On June 9, 2023, ELDI was awarded $400,000 from the Pennsylvania Housing Affordability and Rehabilitation Enhancement (PHARE) Fund to create new affordable homeownership opportunities in the East End. We have been using this PHARE grant to renovate six vacant houses in East Liberty and Larimer.

Four of the homes will be sold to buyers earning 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI), and two will be reserved for buyers earning 50% AMI. We will work with partners like Catapult Greater Pittsburgh and others to find and prepare homeowners to live in these remodeled homes in 2025.

All of these structures were in extremely bad condition and needed to be completely remodeled from roof to basement. Over a year later, we’ve made significant progress.

Here’s an update on where we are now:

  • 177 Mayflower Street: As of November 2024, the home is under construction.
  • 163 Mayflower Street: We will clean out and do a total rehab of the home soon.
  • 157 Mayflower Street: We have our final conservatorship hearing on December 19th. This will hopefully enable us to begin construction soon after.
  • 159 Auburn Street: The home is going to be demolished soon to prepare it for new construction.
  • 5634 & 5636 Rural Street: These units are almost complete.
163 Mayflower Street will soon be cleaned out and readied for rehab.

We have started construction on 177 Mayflower Street, which needs a total rehab.

5634 and 5636 Rural Street are almost finished and ready for affordable homeownership.

Why it matters

Blight isn’t just an eyesore: it costs neighborhoods in health and property value over time. A Tri-COG Land Bank report noted that properties within 200 feet of a single vacant parcel can see a decrease in value as high as 16.5%.

ELDI is no stranger to fighting blight.  In 2002, we realized that to achieve the community’s vision for the neighborhood—as defined in the 1999 and 2010 Community Plans—we needed to tackle the scale of the problem. That meant gaining control of hundreds of vacant, blighted, and/or abandoned properties in the neighborhood, using our residential development strategy of “Test Drives, Flips, Targets, and Mothballs.”

ELDI’s Residential Development Strategy

TEST DRIVE

A pipeline of prospective buyers were given the opportunity to “Test Drive” the neighborhood by renting houses in good condition owned by ELDI.

FLIPPED

Houses in fair condition were “Flipped” to new buyers after moderate improvements were made.

TARGETS

Nuisance and poor condition properties were developed with significant renovations as “Targets” to supply move-in quality homes to new buyers.

MOTHBALLED

Recognizing that rehabilitating just a few dilapidated properties would drain available resources, ELDI acquired and simply “Mothballed” these properties for future development. When the neighborhood finally tipped toward revitalization, it became financially feasible to develop the mothballed properties. Some of these properties and vacant lots were held by ELDI for over 10 to 15 years.

Since 2008, we have also increasingly been using conservatorship as a tool to tackle blight in the East End.

➡️ Learn more about that here. ⬅️

“While bringing these dilapidated homes back online and into productive use for the neighborhood requires a lot of patience and a great deal of creative financing, this is what we have to do to create lasting and meaningful change. Our greatest reward is giving  an affordable owner not only a beautiful home but also an opportunity to build wealth for generations to come.”

– Ted Melnyk, Director of Operations at ELDI