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Location: Plum Borough, east suburb of Pittsburgh, PA
144 posts, read 224,416 times
Reputation: 130
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This has been a question that's been sitting with me for awhile and I've put off asking. I may have put it off even longer if someone hadn't revived my Plum Borough thread. Penn Hills is an area which I have fond memories of as a child, because I often visited my cousins who lived on Jade Drive. Christmas time was fun there, and so was summer in their pool. This section of Penn Hills, near Oakmont and Plum, is still fine, but unfortunately the same can't be said about areas bordering Pittsburgh.
There's a lot of abandoned property in the municipality, and some demolition has happened. Unfortunately, demolition apparently is not happening as fast as it should, and that is a likely cause of some of the crime in the "bad" sections of Penn Hills. This situation is loosely similar (although not nearly as dire) as the one that Detroit is in. That city is trying to demolish 10,000 structures by the end of 2013, and is trying to get outside funding to do so. Would it be worthwhile for Penn Hills to ask for additional revenue so they are able to take down buildings, which may be breeding grounds for crime, at a faster rate? Some reading:
Where, when, and how do you see Penn Hills hitting the bottom?
Will it be in 2030, 2040, or later? Do you see it happening on a similar trajectory to places such as Braddock or Homewood, among others?
Do you see Penn Hills, because of it's built environment, as being more or less susceptible to certain types of crime? For example, Homewood had a trouble area called the "kililng fields" which was on Formosa Way. The surrounding buildings were destroyed to prevent crime from happening there. Are there any equivalent structures in Penn Hills which pose similar problems?
What condition will Penn Hills be in at its worst? Will it be as bad as Homewood and Wilkinsburg were in the early 90s when they feuded with each other? Do you think the population will drop below 30,000? Will a lot of Penn Hills return to nature?
What kinds of things need to happen to stop the increase in blight? Changes in Section 8 rules that only allow a certain percentage of a municipality to participate in the Section 8 program, so now one area gets overwhelmed and cash strapped? Putting up with less bad behavior by recipients of Section 8 vouchers, so that only upstanding citizens get them? Keep in mind that there are limited vouchers to go around. Declaring Penn Hills a distressed community, like Wilkinsburg was in 1987, so they can get more money for services such as law enforcement? Incentives for businesses to move in, so Penn Hills can experience some East Liberty style success? Personal opinion: I wonder if things would have been a lot better for Penn Hills if their balance of residential/commercial/industrial (who loves SimCity?) would have balanced a little more in favor of commercial and industrial.
While I'm very happy for East Liberty's turnaround, and for that of Pittsburgh at large, I am a little upset that Penn Hills could inherit some more of East Liberty's former problem residents. If displacement absolutely has to happen, it should be done slow enough that areas receiving displaced populations have time to absorb the new people. Surely there has to be a better way then using Penn Hills as a dumping ground...
Last edited by ryanm3685; 03-02-2013 at 07:53 AM..
Reason: wanted to add some links
Penn Hills isn't the ghettos of Detroit. You could eliminate many of the vacant buildings by the government lifting tax liens on them and selling them for a bargain. Someone would fix them up. If you tear down the buildings, you end up with Homewood----neighborhood streets with overgrown vacant lots like missing teeth. Vacant buildings or not, the crime will remain.
Where are the bad sections of Penn Hills? I know it's a large municipality, but I drive a few routes through there (that area with the Scottish streets, Edinburg, etc.; between Saltsburg and Frankstown; and those streets behind the Wylie funeral home; Shannon Rd. to get to Verona) and haven't encountered any sections that struck me as in need of demolitions.
Where are the bad sections of Penn Hills? I know it's a large municipality, but I drive a few routes through there (that area with the Scottish streets, Edinburg, etc.; between Saltsburg and Frankstown; and those streets behind the Wylie funeral home; Shannon Rd. to get to Verona) and haven't encountered any sections that struck me as in need of demolitions.
Aside from some pockets, the worst are all closer to the borders of Homewood.
Penn Hills does want to demolish a lot of long-term vacant homes, and they set aside a budget to do ten to twenty a year because that's all they can afford. There is a known issue about this, so the OP isn't wrong in that regard. Generally they're houses that are beyond repair and very long term chronic problems, sometimes houses that have burned and the shell still remains, stuff like that. Even so, it doesn't belong in the same sentence as Detroit. In Detroit, vigilante arsonists burn a crazy amount of problem homes out of desperation, for god's sake.
Have you ever been to Detroit? Penn Hills isn't even close to being among the most abandoned or blighted areas of metro Pittsburgh, much less comparable to Detroit. If Penn Hills was in the city of Detroit, it would be considered one of the decent neighborhoods. Do you realize that there are huge sections of Detroit where the street lights aren't even lit, garbage isn't picked up, blocks and blocks of houses are abandoned and tax delinquent. It's so bad in Detroit that the rate of property owners who pay taxes is only 47%.
Thanks. I see the area now. Now that I think of it sometimes when I'm up by Lemington Rd and cross over to Brushton I notice the streets signs change and otherwise wouldn't know that it's Penn Hills, because it seamlessly transitions from Lincoln-Lemington and Homewood. I guess that's why my points of reference listed weren't that relevant!
That section looks pretty small compared to the size of the rest of Penn Hills, though.
Thanks. I see the area now. Now that I think of it sometimes when I'm up by Lemington Rd and cross over to Brushton I notice the streets signs change and otherwise wouldn't know that it's Penn Hills, because it seamlessly transitions from Lincoln-Lemington and Homewood. I guess that's why my points of reference listed weren't that relevant!
That section looks pretty small compared to the size of the rest of Penn Hills, though.
Yeah, we sometimes drive down Frankstown that direction on our way to other areas, and I couldn't begin to tell you where exactly it turns into Homewood, the transition area all looks about the same. But from where we live in Penn Hills, it takes a good long while to get to that area. It is, like you said, a big municipality.
There is no doubt that there is a lack of funding to take down structures that are beyond repair.
I agree with the idea that new construction should be taxed, and the funds used to help deal with the problems caused by adding new units to a region that is already oversupplied.
If there's much new construction going on in Penn Hills, I am not sure where it would be. I don't know that people with the money for new construction should exactly be discouraged from living here. We're already losing tax money with the big country club along RT 130 looking like it's going to close down, among other things.
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