This is not another piece about why a public Land Bank might be necessary.
It is a piece about the nature of the political “conversation” we’re having, and how we’re going to be stuck with it until it resolves.
Marimba Milliones of the Hill CDC, during a WESA interview with the land bank co-sponsors, called in and precisely identified the difficulty much of the City is having:
I think that the discussion in process has lacked the depth and the genuine desire to collaborate that’s necessary for communities to fully buy-in — and when I say “communities” I mean those most impacted. So what we have right now is a City Council that is divided, and this is happening mostly around racial and class lines. And that causes me great consternation relative to pushing this forward so quickly. So my question is one around the urgency. You know, why was this bill introduced the second week of City Council, being in session on January 14th, and what is the urgency of pushing through a bill that’s going to impact every single City neighborhood without really doing that deep dive. Also, I’d like to say that Councilman O’Connor talked a little bit about the City-owned properties and those not being able to be moved over without first having City Council approval, but the reality is that these neighborhoods that are most impacted have a high level of tax delinquent properties which are privately owned — and those properties could be moved over much more quickly. That’s a major concern. And so I’d really like to ask Councilwoman Gross also: are we repeating history? Are we missing our opportunity to change the direction our legacy has put us in? I think that we’re missing an opportunity to have that deeper-dive conversation. Land banks in other cities were most impactful because those cities were hit very hard by the mortgage crisis, which Pittsburgh did not experience that same level of crises. So I’d like to just ask the councilors to slow this process down, to engage in a deeper conversation with the communities that are mostly impacted, and I’d like to get some responses to that. (WESA)
Quickly, although Pittsburgh eluded the mortgage crisis by default, we did suffer the collapse of the steel industry and an insane 50% population dip, not to mention the loss of all that capital. So I would argue those crises are fairly similar.
But more importantly, Continue reading →