CP photo: Jared Wickerham Intersection of Centre and S Highland avenues in Pittsburgh s East Liberty neighborhood Since 2014, the city of Pittsburgh has lost more than 7,000 of its Black residents. Most of those Black people are leaving for suburbs within the Pittsburgh metro area. From 2010-2019, for every Black resident leaving the Pittsburgh metro area entirely, 4.6 Black people are only leaving the city but staying in greater Pittsburgh. This reality has sparked a debate among city leaders. For years, many housing advocates have cited gentrification as the main reason Black people are being forced out of the city, by rising rents and housing prices many can no longer afford. But recently, some elected officials have claimed that Black Pittsburghers are leaving the city by choice.
Katie Blackley / 90.5 WESA
The advisory board of Pittsburgh’s Housing Opportunity Fund, or HOF, will soon have to be more selective about what projects they support, and when they do, they want to be sure those investments do the most good.
Pittsburgh City Council approved the Housing Opportunity Fund in 2017, but it took a while to fund it, so the HOF has operated in an environment of relative abundance: in each calendar year it’s had roughly two years of funding to get out the door.
While the Urban Redevelopment Authority had created a scoring sheet to evaluate proposals, advisory board member Mark Masterson said that got put aside.
Black Horizons host Chris Moore in the WQED Studios In 1986, legendary
Pittsburgh Courier photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris was swindled out of his life’s work by a street vendor, who convinced Harris to sell his 100,000 photos and negatives for only $3,000. At the time, Harris was nearly 80 years old and didn’t have a lot of money. Even though Harris’ work is legendary now, in Pittsburgh circles and beyond, it didn’t really start to receive widespread recognition especially outside of Black media until very late in Harris’ life. Several years later, Harris and his family sued the street vendor and claimed the Harris estate was entitled to one-third of all profits from sales and exhibition of his work. In 2001, a few years after Harris passed away in 1998, the estate won that suit, and the collection was back in control of the Harris family.
Heck is President of Nonprofit Talent LLC.
January 25, 2021
Michelle is President of Nonprofit Talent LLC, a company specializing in leadership transition management and executive search for the nonprofit sector. Her client roster is a who’s who of Pittsburgh nonprofits.
Founded in 2013 with partner Todd Owens, Nonprofit Talent is an outgrowth of the former consulting firm Dewey & Kaye, where Heck worked as senior consultant beginning in 2007. In 2017, Todd exited the firm and Michelle became the sole owner. That same year, she expanded the staff to seven professionals and added services to include leadership transition consulting and organizational staff development as well as executive search. In 2020, Nonprofit Talent launched a partnership with the Executive Action & Response Network, an initiative to recruit and hire more Black Pittsburghers into executive roles.