federal government wants to take away the city's community development money, it should also take away all of the group homes and other subsidized housing "they've dumped on us over the years," Pittman says. (One city official noted Wednesday that "the Mon Valley has absorbed a lot of public service facilities that haven't gone to wealthier communities like Peters and Upper St. Clair.")

. . .

Councilman A.J. Tedesco Jr. says the incident may serve as a warning that the city has become too dependent on federal grants and aid.

"Now they control us, because they hold the purse strings," he says. "If we were a business and you were giving us $1 million, you'd want a say-so in how the money was spent."

When the city plans next year's budget, Tedesco says, "we need to look at ways to reduce costs and increase revenues and reduce our reliance on community development money."

You are previewing your comment. Be sure to click on 'Post Comment' to store it.