Vacant and abandoned properties are plaguing Pittsburgh neighborhoods. According to a report by the Center for Community Progress, there are approximately 23,757 existing vacant properties spread across the city. Over the past decade, the number of abandoned homes and lots in Pittsburgh doubled in size, with one in five carrying code violations, including collapsed roofs, shattered windows, and electrical hazards.
At Catapult, we often talk about helping individuals build generational wealth through homeownership — and while this is key — it’s only one layer. If we zoom out a little further, it becomes clear that building generational wealth is actually a community endeavor — and one greatly impacted by vacancy and abandonment.
Catapult’s latest program, CLEAR (Clinic for Legal Equity and Repairs), is setting out to do just that. The program — which is fueled by a generous $3 million investment from JPMorgan Chase — supports people throughout Allegheny County living in their homes without legal title to the property in their name. This often happens when the homeowner on the deed passes away without a will and family members continue to live in the home. CLEAR participants are eligible for title clearance as well as home repairs and estate planning to ensure that they can maintain their homes, grow their wealth, and transfer assets across generations.
Joining Forces with Rising Tide Partners for Property Rehab and Acquisition
The CLEAR program will also work to improve the communities these residents live in through property acquisition and rehab. For this part of the work, we are partnering with Rising Tide Partners, a local land recycling nonprofit that helps neighborhoods across Pittsburgh realize their community plans and visions.
Rising Tide will not only help CLEAR participants carry out much-needed home repairs, but they will also work to improve other houses on their block that are lowering property values.
“It’s hard to build wealth in your home if the house attached to yours is abandoned and rotting away, or the three houses next to yours are abandoned and rotting away,” said Rising Tide Partners Executive Director Kendall Pelling. “So we’re going to be looking for places where participants of the CLEAR program need help dealing with the blight around them.”
Once those blighted properties are identified, Rising Tide will work to secure control — through sale, conservatorship, or other means — and partner with local community groups to find uses for the properties that support community development activities. This will ultimately bring more properties online that are clean, safe, and contributing to a community’s goals.
“It’s a people-focused approach to community development, instead of a place-based approach. Instead of going to a block and saying, ‘There's all these abandoned houses here, let's clean up the abandoned houses,’ we're going to the block because there is a family that wants to get clear title of their home. Then we're looking around them and saying, ‘Well, what else is causing them trouble?’”
Keeping Property in the Hands of the Community
Rising Tide will also help Catapult CLEAR participants in instances where they might be better off getting rid of their properties as opposed to taking title. This could be when the taxes owed on the property are too high or when rehab will be too costly. In these cases, Rising Tide would be able to offer a fair price for the property while keeping it in the hands of the community.
“We’re not going to be out here intentionally looking for properties to purchase. That's not what this money was intended to do, but it is intended to give people options that they would not have had otherwise if we didn't step in and partner with Rising Tide to do our part. We want to make sure that if a home is not a good fit for a family, then we still ensure that it benefits the community. This minimizes opportunities for investors to swoop in and get the property off a family for $500, and the next thing you know, we have another absentee property owner who won't respond when the roof is falling down.”
For Pelling, this partnership brings together what he sees as three critical elements needed to stabilize communities: family, legal, and property services. It’s also an opportunity to partner with other nonprofits and government agencies to tackle the city’s blight and housing crises at scale.
“Ultimately, we’re helping a family figure out a solution to their home, then we’re figuring out solutions to the homes around them, and then we’re figuring out a solution to their blocks and beyond. At the end of the day, real estate is just an instrument to address problems and provide opportunities for real people — that’s what justice looks like.”
