One Community Update
June 18, 2025

Source: www.wesa.fm

A more than 100-year-old Craftsman in Clairton is in the middle of its Cinderella story. The house on a corner lot on Walnut Avenue has all new wiring, heating, air conditioning, a new kitchen, 30 new windows, the termite-chewed floor is coming out and new laminate is going in, among other upgrades.

“This is a stable neighborhood,” said Greg Chiprich, a local developer who bought the property from the Tri-COG Land Bank and is fixing it up. “People take care of their properties. This stood as kind of an eyesore and in the coming weeks and months, it will not be that anymore. There’ll be a family living here.”

It was a family home for many years before becoming a rental until the owner passed away and the next generation let it go. That’s a common tale in towns like Clairton and throughout the Pittsburgh region — vacant and abandoned homes sprinkled on well-manicured streets or, in other pockets, rows and rows of homes without anyone home and weighed by unresolved liens and ownership claims keeping them from the market.

A more than 100-year-old Craftsman in Clairton is in the middle of its Cinderella story. The house on a corner lot on Walnut Avenue has all new wiring, heating, air conditioning, a new kitchen, 30 new windows, the termite-chewed floor is coming out and new laminate is going in, among other upgrades.

“This is a stable neighborhood,” said Greg Chiprich, a local developer who bought the property from the Tri-COG Land Bank and is fixing it up. “People take care of their properties. This stood as kind of an eyesore and in the coming weeks and months, it will not be that anymore. There’ll be a family living here.”

It was a family home for many years before becoming a rental until the owner passed away and the next generation let it go. That’s a common tale in towns like Clairton and throughout the Pittsburgh region — vacant and abandoned homes sprinkled on well-manicured streets or, in other pockets, rows and rows of homes without anyone home and weighed by unresolved liens and ownership claims keeping them from the market.

In the wake of the national foreclosure crisis, Pennsylvania’s legislature passed a law in 2012 allowing for the creation of land banks. Since then, the Tri-COG Land Bank, which covers 26 municipalities and the Pittsburgh Land Bank have been up-and-running in Allegheny County. They’ve both sold properties and evolved over time — now with an eye toward developing more affordable housing and partnering with other community organizations.

But while Tri-COG has had local buy-in and steady growth, the city of Pittsburgh’s Land Bank lacks long-term funding and first bid at sheriff’s sale. Finding consistent funding and building on an established model for local land banks could clear a future for housing in Allegheny County.

“For the city itself, you can take eight, nine, 10 houses at $1,500 to maybe $2,000 a year in taxes — it’s a huge chunk,” said Tony Kurta, deputy mayor of Clairton and board member of the Tri-COG Land Bank. “That’s a police officer. And so the more we build it up and the more we get it rolling, then it helps us tremendously.”

The missing teeth

Overgrown empty lots, houses with sinking porches and punched-out windows, sit vacant, like missing teeth in a neighborhood. Getting a grasp on the precise number and location is tricky. In Pennsylvania, there’s about 215,000 vacant parcels of land, according to the most recent U.S. Census estimates. In the city of Pittsburgh, there’s between 5,000 and 20,000 properties that are currently tax delinquent, said Sally Stadelman, manager of the Pittsburgh Land Bank. This includes 5,000 that are in the inventory of the city’s taxing body and another 15,000 to 20,000 that are privately owned.

Letting these properties sit there is expensive. Municipalities spend millions on code enforcement and other public services while losing out on tax revenue from the property. Allegheny County’s blighted properties cost municipalities around $19.3 million per year in expenditures and lost tax revenue, according to an analysis commissioned by Tri-COG Land Bank. And homeowners living near a vacant lot in Allegheny County lose an average $5,145 in property value.

“Taxpayer dollars are going to board up vacant properties, taxpayer dollars are going to clean up illegal dumping, taxpayer dollars are going to pay for a fire, police, EMS to go there to respond,” said Kim Graziani, senior advisor at the Center for Community Progress. “Any kind of public safety issue, whether that squatters, whether that’s some type of crime that is happening there. The public cost is a huge thing.”

Vacant properties are often stuck. Public liens or delinquent taxes far exceed the fair market value of the property, the cost of demolition or rehab. And they’re often in a legal limbo in which the title to the property isn’t clear due to liens or taxes or an issue with a previous heir to the property.

One of the biggest challenges is actually finding the owners, particularly when they don’t live in the state. “Between deceased owners and LLCs, it’s very difficult and expensive to often track owners when they don’t live in Pennsylvania,” Branton said. “Holding them accountable is very difficult. It requires an extradition to Pennsylvania in order to hold them accountable. And that’s not a priority for the criminal justice system in Pennsylvania.”

This is where the land banks come in. The key power that most land banks are created for is the ability to acquire tax sale properties for low cost without having to bid against other bidders at a public auction, according to Branton. In Allegheny County, the Tri-COG Land Bank has this ability among its member municipalities, but the Pittsburgh Land Bank has not yet reached an agreement with the city’s taxing bodies to skip the line at the sheriff’s sale.

Land banks also accept donations of properties, buy properties, or take properties and municipal transfers from the municipalities. They clear the titles and liens with the taxing bodies through an expedited “quiet title” process and hold those properties tax exempt until they’re ripe for re-development. They don’t have to sell to the highest bidder.

“Land banks have great flexibility in who they sell to, for what purpose and for what cost,” Graziani said. “A lot of times they’re able to transfer properties for very little to no cost to non-profits if they are mission-oriented, going to develop affordable housing or do community gardening, you name it. So, there’s a lot of flexibility, much more flexibility than local government.”

Local evolution

“The thing that often separates a house that can be saved and one that has to be demolished is water,” said An Lewis, executive director of Tri-COG Land Bank.

