Fed-Up Tenants Of PNC Bank's McKeesport Complexes Demand Change

Pittsburgh PA

27 July, 2021

8:16 PM

Description

By By Rich Lord, Kate Giammarise and Ryan Loew, Public Source July 27, 2021 Kids dashed and footballs flew around the sunny courtyard of Hi View Gardens as a dozen tenants of the McKeesport apartment complex gathered by concrete steps to challenge a mysteriously named landlord with resources they could only guess at.For three years, they'd watched their 117-apartment community deteriorate and had complained individually to managers hired to run Hi View by a landlord referred to on property records as McKeesport Urban Holdings 2 LLC.They'd placed buckets below leaky roofs and plumbing.They'd fired up stoves when the radiators failed.They'd endured roaches and rodents.They'd called 911 when harassed, assaulted or shot at by intruders.Finally, on May 12, the tenants – mostly Black or Brown women – were getting organized."Get us our maintenance people. Give us somebody in our office who knows what they're doing. And get our apartments together," tenant leader Tanya Brown summarized, as they discussed the petition they planned to circulate and present to the management company and landlord. This article was produced by PublicSource.org, a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. PublicSource tells stories for a better Pittsburgh. Sign up for their free email newsletters at publicsource.org/newsletters.