Low income housing stock shrinking on North Side (Pittsburgh, Penn Hills: house, neighborhood)

[WhoIsStanwix?]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

Again, how many people work at commercial properties and how many people work at personal homes. Please stop comparing the two. I am tired of people that don't care and let homes fall apart be able to stay. Let people buy the homes up and fix them to what there once were.

Point taken. The stadiums do more than create jobs, too. They make a city like Pittsburgh more desirable to move to for many people, relative to a city without the professional sports footprint (though one might argue Pittsburgh being so sports crazy actually turns a lot of people off).

Ultimately, though. Unless you want to wait 30 years or so for the inner ring urban areas to prosper again, someone is going to need incentive, whether it be tax or otherwise, to spark and continue development. Otherwise, people will continue to pay higher prices to move to established city neighborhoods or will build on cheaper land in suburbs.

The question then becomes, do you provide government cheese to the rich, middle class, or the poor? Or do you try and encourage mixed income development, which I think others have pointed out here (and I don't have facts to back this up), is better than completely isolating pockets of poor people in projects.

[SammyKhalifa]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

Why ride a bus from the Northside flats to the city? Best more of the undesirables move to Penn Hills and take the bus in. Then everyone is happy. Bus service is in demand, so there are more drivers and supply and demand dictates who can and can't live in what should be prime areas. The Northside has no business being anything less than prime. Keep government out and let the people fix homes and neighborhoods up. No subsidizes housing should be there. It is prime and needs to be taken over buy people that want to save those old beautiful homes.

As someone who's not exactly rich (but better-off than many) with many friends that make low pay, I take very high offense with the "undesirable" tag.

[gg]

Originally Posted by SammyKhalifa

As someone who's not exactly rich (but better-off than many) with many friends that make low pay, I take very high offense with the "undesirable" tag.

It is undesirable if you love those big old homes. Let me further explain. If you buy a large old Victorian Era home in the Northside here is the following issues for someone of very little means.

1. Heating costs.
2. Restoration costs that are amazingly high if you want to restore to original.
3. Amazingly high maintenance costs year after year.

People without deep pockets let the homes crumble as we see all over our city. I love these old homes and would love to see them restored.

2327 Perrysville Ave. in the Northside would have been a prime example. I looked at that home over 15 years ago to buy and restore, but it was too big of a project. It was a very special victorian owned by a ship captain that had a very old ship like feel inside and out. The home was so run down then, it would have taken one heck of a lot of work back then. I just looked at Google Maps and the home is now a teardown. Nothing can be done. Too late. The people that owned it were poor. The ripped all the mantles out of course to pay heating costs and had space heaters everywhere. That 100 year old masterpiece is gone and will never return. What could have saved it? Deep pockets. Sorry, I have been around the game too long to think a home like that can be refurbished by someone on food stamps. Um, I don't think so. If someone can post a picture of the home, go for it. You can see a tiny bit of that ship like gingerbread left, but it is all but gone now.

[WhoIsStanwix?]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

It is undesirable if you love those big old homes. Let me further explain. If you buy a large old Victorian Era home in the Northside here is the following issues for someone of very little means.

1. Heating costs.
2. Restoration costs that are amazingly high if you want to restore to original.
3. Amazingly high maintenance costs year after year.

People without deep pockets let the homes crumble as we see all over our city. I love these old homes and would love to see them restored.

2327 Perrysville Ave. in the Northside would have been a prime example. I looked at that home over 15 years ago to buy and restore, but it was too big of a project. It was a very special victorian owned by a ship captain that had a very old ship like feel inside and out. The home was so run down then, it would have taken one heck of a lot of work back then. I just looked at Google Maps and the home is now a teardown. Nothing can be done. Too late. The people that owned it were poor. The ripped all the mantles out of course to pay heating costs and had space heaters everywhere. That 100 year old masterpiece is gone and will never return. What could have saved it? Deep pockets. Sorry, I have been around the game too long to think a home like that can be refurbished by someone on food stamps. Um, I don't think so. If someone can post a picture of the home, go for it. You can see a tiny bit of that ship like gingerbread left, but it is all but gone now.

For all of the things I tend to disagree with you on, this is not one of them in the least. I didn't fully appreciate what you were trying to say until you set forth this example. Yes, it takes very deep pockets to restore homes like these. I still don't know how you get people to do that, though unfortunately, it would likely mean getting many of the lower income folks out of the neighborhood, as money doesn't like to move into no money areas.

