More than 500 days after pledging to find and fund 500 units of deeply affordable housing to move people out of homelessness, Allegheny County officials are celebrating having housed more than 500 individuals.
“We met and we exceeded that goal,” said Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato. She spoke Tuesday morning at an ACTION Housing site in Squirrel Hill, flanked by golden ‘500’ balloons.
Innamorato has often spoken about her family’s housing instability when she was young, and the affordable housing push has been a centerpiece program for her administration.
The initiative, which kicked off in June of last year, aimed to house hundreds of people in roughly 17 months, with a focus on aiding people who were primarily unhoused for economic reasons, rather than due to addiction, mental illness, or other more complex problems. Driven by a post-pandemic surge in rental costs and visible, unsheltered homelessness, county officials said they wanted to invest in moving people into housing rather than building more shelters.
On Tuesday, Innamorato hailed the partnerships that made the work successful.
“This program is only made possible because of the dozens of foundations, of developers, of landlords and government partners who came together and committed to the promise and the idea of 500 in 500,” Innamorato said, speaking before dozens of government officials, housing advocates, and other community members.
Kate Giammarise
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90.5 WESA
Allegheny County Department of Human Services Director Erin Dalton said part of the ‘500 in 500’ housing initiative was making government work better.
County officials said as of Tuesday, 622 people — including both single individuals and families — have been housed through the initiative, and another 83 people are in the process of moving into housing. The program has identified 568 housing units; of these, 387 are occupied, 37 are in the process of being moved into, 12 are being matched with a tenant. Eighty-two units are under construction, and 22 are financed and moving toward construction.
“ And we know those numbers are gonna keep growing,” Innamorato said.
The vast majority of people helped through the program — 97% — have remained housed, officials said.
One of those aided by the program is Andrea Johnson, who spoke Tuesday.
She had been bouncing between shelters and living in a storage unit, but was able to get an apartment through the program.
“It was amazing to move in and just feel like you had a place to feel safe and feel like you could exist,” she said.
Several speakers Tuesday said just making government work better was a key part of 500 in 500.
Allegheny County Department of Human Services Director Erin Dalton described the initiative as a series of smaller efforts that all pointed toward the same bigger goal, such as repairing existing vacant housing units and working more closely with the city and county housing authorities to quickly move people exiting shelter into empty units.
Additionally, Dalton said, her department made technology improvements to more swiftly match people leaving shelters with available units, and had a dedicated team to help people obtain needed documents to move into housing.
“Government is sometimes like a multi-headed dragon where each head is working in its own way,” said Kendall Pelling, executive director of nonprofit developer Rising Tide Partners. “Sometimes they bite each other and fight each other, but they’re really one organism, one dragon that can help solve problems. And what I saw the county executive and her team do is they put the reins on each of those heads and said, ‘Hey, let’s go somewhere.’”
Funding for the effort has come from a variety of sources. Five foundations contributed $3.4 million, to aid case management as well as renovations to fix county housing authority rental units. Additionally, Allegheny County and Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority have invested more than $9.4 million toward new units.
Ed Nusser, the county’s director of housing strategy, said officials will be working to maintain the government processes that have been built and bring more units online.
“We know there are gonna be more things coming,” Nusser said.
“Here’s to the next 500,” Innamorato said.