A gaping, soggy hole in a roof marks a house for costly demolition. Demoing a home costs a municipality about $20,000. The vacant lot that remains is a tough sell in many small municipalities or disinvested neighborhoods where property value is low.

Since the Tri-COG Land Bank began in 2018, they’ve sold 89 properties. They own another 86 and 36 more are working their way through the legal process. About 80% of their real estate is either being sold to a nonprofit, a developer committed to selling to an owner-occupant or to an owner-occupant directly. They work directly with member municipalities, such as Clairton, who refer potential properties to the land bank and pay dues that make up about 20% of the land bank’s budget.

The goal is to put properties back on the tax rolls and spur homeownership without overcooking the local market. “Optimally, in any given real estate market, there’s a variety of housing choices,” Lewis said. “There’s rental, there’s owner-occupancy, and there’s a variety of price points so that it keeps communities diversified, healthy and stable. It staves off gentrification, which can lead to residents getting priced out of their neighborhood, but it also makes sure that neighborhoods that have been in a state of decline have an opportunity to come up at a good and healthy rate.”

Partnerships have paved the way for this work. Some of the properties are transferred to local nonprofits who renovate and reserve them for affordable housing. Other partners are property investors, or flippers, from the nearby community, like Chiprich. The Tri-COG Land Bank is able to file an enforcement mortgage on the properties to hold them accountable. If they do the renovations correctly and are ready to sell to a homeowner, then the land bank releases the enforcement mortgage. They have some move-in ready properties in their “Reno-Lite” program that are safe but “maybe the toilet’s pink” in order to keep their inventory “naturally affordable,” Lewis said.

But no two land banks are alike, even if they share borders. The Pittsburgh Land Bank, which operates within the city limits, was created in 2014, but didn’t make its first sale until 2023. To become operational, the land bank needed funding — $3.5 million from the federal American Rescue Plan — and a consensus among city officials that the land bank should acquire property already owned by the City of Pittsburgh and turn it into affordable housing projects or other community-led projects.

“It’s up to each individual neighborhood to determine what is right for their community,” Stadelman said.

Since the fall of 2023, the Pittsburgh Land Bank has completed 34 sales and they’re working with buyers to close on more than 30 additional properties. About three-quarters of these properties are vacant lots, according to Stadelman. Many of those empty lots are becoming affordable housing, including a project in Beltzhoover and another on Charles Street on the North Side. Others, like the community garden in the Mexican War Streets that has been there since the 1970s, will be owned by the Allegheny Land Trust and permanently protected as garden space.

Creating a model for an uncertain future

Recently, Pittsburgh Land Bank has been following Tri-COG’s lead with a pilot residential rehab program. It’s geared towards people who would like to live in the property and bring their own funding and contractors. The first sales are pending.

“What we see on the market is that so many properties can be difficult to purchase,” Stadelman said. “It’s easier for someone to come in with cash and quickly scoop that property up. And so, we’re here as a patient seller for owner-occupants interested in completing that kind of work. And it’s one more way that helps us make sure that we’re keeping that vacant and abandoned property moving along in the system because without intervention, we the taxpayers are on the hook for these properties, regardless.”

It’s all about creating a model of a land bank that fits Pittsburgh, Stadelman says. “We want to showcase what we’re able to do. Volume is definitely the mid- to long-term goal. But right now, it’s just important to show what the tools are capable of doing and how we can build them slowly and build them correctly to work to serve communities.”

They’re “closer than they’ve ever been” in reaching a deal with the city’s taxing bodies, so they can get a priority bid at sheriff’s sale, according to Stadelman. But the Pittsburgh Land Bank still lacks dedicated, consistent funding. The federal funds are set to run out in 2026. And without a new source of revenue, its future is tenuous. Earlier this month, Pittsburgh City Council voted to start a task force to look into funding solutions.

Direct property sales aren’t enough to sustain up-and-coming land banks, Graziani said.

“How could a land bank be self-sustaining when they are focusing on taking properties that the private market and society, in general, has turned their back on? They are underwater, they are complicated. They need subsidies to acquire and to redevelop, and funding to work.”

Across the Pennsylvania-Ohio border in Cleveland, the Cuyahoga Land Bank is a national model of abundance. Since its inception in 2009, it’s cleared and sold 10,000 abandoned properties. A large, reliable chunk of their budget comes from a share of the penalties and interest from delinquent property tax settlements. This comes from an Ohio state law that Pennsylvania doesn’t have. And last year, the Cuyahoga Land Bank received $111 million from the state to remediate brownfields.

This fall, the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development is scheduled to release the first draft of a “comprehensive Housing Action Plan” for the state. What’s in the plan is unclear, but land bank advocates hope it comes with some kind of support specifically for land banks.

Back in Clairton, Tri-COG Land Bank is working on converting two abandoned houses into affordable housing. Fixing them up is estimated to cost about $200,000 each and then they’ll likely be sold for around $75,000, according to Lewis. Funds from the Pennsylvania Housing and Financing Agency and Allegheny County are footing the bills. They already have new roofs.

The houses on this block have short, crisp green lawns, flower beds, and come with a view of the Monongahela River. Kurta doesn’t live far and has family down the street. He grew up in Clairton and “loves it here.” Helping keep single-family homes in Clairton out of the hands of corporate investors, helps strengthen the community, Kurta said. “The land bank gives us the option of working with somebody like Greg, who gets it back to a homeowner, which has been super for us. We’d rather go that way than let these corporations come in. You have no contact with them. They don’t maintain them. They don’t care who’s in them. This way, we have a little bit of control of who’s living in our neighborhoods and it works out.”