Gateway working with Tri-COG Land Bank on acquisition of Pitcairn property

The Gateway school board has given the Tri-COG Land Bank permission to acquire another residential property in Pitcairn.

The house, located at 590 4^th Street, marks the second the land bank has eyed for acquisition in recent months. Another on 7^th Street is in the process of being acquired by the land bank, pending a legal process to clear the title. Yet another, on Brinton Avenue, is being eyed for acquisition.

The board voted 7-2 in favor of allowing the land bank to begin the process of acquiring the 4^th Street property. School directors Val Warning and Brian Goppman dissented.

The Pitcairn properties would join three others in Gateway School District, located in Monroeville, the land bank has acquired since being established in January 2017.

Those properties are at 220 Poplar Street, 412 Alpine Village Drive and 2037 McKinney Drive. They have not been listed for sale. However, according to An Lewis, the land bank’s executive director, those could be listed for sale later this year.

In total, the land bank has acquired 32 properties, including a vacant lot in Edgewood that was put on the market in October. The land bank announced Jan. 24 that two additional properties, in Turtle Creek and Braddock Hills, were listed for sale – bringing the total properties for sale through the land bank to three.

Warning and Goppman expressed concern to their counterparts during a budget and finance committee meeting where representatives from the land bank presented on its progress within the school district.

“It’s a good idea but I’m just looking at the return, what we’re going to get back as a school district – and how long before it does. I mean, we’re putting money out with nothing in sight coming back,” Warning said.

Since January 2017, Gateway School District has contributed $49,500 as part of its yearly membership dues in the TCLB. Membership dues are based on a percentage of a taxing entity’s annual delinquent property tax collections, said Lewis. For Gateway, the percentage is set at 5%.

Goppman was concerned about the land bank’s policy that requires each member community to pay dues that apply to the acquisition of properties not just within Monroeville and Pitcairn.

“We’re using, essentially, Monroeville taxpaying dollars that’s applying to communities outside Monroeville … I don’t see how that’s fair to them to be paying for Penn Hills or Clairton,” he said.

There are 22 municipalities within Allegheny County that are members in the land bank. Penn Hills is not one of them.

Lewis said the reason properties take a while to list is because the land bank wants to make sure the titles are insurable. The legal process, known as a quiet title action, takes up to a year to complete. And the process cannot begin until the land bank has obtained the deed, secured the house and cleaned them out.

If either Gateway, Monroeville or Allegheny County decided to end its membership in the Tri-COG Land Bank, all those taxing entities would stop benefitting from the land bank, Lewis said.

“They must all join together,” Lewis said, citing the land bank’s intergovernmental agreement. “Part of what (the land bank) does is steward abandoned properties to clear the title.” The ultimate goal, she said, is to place blighted properties back on the tax rolls and make communities safer.

Details on properties owned by the land bank can be found on the organization’s website.