Pittsburgh Offers Housing When Closing Encampments. Will That Last?

In February, the city of Pittsburgh cleared a homeless encampment along the Eliza Furnace Trail, colloquially known as the “Jail Trail,” for its proximity to the Allegheny County Jail.

Previous encampment sweeps in the city had resulted in displacement of unhoused residents, and in one terrible example, a woman fell from the bucket of a construction vehicle as crews attempted to clear the area when she was still inside her tent.

This time, there were no such concerns because everyone who had lived there was already gone—they’d already moved into transitional or even permanent housing.

“There was nothing left but trash,” recalled Muhammad Ali Nasir, who goes by MAN-E and is an organizer with Community Care and Resistance in Pittsburgh, the outreach program of the grassroots community group 1Hood. 

Officials with Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, which collaborates with the city on homelessness issues, didn’t even need to post closure notices, MAN-E said.

The way Pittsburgh has recently closed encampments differs from the methods many U.S. cities have used since a Supreme Court ruling gave them greater authority to clear homeless camps. Last year, the court ruled in Grants Pass v. Johnson that cities can enforce camping bans against people sleeping outside—even if they have no other options—upending a legal precedent that held doing so amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment” barred by the Eighth Amendment. Since then, more than 100 cities have passed ordinances against sleeping outdoors, with some cities aggressively sweeping homeless encampments and arresting people deemed to be violating camping bans. 

But after urging by community groups connected to the unhoused population, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County have adopted a policy that goes beyond merely telling residents they can go to shelters before encampments are swept and then arresting anyone remaining. Instead, they’re providing “credible offers” of long-term and sustainable housing. 

The strategy has seen success during the first term of Mayor Ed Gainey, Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor, who hosted a February press conference with the county to mark the closing of the Jail Trail encampment. But its future is uncertain as Gainey faces a tough reelection bid on May 20.

“He’s doing the best we’ve ever seen, ever, in terms of how he’s addressing homelessness,” MAN-E said on Gainey’s approach. “[But] he’s going to get attacked no matter what.”

Pittsburgh began its effort to clear homeless encampments in earnest in late 2022, less than a year into Gainey’s tenure, citing “public health reasons.” As in other cities, advocates immediately decried the sweeps, arguing that officials were unlawfully taking and destroying people’s property, and also violating the Eighth Amendment if those affected had nowhere else to go.

Pittsburgh’s sweeps “didn’t happen in a way that was as bad as other places that we’ve seen, [but] it was happening,” said MAN-E. 

Pittsburgh did offer beds in congregate shelters to those who resided at camps that were being cleared, but those options were temporary, and not effectively available to every person living in an encampment. Unhoused people may avoid shelters for numerous reasons—if they have pets, for example, or out of a concern for safety. Plus, advocates said, some people were forced from their camps without learning about shelter opportunities. “We recognized the harm and the trauma that was being inflicted on the folks who were living there,” MAN-E said.

It was in fact this insufficient shelter access that led to the creation of the Jail Trail in the first place. MAN-E, who was involved with setting up the encampment nearly three years ago, said that it was started by people “who got kicked out of Second Avenue Commons,” the city’s largest shelter, which is close to the jail.

By offering shelter beds, Pittsburgh was in line with the legal standard at the time, which held that cities could only legally clear encampments if they ensured that unhoused people were offered an alternative. That requirement changed after Grants Pass, however. Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, who took office last year, released a statement after the June 2024 Supreme Court ruling saying the court’s decision “does not impact our response to homelessness in Allegheny County” and that the county will “continue to… treat our unhoused neighbors with care and dignity…to help them live stable and dignified lives.” The city government also had committed to offering housing when clearing camps.

Sam Schmidt, co-founder of mutual aid group Our Streets Collective and organizer with the Pittsburgh chapter of the National Union of the Homeless, said that’s not what always happened.

The “standard approach of moving people into emergency shelter” didn’t necessarily mean that people actually went to the shelter, she said. “They just moved to another tent site or an abandoned building nearby,” she said, likening the city’s efforts to forced evictions.

Schmidt believes that both Gainey and Innamorato take the lack of affordable housing seriously, but that city and county authorities weren’t promising a sufficient alternative to unsheltered homelessness—housing that actually worked for people. And the crux of the issue, according to Schmidt, was that the “treatment of unhoused individuals” when clearing encampments was inexcusable. 

Without federal law on their side anymore, advocates for Pittsburgh’s unhoused brought their displeasure with the sweeps directly to local leaders. Protestors, including Schmidt, delivered letters to Gainey’s office in early December calling for a halt to the encampment closures and demanding long-term, sustainable housing options for anyone displaced. They then held a protest outside the mayor’s house later that month to object to sweeps of homeless encampments.

The protests worked: Beginning in January, community groups won a seat at the table with the mayor as well as staff with the Allegheny Department of Human Services as they developed their homelessness policy. Previously, any meetings with the city on the issue were with Gainey’s staff rather than the mayor himself, activists said.