[SammyKhalifa]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

It is undesirable if you love those big old homes. Let me further explain. If you buy a large old Victorian Era home in the Northside here is the following issues for someone of very little means.

1. Heating costs.
2. Restoration costs that are amazingly high if you want to restore to original.
3. Amazingly high maintenance costs year after year.

People without deep pockets let the homes crumble as we see all over our city. I love these old homes and would love to see them restored.

2327 Perrysville Ave. in the Northside would have been a prime example. I looked at that home over 15 years ago to buy and restore, but it was too big of a project. It was a very special victorian owned by a ship captain that had a very old ship like feel inside and out. The home was so run down then, it would have taken one heck of a lot of work back then. I just looked at Google Maps and the home is now a teardown. Nothing can be done. Too late. The people that owned it were poor. The ripped all the mantles out of course to pay heating costs and had space heaters everywhere. That 100 year old masterpiece is gone and will never return. What could have saved it? Deep pockets. Sorry, I have been around the game too long to think a home like that can be refurbished by someone on food stamps. Um, I don't think so. If someone can post a picture of the home, go for it. You can see a tiny bit of that ship like gingerbread left, but it is all but gone now.

OK. Of course I'd like to see the houses kept up/repaired/whatever. I'll buy that.

I'd still like to see it possible for lower-income people to be able to live close to the city though. I guess I didn't like the connection between income level and desirability. Most of the people I know that are poor would also be some of the best neighbors you could ever ask for.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by WhoIsStanwix?

For all of the things I tend to disagree with you on, this is not one of them in the least. I didn't fully appreciate what you were trying to say until you set forth this example. Yes, it takes very deep pockets to restore homes like these. I still don't know how you get people to do that, though unfortunately, it would likely mean getting many of the lower income folks out of the neighborhood, as money doesn't like to move into no money areas.

It's an interesting issue, because having a home inhabited by people who at least maintain it(as in neither improve it nor destroy it) is much better than having an unoccupied home. A lot of these areas began as wealthy neighborhoods. The wealthy people abandoned them for some reason or another. It's not like low-income people were forced on the neighborhood; it was just a natural result of the wealth leaving. And I do think that that result is generally more desirable than an abandoned neighborhood.

[UKyank]

You also have to factor in our state's screwed up property/school tax situation when dealing with these old grand homes. Maybe not someone on food stamps, but someone not all that wealthy could buy one of those former grand homes, over the years put alot of work returning it to its past glory and then as a result of this work be hit with a huge tax hammer they cant afford which effectively places any real hope of having any of those homes being restored solely on the wealthy & as pointed out, the wealthy aren't going to be pioneers moving into an area that is lower class.

[WhoIsStanwix?]

Originally Posted by UKyank

You also have to factor in our state's screwed up property/school tax situation when dealing with these old grand homes. Maybe not someone on food stamps, but someone not all that wealthy could buy one of those former grand homes, over the years put alot of work returning it to its past glory and then as a result of this work be hit with a huge tax hammer they cant afford which effectively places any real hope of having any of those homes being restored solely on the wealthy & as pointed out, the wealthy aren't going to be pioneers moving into an area that is lower class.

I wonder if some sort of break for "Historical/Restored Home" would help this situation...though I'm sure you'd see wealthy people snagging up those homes and restoring them, and using that designation as a tax shelter.

[UKyank]

Originally Posted by WhoIsStanwix?

I wonder if some sort of break for "Historical/Restored Home" would help this situation...though I'm sure you'd see wealthy people snagging up those homes and restoring them, and using that designation as a tax shelter.

I'd rather see that though as at least the places woukd be fixed up by someone. Personally if improving the look of your home wasn't penalized, I think that many of our neighborhoods would get a big aesthetic facelift improvement.

[WhoIsStanwix?]

Originally Posted by UKyank

I'd rather see that though as at least the places woukd be fixed up by someone. Personally if improving the look of your home wasn't penalized, I think that many of our neighborhoods would get a big aesthetic facelift improvement.

Is square footage of building + lot size, adjusted for location a common method of valuing property in other places? Otherwise, any tax formula based on recent selling price/appraisal value would always penalize homes that look better as far as tax burden.

It would actually be interesting to do a cost/benefit analysis of improvements to your home, specifically exterior, over various time horizons (1 year, 5 year, 10 years, 30 years?), to see whether the increased tax expense offsets the value increase if you were to sell.