Proposed Polish Hill homeless shelter divides residents at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, zoning hearing

The Zoning Board of Adjustment heard testimony on Thursday, November 12, on whether Pittsburgh should allow an overnight homeless shelter to operate year-round in Polish Hill. About 20 people in the room and online spoke in favor of the shelter. About 30 voiced concerns about added traffic, public safety, and whether the chosen building is well suited to serve as a shelter.

The proposed site is the building at 3567 Bigelow Blvd., where the road meets the Bloomfield Bridge. The property is zoned Urban Neighborhood Commercial, so it would need a special exception to operate as “interim housing.” If the board approves it, the Allegheny County Department of Human Services could contract with an outside group, in this case Community Family Advocates, to provide beds and meals to homeless people who cannot be served by other area shelters.

DHS employees told the board that the Polish Hill site would operate from 7 p.m. to 9 a.m. They expect an average of 80 to 100 people per night in congregate, sex-segregated sleeping quarters, with breakfast and dinner provided. Shuttles would carry clients between the overnight shelter and day service providers, and people who need more comprehensive support would be referred to Second Avenue Commons.

Abigail Horn, director of DHS’s Office of Community Services, said the county has used a similar shuttle service to take people from Second Avenue Commons to winter overflow shelters. Citing 911 call data, she said that operating a winter shelter on the North Side did not increase emergency calls and that calls in the area were overall medical in nature. She also presented a graph showing that property values rose in areas around shelters between 2010 and 2024, and argued that the presence of a shelter did not impede rising values. Horn said the Bigelow Boulevard building would be an “overflow” shelter because DHS’s first goal is to place people in a 24-hour shelter.

“Our aim is to do better by the people of Allegheny County and to make it a year-long overflow capacity because we have found that we’ve been unable to open enough shelter beds,” Horn said. The county’s stated aim of adding beds for people without shelter is a concrete form of welcome for the stranger (Matthew 25:35).

City councilmember Deb Gross, whose district includes Polish Hill, asked the board to reject the application for special exception. Gross cosponsored the ordinance allowing interim housing and said an overnight shelter does not meet the standards City Council intended. She said the ordinance was meant to create more transitional housing, such as apartment buildings with on-site social services.

“What’s being proposed here is overnight only, so that you’re still, you are unhoused. You don’t have stability. You don’t have privacy. You don’t have autonomy. Really, you don’t have dignity,” Gross said.

Colleen Shuda, president of the board of directors of the Polish Hill Civic Association, said the group does not have an official position on the proposal, but she criticized the development process. “The rapid timeline that has been guiding this process since Sept. 1 has really created a difficult environment for any neighbor-to-neighbor conversations to happen, or just generally for working together towards collaboration and understanding,” Shuda said. “It would be an understatement to say that the community has been divided on this,” she added.

The division was clear in the meeting room, where the board heard testimony for and against the shelter for more than three hours. Opponents said they were worried about increased traffic from shuttles and personal vehicles in the small parking lot in front of the building and on the narrow streets around it. Neighboring business owners said they were concerned that additional vehicles could block roads and that shelter clients could loiter in the area.

“At the same time that the shelter is opening every morning with no obligation to get on the shuttle, our school kids, every school-aged child in our neighborhood is gathering mere blocks away at the school bus stops at the exact same time,” McCall said.

Source: Read the original report