PITTSBURGH — The City of Pittsburgh is making progress in tearing down dangerous properties, but problems tied to the thousands of buildings persist across the city.
Take Allentown, for example. The 200 block of Millbridge Street means a lot to Karen Zola. Her mother, who is 90, has lived on a corner lot for over 30 years.
Over time, blight crept in and stuck around. A home two doors down from hers, at 205 Millbridge Street, became abandoned and fell into disrepair. The entire front porch collapsed a couple years back, but complaints to the city yielded no results.
“The porch had already imploded on itself. The back of the home looked like it was about to collapse,” Zola said. “It’s like you lose sleep over it because it’s just such an injustice.”
Zola was livid a few years ago when the city issued warnings and citations to homeowners for what she characterized as minor infractions, while the property two doors down from her mother’s sat neglected and dilapidated.
“Expletives are just flying out of your mouth, because I cannot believe the city would invest time in a city inspector to come into this neighborhood to tell us we need to paint our porches and clean up our porches… when you have a million homes that need to be demolished!”
11 Investigates confirmed the condemned home was owned by the city of Pittsburgh and has been since 2017.
Relief finally came in May when the city paid for it to be demolished. It was part of Mayor Corey O’Connor’s demolition blitz. He announced the blitz just weeks into taking office, and after 11 Investigates showed him our reporting focused on a list of problems tied to condemned buildings and the drop-off in city-funded demolitions the past two years, despite there being millions of dollars of funding in place.
11 Investigates found the city issued 90 demolition permits in 2021, 108 in 2022 and 109 in 2023.
In 2024, the city issued just 25 permits for city-funded demolitions.
After 11 Investigates exposed the issue, demolitions increased in 2025 but only to 51 permits.
Meanwhile, condemned buildings continue to cave in and collapse across the city. They are frequently the site of suspicious fires as well, including several where firefighters were injured during the response.
The city’s Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections is responsible for identifying and demolishing dangerous buildings. When they sit untouched, the problems stack up.
Karen Bentz has owned the home directly next to 205 Millbridge Street since 2004. She rents out the property and is currently spending her off-days renovating it. Bentz said she complained to the city for years, concerned the condemned home would collapse onto hers.
“I called the demolition guy, and he said ‘well, it’s only a 2 on a scale of 4.’ And I said, ‘have you looked at the house?’” Bentz said.
She said her home suffered minor damage when the porch of the condemned home collapsed.
Ultimately though, it was not the home she needed to be most concerned with. It was the large tree in the backyard of the city’s property that fell onto her garage in February 2025.
She said the city paid for the tree to be removed a couple months later. But after reviewing her claim for damage, the city’s law department denied Bentz’s claim for damages. She tried to fight it for months.
In Pennsylvania, damage from fallen trees falls on the whoever owns the property where the damage occurred, not the owner of the tree. That is unless the owner had documented knowledge the tree was dead or dangerous.
Bentz said the garage was not insured at the time the tree fell onto her property, and she received an estimate that repairing it will cost around $25,000, money she does not have.
She is currently paying someone to tear down what remains of the garage before it collapses and takes out her neighbor’s fence. She says rebuilding it, for now, is not in her budget. She believes the city should foot the bill.
11 Investigates asked the city about city-funded demolitions under the O’Connor administration. As of a couple weeks ago, the city said it had completed 35 city-funded demolitions. It said more than 60 permits have been approved, and the city is on track to complete 106 city-funded demolitions by the end of September.
“We are continuing our annual demolition plan, trying to target blighted properties that have been continuous concerns in communities. This work will continue throughout the year city-wide,” a spokeswoman wrote.
She added that more demolition permits will be approved after September, when CDBG funds become available.
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