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When I began my write-in campaign for mayor, I was met with bemused indifference. But thanks to grassroots support, I’m proud to say I’m now riding a wave of apathy.
So I empathize with the Hill District as it faces plans to build a new arena next door. Some people outside the neighborhood think neighborhood advocates — who are seeking $10 million in community investment — are merely asking for handouts. I see something else: people making long-overdue demands not just for themselves, but for the city.
When Los Angeles built the Staples Center arena, residents demanded — and got — a host of benefits. These included more than a million dollars for parks, set-asides for affordable housing, local hiring and job-training guarantees … even a residential permit-parking permit. Cities across the country are following suit, using tax-subsidized developments as leverage to address longstanding needs.
Mayor Luke Ravenstahl seems to be taking the Hill District’s concerns seriously … when he’s not jetting off to New York City. But the Hill should inspire a whole new approach to development. One that considers reducing economic hardship at the outset, rather than as an afterthought.
How would I begin that approach as mayor?
First, I’d require any developer who gets city tax subsidies to hire a percentage of city residents — and to pay them a living wage well above the state minimum. After all, why lure a company that doesn‘t pay good money?
Pittsburgh City Council has rejected similar ideas before, and passing them now won’t be easy. But because it raises wages for all, a living-wage campaign could unite union leaders and black activists — two groups who have had little to say to each other until now.
That dialogue is important for everyone. Pittsburgh has workers who are old — more than one worker out of six in the region is 55 or older — and poverty among the young. (The Census Bureau says the region has one of the nation’s highest poverty rates among 18-to-24-year-olds.) As older workers retire in fields like manufacturing, young people must take their place, or those employers will go away. Union workers and contractors want to build an arena? Fine. They can kick into a job-training fund, so young workers can take jobs as old workers retire.
Often, of course, people who need jobs can’t get to them. In neighborhoods like Homewood and the Hill, fewer than half of the residents own cars. Clearly they can’t count on the Port Authority expanding service in the suburbs, where the jobs are. But in another Los Angeles jobs program, low-income residents were loaned money to buy cars of their own. We could try a similar program here.
It’s not that no one speaks to such needs; it’s that too many people speak to them. Dozens of groups compete for influence in neighborhoods like the Hill, and often they focus on only a few city blocks. That makes them easy to divide and conquer … and to ignore.
Hill groups, for example, are seeking $10 million for themselves; why not replace that demand with subsidized day care for low-income workers all over town? Instead of appeasing one neighborhood, the mayor should push for anti-poverty benefits citywide. Instead of public-private partnerships, a mayor should form public-public partnerships, forging alliances between like-minded groups everywhere.
It’d be a refreshing change from doing deals at the Duquesne Club, at least.
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2007.
Good article!
We should strive to be fair and distribute public funds to benefit the greatest number of people. That being said, it is almost impossible, and I think unworkable in a city like PGH to simply divide funds equally by neighborhood. That is to say, there are projects that need to be in place that will benefit one group more than another, but these projects will also give the city its biggest benefit.
Perhaps a project like working harder to get guns out of a particular neighborhood is so beneficial to the region that it is ok if that project benefits one neighborhood the most. I don’t know, but I do know that lobbying for benefits of this sort should not be tied to an individual deal like the arena. There is something unseemly about this type of “negotiation” that smacks of extortion.
It is very debilitating to a whole area to see projects of merit under attack. People in PGH want this project. They want to keep the Penguins. Attacks by special interest groups going after projects of merit hurt the city’s morale. Is it impossible to make a show of unity?
Please, go ahead and lobby for projects that benefit your neighborhood. This is what you should do. But don’t do it by threatening to stop good projects. Don’t do it at the expense of the city. Let’s let these types of funds go into the city’s coffers. Then let the city counsel decide how these funds can best benefit the people of the city of Pittsburgh,
M