Pittsburgh, PA: Mostly happy.
PROS:
-Affordable homeownership opportunities. We purchased our first home on the city's North Side in March 2020 for $54,900. The house is small on a postage-stamp-sized lot and is semi-attached (one shared wall with the other neighbor being detached but spitting distance away). With that being said we also have a 1-car detached garage accessible via a rear alley and about 1,000 square feet of living space on three floors (choppy layout). You can easily buy a home here for <$150,000 that is move-in ready.
-Growing culinary scene. Since I moved here in 2010 the quality and variety of restaurants has ballooned. There are now even some restaurants that are so trendy that you need to make reservations months in advance. This was unheard of when I moved here. No, we don't have a Michelin-ranked restaurant, but who cares?
-Educated and worldly population. Roughly 50% of those aged 25 or older in the city limits have at least a Bachelor's Degree. It is easy to meet people who have moved here from all over the world to attend graduate school or to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship. We are growing our AI and robotics engineering sectors of the economy; Duolingo is headquartered here; and a lot of TV shows and movies film here or have filmed here.
-Booming economy. Similar to the above point the economy here is so hot that our office can't stay fully-staffed. Unemployment here is around 3% (albeit that seems to be the case nationally since Boomers are retiring in droves; Millennials are snorting fentanyl for unknown reasons; and Gen X and Gen Z are each like 3,000 people). Our city's median household income is around $60,000, which is great when coupled with having many homes for sale around $150,000. It is easy to live comfortably (albeit not extravagantly) here. My husband and I earn ~$75,000/year annually combined, and we are able to go out to eat often, give to charity, tithe, etc.
-Low RANDOM violent crime. Violent crime here VERY RARELY involves innocent bystanders. If you are shot with RARE exception it's the result of being in a rival gang, shorting your dealer, being involved in domestic violence, picking a fight bigger than you can handle at a bar or via road rage, etc. If you are just jogging down the street, yes, even in Homewood, our worst neighborhood, you are very unlikely to be a statistic. I feel safe here overall and live in a very high crime neighborhood. I have become friendly even with some of the local drug dealers as I am out litter-picking---they know they I'm not a narc, and they know I'm actually doing them a favor by picking up the needles dropped by their "clients" prior to neighbors squawking to the police or local media about it. No, I'm not happy or supportive of drug-dealing, but if you don't bother dealers they generally won't bother you.
-Very LGBTQ+-friendly. We have a very high percentage of our population falling under the rainbow umbrella. Just on our block four out of the eleven adults are LGBTQ, and I am aware of at least a dozen others in surrounding blocks. You see rainbow flags in a lot of areas, and our pride festival is very large. Due to the nature of my work (law enforcement analysis) I work in an office full of Republicans (and even some being die-hard MAGA types at that), and all are supportive of same-sex marriage, indicating that even our city's right-wingers are at least moderate on the LGBTQ+-oriented front. They are generally just conservative on things like taxation, Second Amendment rights, immigration, and abortion (and even then it's like a 50/50 split with some of the MAGA's in my office being pro-choice).
CONS:
-This city is FILTHY! I pick up litter constantly, and it just seems to come back faster and faster. We have rugged and steep wooded hillsides, so shady contractors/flippers will just pull up with their pickup trucks and dump all sorts of debris off of the roadsides. The local squirrels and crows, both of whom we feed very well, often bring us "gifts" of litter they find.
-The weather here is abysmal. We are a very cloudy city overall. It is gray here roughly 5 days per week for several months of the year. Our winters are cold and windy with little snow (bummer for those of us who love snow). We are just too far west for most Nor'easters to impact us; just too far south for the good Lake Effect snows; and just too far east for most Alberta Clippers to still have enough potency to drop more than like 2"-4". Summers are very humid and sticky. This summer has featured a lot of code red air quality days thanks to the Canadian wildfires.
-Rents are relatively high vs. prevailing wages. Most homeowners here are doing just fine. Renters? They are just as endangered of becoming homeless here as in many other more expensive large cities. I believe our typical 1-BR apartment rent is now well over $1,000/month in the city limits. That's absurd considering the mortgage payment on a 3-BR house here is much less than that. I have a colleague who just put in his notice today. He had to quit for a higher-paying job or risk eviction. We are building hundreds of new apartments across the city, but we still need many hundreds more.
-Terrible east/west infrastructure. I live and work in the city and am relatively immune from the infamous I-376 gridlock between Downtown and the suburbs; however, if I leave work on a Friday and want to visit my dad in Scranton, PA I do have to get tangled in the 376 conga line. It can often take me nearly an hour just to get from my Downtown office via car and out of Murrysville, our furthest-east major commuter suburb. Our airport is also far from Downtown, and if you have a flight around the PM rush hour you need to say a prayer you'll make it there on time thanks to the congestion of 376, which is only two lanes in each direction. Pittsburgh desperately needs an east/west BRT expansion or an east/west light rail expansion.
-Sports culture. I'm not into sports. Most natives are and don't shut up about the Steelers---even in the off-season. Other than thinking Mason Rudolph looks fine without a shirt I know nothing else about the Steelers.
-Homelessness. I work Downtown near a new large homeless shelter that was already over-capacity when it opened. As a result dozens of other unhoused humans just roam around the surrounding blocks of the city all day. Most are harmless. Some will shout at you or rudely accost you, though, which creates a negative/unnerving environment, especially for tourists and rich WASPy suburbanites. We have a lot of mentally unwell and/or addicted types roaming around leaving needles, urine, and feces here and there, and our mayor, despite being in office for a year-and-a-half now, seems to not have a plan to address any of it, which is quite unfortunate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gg
Pittsburgh PA. Not happy
I am a 50+ year old vet in this city. I lived in Miami, Sarasota and Orlando as well. Pittsuburgh IMHO is turning into a mini Portland and that style. The downtown isn't a place you want to go anymore. It is declining still, but prices of homes are wildly high. I have 20 years in real estate and owned a restaurant before you pretend to know more. The city is going the way of San Francisco without those amazing views and great weather in comparison. I am moving to the country soon. I have a few more years left if I can survive as a white older male.
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Eh. Parts of the city are becoming the FOX News portrayals of Seattle or San Francisco. Parts of the city are just fine. Overall the city's population dropped by literally just a few dozen people from 2020-2022 after generations of steep decline, and I think we will actually show population growth from 2020-2030. More neighborhoods are on the upswing than are on the decline out of our 90 neighborhoods. It's easy to focus on Downtown or parts of the North Side or Homewood or Carrick and feel despair, but there's also massively transformative success stories like the Strip District, Lawrenceville, East Liberty, South Side (despite the recent quality-of-life issues that the city actually IS addressing), Manchester, East Allegheny, etc. I'm also bullish on the next decade for the Hill District, especially since they will be cleaning up Bedford Dwellings/Chauncey Drive, which is the last large-scale low-income (and high violent crime) housing project in the Hill District. If they make that another mixed-income success story like Crawford Square or Oak Hill we'll be in good shape there.
The city is deep blue politically in a massive county that only LEANS blue that is surrounded by exurban collar counties that are overrun with MAGA types. I honestly think you'll see that the county overall only LEANS blue with the county executive race this Fall. I'm a moderate Democrat, and I'm leaning towards voting for Rockey (Republican) in November because Innamorato seems to be part of this new "decriminalize everything and everyone" mantra that threatens to worsen the quality-of-life for those of us in transitional urban neighborhoods. I'm also leery of voting for Dugan for DA but also am not thrilled with Zappala running as a Republican either.
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