A day after clashing with his Democratic rival in a televised debate, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey on Wednesday doubled down on his claim that he’s “delivered” 1,600 units of affordable housing during his city hall tenure.
Gainey has recited the statistic on the campaign trail time and again. He referenced it several times Wednesday during a tour for media of affordable housing sites in East Liberty, the Hill District and Oakland. He mentioned it while standing beside a sign that read, “1,600 affordable housing units delivered with more than a thousand on the way.”
About 500 of those units have actually been completed, according to data from the mayor’s office.
The rest are under construction or have closed on financing but have not yet been finished. That figure includes new units, as well as existing affordable housing the city has helped to preserve from either transitioning to market rate or closing if in disrepair.
These housing statistics have become a focal point in an increasingly heated Democratic mayoral primary race, as Gainey and challenger Corey O’Connor argue over minutiae in the data and semantics in how they articulate their points.
O’Connor, the Allegheny County controller and a former city councilman, contends Gainey’s representation of the housing data is dishonest.
“He got caught lying to the people of Pittsburgh again,” O’Connor told TribLive Wednesday, disputing the mayor’s claim of delivering 1,600 units of affordable housing when less than a third of those have been finished.
O’Connor had challenged Gainey to show him the 1,600 affordable housing units in question. That’s what spurred Gainey’s 2 1/2-hour bus tour, which included five stops at sites that have been built or are under construction.
O’Connor declined to participate.
During a debate Tuesday evening on WTAE, Gainey criticized his opponent for not planning to show up to the housing tour O’Connor had requested.
“We invited him. Now we find out he will not be there,” Gainey said.
“I am not going to attend a campaign rally for the mayor,” O’Connor replied. “He knows he cannot walk around the city and produce 1,600 new units of affordable housing.”
Do details matter?
“Today we’re going to show you a whole lot, 1,600 that we delivered,” Gainey said at the start of the tour, standing before Pennley Commons and New Pennley, where the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority helped fund an ongoing effort to preserve and rehabilitate 145 affordable housing units.
Gainey said he felt the 1,600 number he continues using is “conservative.” But when asked whether he acknowledged that some of those units are still under construction or have only closed financing, he replied, “We’ve always said that.”
The mayor doesn’t always spell that out.
“We’ve built, we’ve delivered, 1,600 units of affordable housing,” Gainey said during a televised debate Tuesday hosted by WTAE.
Last week, in a debate aired by WPXI, the mayor said, “I want to talk about the results that we’ve delivered for you, such as housing, thousands of units of affordable housing.”
O’Connor in Tuesday’s debate argued Gainey hasn’t done enough to build much-needed housing for low-income Pittsburghers.
“First thing you have to do is be transparent in how many units have actually been built in the last three and a half years, and it’s only a couple hundred,” O’Connor said.
Fighting over the details and bickering over phrasing isn’t likely to sway voters, said Alison Dagnes, a political science professor at Shippensburg University.
“What political psychology shows is that voters are not moved by facts and specifics and details as much as they are moved by an overall sentiment,” she said. “Pointing at specifics and at data are not going to change the voters’ existing understanding of who the mayor is.”
Voters tend to forget the specific numbers very quickly, Dagnes said, even as Gainey and O’Connor spar over them at length.
Points of agreement
Gainey and O’Connor agree the city needs more affordable housing. They agree the city should build new units and preserve existing ones.
Both point to low-income housing tax credits, state or federal grants and existing city initiatives as ways to bolster the housing supply. And both have advocated for minimum lot-size reform and more transit-oriented development.
But their approaches aren’t identical.
Gainey has proposed a citywide inclusionary zoning mandate, which would require a portion of any large-scale housing project be designated affordable housing.
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O’Connor countered that such a tactic wouldn’t work in every community. He prefers a neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach to inclusionary zoning.
O’Connor also has suggested cutting red tape to make it easier and quicker to build housing in the city. He pitched the idea of a zoning change to incentivize infill construction between or on top of existing buildings.
Affordable housing has been a priority for Gainey throughout his first term. Under his administration, the city agreed to pay $62.5 million over 25 years to pay off a controversial bond for the Urban Redevelopment Authority to fund additional housing initiatives. The city’s long-stalled land bank finally began selling its first properties, including some for affordable housing. The mayor signed executive orders aimed to protect residents from housing discrimination.
Media blitz
As the May 20 primary approaches, Gainey has launched a blitz of housing-related press conferences, capped by Wednesday’s tour.
“This is truly a full circle moment for me,” Gainey said as the tour moved to Cliff Street in the Hill District, which, he said, “is where my momma grew up.”
That stop included a walk around the former Letsche School building, where Beacon Communities transformed an empty school into over 40 mixed-income apartments. Four new townhouses recently sprang up nearby.
Jala Rucker, a member of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh, marveled at the transformation. She went to school at Letsche.
“Affordable housing means everything,” said Rucker, who has relied on affordable housing for much of her life. “Families shouldn’t have to work 100 hours a week in order to keep food on their tables or pay their rent.”
At the next stop, Gainey toured a new three-bedroom home that Amani Christian Community Development Corp. will soon sell through the OwnPGH program, which offers up to $90,000 to low-income, first-time homebuyers.
The program was technically created during the prior administration under Bill Peduto, Gainey said, but wasn’t put into use until after he took office. It has so far helped 169 homebuyers, 91% of whom identified as a minority- or women-led household, according to the URA.
Rev. Lee Walls, executive director of the Amani Christian development group, lauded Gainey’s efforts to increase the affordable housing supply.
“We have to be able to look at the total picture, which is all of the affordable housing units that are in the pipeline,” he said.
Gainey also stopped at the Oakland site where construction is underway on a building that will include 48 apartments catering to low-income LGBTQ seniors and Bedford Dwellings in the Hill District, where a $50 million federal grant is helping fund about 800 new and replacement housing units.
The city had tried but failed to secure a similar federal grant for Bedford Dwellings under a prior administration, said Council President R. Daniel Lavelle, who accompanied the mayor on the tour and credited him with helping secure the investment.
“That is our commitment to affordable housing,” Gainey said.