Advocacy journalism and counting residential units
Two Recent Pittsburgh Initiatives
and the possibilities I see for Wilkinsburg
Staying inside to avoid the frigid weather, spending more time than usual reading news, I came across two recent Pittsburgh initiatives I want to mention to Wilkinsburg residents. One is a website for advocacy journalism and the other is a proposed ordinance to create a Pittsburgh City council-sponsored dashboard that will publish counts of housing units, identifying them from newly constructed to declared unfit for occupancy.
InformUp: Pittsburgh is advocacy journalism. The earliest post on https://informup.org “InformUp: Pittsburgh — Be in the Room – Tell City Council what you think about everything they are voting on this week” is dated September 2, 2024; but I discovered the website only this week. This compendium of information about Pittsburgh City Council actions that matter to residents’ quality of life is written and edited by professional journalists, most of whom, it seems, continue writing for established publications. The journalists are making this effort to go beyond reporting to ask readers— “what outcomes do you want?” and to report that to the elected representatives. Here is the overview on LinkedIn—
InformUp is a nonprofit news startup dedicated to ensuring communities have timely information about local governance, and that their collective voices are heard by elected officials. We strive to restore the feedback loop of local journalism by providing accessible reporting on public meetings, soliciting representative community feedback, and accurately relaying those preferences back to decision-makers.
Somewhere in reading about this initiative, I learned that some of the journalists intend to expand their coverage to municipalities beyond Pittsburgh. That’s interesting! This website WilkinsburgUpdate.com intends to do pretty much the same in Wilkinsburg as InformUp.org is doing in City of Pittsburgh.
I believe I first read about the other initiative, a public dashboard to report counts of housing units in Pittsburgh, in the Post-Gazette. Other publications have also reported it, and it’s discussed in a post 1/16/2026 on informup.org.
For all the talk about housing development, no one knows exactly how many units exist or are available in the city.
According to legislation introduced on Jan. 13 by Council Member Bob Charland of the South Side, housing data discrepancies came to light during zoning reform discussions last year. Charland’s solution would be a housing data dashboard.
The dashboard would include monthly data of newly constructed units that are available for occupancy as well as units that are no longer available. … If passed, the dashboard would go live on the city’s website by the end of the year.
Credit to Amy Whipple
It seems that Pittsburgh and Wilkinsburg, on separate tracks, are coming realize that residents want to know the facts about blighted residential properties and count of units that are available as affordable to typical housing budgets.
In November 2024, Wilkinsburg voters approved a Home Rule Charter that sets some new rules for our local government administration. Our name remains Wilkinsburg Borough, but our Home Rule Charter supersedes the PA Borough Code (Title 8)
https://www.palegis.us/statutes/consolidated/view-statute?txtType=HTM&ttl=08
while leaving provisions of the PA Borough Code in place where there is no conflict with the Home Rule Charter. Borough council will soon vote on an “Administrative Code” that restates the provisions of the Home Rule Charter as sections in the Administrative Legislation division of our Borough Code. (The Borough Code is divided into Administrative Legislation and General Legislation. Sections in General Legislation are not materially affected by adoption of the Home Rule Charter.)
The Administrative Code includes an article, Article V. Blighted Properties —
Twice yearly, the Code Director shall provide to the Borough Manager for presentation at a public meeting a list of blighted properties, and a list of those properties subject to a conservatorship as ordered by the Court of Common Pleas for purposes of updating Council as to the status of the structures and to recommend further action including but not limited to demolition, seeking conservatorship, or removing a conservator.
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