There are people (well, a few) who seem really committed to the idea that Pittsburgh is somehow being overwhelmed by newcomers who are driving up the cost of real estate and generally making themselves a nuisance.
Yeah, that’s not really the case here; prices are going up everywhere, but Pittsburgh’s population is stagnant, if not in decline.
The inclination, especially by Pittsburgh lifers, to feel threatened by transplants isn’t going to be solved by us right here. But what if there were a way to integrate newcomers with the lightest possible impact on home prices? This is a job for … new construction.
Yes, this column is mostly about weird little houses in Pittsburgh that are 70-100 years old, because those tend to be the affordable ones (and I like them). But not everybody has the time and energy to restore and/or maintain an old house. So, you need some new things too, if your city is going to thrive. Admittedly, we don’t have much of it at this point, but we’re at least keeping an eye out.
Part of the reason is that building new is expensive. If affordability is your primary consideration, don’t look at the newbies. However, in the long run, new market-rate construction helps keep older homes affordable (a good summary of how this works is here). You can either have newcomers bidding up the prices of older, existing houses — which affects people who live here already — or you can attract some of them to new construction, which relieves the price pressure on older houses.
Obviously, if you are knocking down cheap old houses to build expensive new ones, that has the opposite effect. That’s bad and is a major problem in many cities. But in Pittsburgh, we have another problem: thousands and thousands of empty lots and abandoned houses that nobody wants, for any price. So, you can usually just build there, and nobody’s theoretical grandma gets priced out. Don’t screw this up, Pittsburgh.
POLISH HILL
For sale: 3022 Wiggins Ave., Polish Hill, $275,000
If you’re looking for affordable “new” construction in Pittsburgh — well, how do you feel about 1987? For Pittsburgh, which has some of the oldest housing stock in America, that kind of counts as new-ish. In 1987, Pittsburgh was in the depths of its post-steel slump, but a skinny kid named Barry Bonds was taking the field for the Buccos, and some signs of hope were on the horizon. Very little housing was being built here (or needed), but someone drew up this sturdy, simple brick rowhouse on Polish Hill, and now it’s mature enough to not command a premium. Putting a garage and driveway out front isn’t great from a pure urbanism standpoint, but parking on a hill is tough, and Polish Hill doesn’t provide much flat land for anything.