O’Connor to seek state funding to prep city’s vacant lots for new housing

PITTSBURGH — With the city again experiencing a modest bump in population growth last year, Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor hopes to turn a longtime source of blight in the city into a new resource on which to build new housing.

Speaking on a panel at the annual meeting of Action Housing at the Omni William Penn, O’Connor responded to a question about one action to help to move the state’s housing action plan forward by detailing a June visit to Harrisburg to seek funding to enable the city to work to remediate its vacant lots so that new houses can be built on them.

“So our ask at the state is going to be for $15 million to take our sites and clean them out so that they are shovel-ready,” O’Connor said. “We own 11,000 parcels in the City of Pittsburgh.”