“Our demands to the Gainey administration were long-term housing that works, right now, or freedom of movement, right to camp,” said Schmidt. “If you’re not making an offer of housing that [meets their needs]—with their people, pets, and things—then you cannot displace them,” she said. Rather than temporary, emergency shelter, people needed transitional housing, which included their own doors.

The city and county agreed.

Still, Lisa Frank, Pittsburgh’s chief operating and administrative officer and member of Gainey’s administration, characterizes the evolution of the city’s housing policy differently. She said officials didn’t change their strategy after the mayor met with activists; rather, they were able to resolve “imagined differences” with them. “What people believed was based on what they saw happening in other places,” she said, adding that she was “impressed with a mayor who has advocates at his house who then invite[s] those same advocates to his office to talk.” 

What’s changed in how the city approaches homelessness, according to Frank, is that the city and county now have the resources to provide shelter. Announced in June of 2024, the county’s 500 in 500 program, funded by federal grants as well as philanthropy, plans to identify 500 affordable housing units within 500 days—so far, more than 250 units have already been filled. Before, camps were cleared due to “public safety” issues, which Frank said included human trafficking and drug use. 

Director of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services Erin Dalton said that after meetings with advocates, the city and county did change how people were notified of encampment closures. She said that they switched “from setting a date even very far in the future, to housing everyone first”—and only then posting a notice against camping. Advocates helped determine the precise language for postings, too, said Dalton.

The day after their first meeting with the mayor, MAN-E and Schmidt walked through the Jail Trail encampment and surveyed people’s housing preferences—what part of town they wanted to live in, whether they had partners or pets, and whether they were allergic to any animals. The county’s own outreach workers also worked with people in the encampment.

That’s how the site was “decommissioned,” said MAN-E, as he doesn’t even think of it as a “closing” since everyone had moved before clean-up crews arrived. More than 20 people received “individualized offers of housing,” consisting of bridge housing or single-occupancy rooms within a shelter, said Schmidt, adding that today, they’re all still housed and satisfied with their living arrangements. “Some of them have even moved on from the transitional housing they chose to more permanent housing,” she added. 

The current spirit of collaboration between organizers and government officials may be tested by the upcoming election, as a new mayor could take office next year.

The mayor is facing a strong primary challenge from his main opponent, county controller Corey O’Connor. Internal polling released by each campaign shows their candidate ahead, but with little independent polling, observers expect the race will be tight. According to pollster Upswing, housing and homelessness are the biggest issues cited by Pittsburgh’s Democratic voters. And both mayoral candidates in the Democratic primary have lambasted the other for accepting developer money, though the majority of developer and real estate support has gone to O’Connor. 

Both candidates have espoused similar priorities around homelessness. O’Connor has said he wants to build more affordable housing, partly by loosening zoning and permitting requirements, and has emphasized the importance of transitional housing. 

But despite offering a vision similar to Gainey’s, O’Connor has criticized the mayor’s approach to homelessness policy. In an email to Bolts, O’Connor’s campaign said the Gainey administration’s “history of haphazard encampment sweeps was abhorrent” and suggested that it remained so “[u]p until election season.” By contrast, O’Connor’s campaign said he wants to “more effectively” build up the homelessness outreach program under the city’s helm, including developing an alternative “co-response” program that would send social workers to some crisis calls rather than police.

“[A]lthough activist groups can provide a host of compassionate and thoughtful support for people who are unsheltered, the City shouldn’t build a system that totally relies on outside organizations,” O’Connor’s campaign said in its emailed statement, suggesting that collaboration with activists would be an area where the mayor and his main primary challenger differ.

Besides the uncertainty surrounding the election, the city and county’s commitment to housing people before closing their encampments remains unclear. And the sheer size of the homelessness problem—and the time it takes to find people housing that works best for them—can mean overextended resources.

Currently, the Second Avenue Commons shelter is full and turning people away. And city and county officials have said they want to clear the South Side River Trail encampment, located in Pittsburgh’s South Side neighborhood, which is quite different from the encampment on the Jail Trail. Whereas the Jail Trail held a contained community, the tents along the South Side River Trail are more spread out, with the encampment made up of both long-time residents as well as people who are more transient. Some people may have only recently lost housing. Others are hesitant to interact with outreach workers. 

At this encampment, while many people have moved to new housing, a handful have not taken the city and county up on any offers of housing. They’re “just not ready to come inside,” Schmidt said. The effort is “kind of at a standstill” while the city, county, and community groups are “going with a fine-toothed comb through these remaining individuals to see if there’s anything we can offer,” she said.

As of now, Schmidt and other organizers “are waiting to see whether or not the city tries to forcefully evict people who are remaining there,” she said. “While city and county officials are doing their press conferences and patting themselves on the back,” said Schmidt, “I’m not standing next to them on the news because we don’t know what’s going to happen.” 

The city also doesn’t seem to know what’s going to happen if they can’t convince people to willingly leave the encampment. It hasn’t taken a definitive stance on whether it would move people by force if they ultimately decline all housing offers. “Everybody asks that question,” Frank said when Bolts posed it to her. “I don’t want to dodge the question, but…let’s cross that bridge when we get there, because maybe we won’t.”