PITTSBURGH — In many city neighborhoods, there’s growing frustration over dilapidated homes and businesses that are in disrepair. There are thousands of buildings on the city’s list of condemned properties. At least hundreds of them are actively falling apart, with caved-in roofs, collapsed walls or floors, falling bricks, broken windows and more.
For over a year, 11 Investigates has uncovered a list of problems tied to these condemned buildings, like dangerous collapses and suspicious fires that left firefighters injured. Neighbors have no choice but to live with it.
“I babysat it for the last 15 years. I’m tired,” said Renee Walker on Chalfont Street in Beltzhoover.
She lives next to a house that has seen better days and better decades. The current owner bought the house in June 2024. Since then, Walker said there has been little construction activity at the home and little to no visible signs of any improvement.
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The sagging front porch is still cluttered with debris and trash. There are holes throughout the property, and the front door is boarded up.
According to court records, the city has hit the owner with code violations almost every month over the last year. He has not been fined. The case is currently in the court system. The magistrate’s office told 11 Investigates the case is ongoing, because the court is working with the owner to address the long list of code violations.
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“You can at least clean it up or act like you care,” Walker said.
It’s far from the only home on her block or in her neighborhood that needs some TLC. There are many condemned buildings, some of which likely need to be torn down due to the current condition. Some homes are privately owned, others are dead end properties, meaning the city cannot find or make contact with the owner, and others are owned by the city of Pittsburgh.
Regardless of the history behind each building, Walker is frustrated more isn’t being done to address the dilapidated buildings that are an eyesore and safety risk in the community. She said she has repeatedly made her complaints known at city hall.
“Peduto was in office. That’s 8 years nothing got done up here. Gainey, that’s another four. That’s 12 years that I’m waiting for something to get done,” she said.
The Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections is tasked with issuing code violations and bidding out jobs to contractors to tear down dangerous buildings.
11 Investigates reviewed city-funded demolitions for the last several years.
The city issued around 100 demolition permits in 2021 – 2023. There were 90 in 2021, 108 in 2022 and 109 in 2023. The city approved just 25 permits for city-funded demolitions in 2024 and 51 in 2025, as of December 10. That is despite a roughly $5 million budget for city-funded demos for the year.
“It just shows you’re not prioritizing these things and you do have the capital to do it,” Mayor-Elect Corey O’Connor said when we showed him the numbers.
“Who’s dropping the ball in getting the job done?” he asked.
O’Connor inherits the problem next month. He said his administration will need to figure out why demolitions have slowed down so much in the last two years, then pick up the speed.
“But then after that, it’s putting out a plan where we’re going to do X amount a year and stick to that plan,” O’Connor said.
Homeowners like Elijah Land are counting on it. He is in the process of rehabbing his grandparents’ former home in Fineview. He bought it after they passed away.
The problem is directly behind Land’s home on Carrie Street, there’s an old bar that is falling apart and on the brink of further collapse.
“The roof is all collapsed in… You could fit a car in there through the roof” Land said. “We’re afraid it’s gonna fall down on us.”
Drone shots confirm there’s a roof collapse. Broken windows reveal an internal collapse, and the side of the building is protruding out. Land also pointed out building materials and bricks that have fallen from the building in recent weeks.
Despite the condition and the blue condemned sign on the front of the building, 11 Investigates found the building was not on the city’s list of condemned properties and had not been inspected since 2023.
After Investigative Reporter Jatara McGee pointed that out and started asking questions, city inspectors went out to the property and marked it as condemned again the next day. They gave it an inspection score of 2, which means it is deemed “structurally compromised, unsafe, and possibly dangerous.”
Repeated interview requests with PLI Director Dave Green and Demolition Manager Robert Columbus have gone unanswered.
The city controller’s office told Channel 11 there was a delay in federal funding this fall due to the government shutdown.
In a statement to 11 Investigates Wednesday evening, a city spokesperson wrote, “PLI is dedicated to continually improving our work.”
The statement provided a breakdown of how city inspectors issue code violations, which 11 Investigates has explained in prior reporting. The city also responded to how the old bar on Carrie Street in Fineview disappeared from the city’s list of condemned properties and offered insight into how PLI utilized it’s two funding sources for city-funded demolitions.
Read the city’s full statement below.
“PLI investigates property and buildings for violations of the City’s maintenance code. The maintenance code requires PLI to “condemn” a property, building, or equipment if it is unsafe or unfit for occupancy. PLI posts a condemnation placard on the subject property, building, or equipment to notify the owner, occupants, and the public of the hazard. These activities are legally required code enforcement actions. Between November 1, 2024, and October 31, 2025, PLI inspectors performed almost 41,000 maintenance code investigations.
“PLI publishes a list of condemned buildings and properties. PLI adds locations to this list after evaluating the relative hazard on a scale of one to four. A score of four is the most hazardous. PLI reevaluates these locations periodically. These activities are not legally required. PLI performs this service to inform the public and support data transparency. As of November 1, 2025, PLI’s condemnation list evaluated 1,824 buildings and properties. Of these, PLI assigned a score:
- Of four to less than one percent.
- Of three to eleven percent.
- Of two to fifty-three percent.
- Of one to thirty-six percent.
“PLI is dedicated to continually improving our work. In 2020, PLI launched condemned property scoring and periodic reevaluations. In 2023, PLI revised the scoring to a scale of one to four to make the evaluations more readily understood by the public. By June 30, 2023, PLI inspectors reevaluated over 1,600 properties under this new scale. PLI reorganized inspector duties to spread this work from three (3) inspectors to twenty-three (23) budgeted inspectors.
“For 11 Carrie Street, the inspector investigated the violation and condemned the property. This is action is documented in case files number CF-PLI-2023-008541 and CF-PLI-2023-031954 and by the condemnation placard posted on the property.
“This investigation occurred during the early days of the expanded inspector group performing this work. PLI did not evaluate the relative hazard of the subject property. Because of this error, the property did not appear on the condemnation list. Subsequently, the inspector has evaluated the property and assigned it a score of two (2).
“The use of capital budget funds does not follow the calendar year. The 2025 Capital Budget included $2.7M in Paygo funding, including $547,000 specifically for the demolition of Berg Place in Carrick, and $2.5M in CDBG funding. The CDBG funds have not been released, and PLI cannot yet use these funds. PLI uses the PAYGO funding for emergency demolitions.”
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