Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group (PCRG)

For a cautionary tale, communities hard-hit by the current recession don’t have to look much further than Youngstown, Ohio. Like many other manufacturing-dependent cities struggling in this recession, Youngstown’s economy was once booming mainly because of the success of one dominant industry. And also like those cities, Youngstown saw its fortunes fall fast and hard… Continue reading »

Home foreclosures could be on a downward trend in the five-county Pittsburgh region. The combined foreclosure rate for the five counties for the first part of the year — Jan. 1 to June 14 — was down 24.1 percent from the same period last year. If that pace continues, it would be the third year… Continue reading »

For more than half a century, Dwelling House Savings & Loan has built a sound reputation for providing affordable home mortgages to Pittsburgh residents whose credit risk is too high and assets too low to qualify for a conventional bank loan. Now its own financial survival could be at stake. The federal Office of Thrift… Continue reading »

High noon on Wednesday. That’s when Gov. Ed Rendell will convene an “emergency meeting” of his cabinet to discuss the current budget crisis and whether tax increases and/or more spending reductions will be needed to balance the fiscal 2009-10 budget, which takes effect July 1. Read the full Post-Gazette article here.

The Pittsburgh Housing Authority should consider cooperating more with other governments to cut costs, and should weigh whether a merger with the Allegheny County Housing Authority would benefit it, City Controller Michael Lamb said today. Read the full Post-Gazette article here.

Here’s a bleak milestone: there’s been more the 1 million foreclosures filed in the U.S. so far this year, according to a count by the Center for Responsible Lending.  Not all of those foreclosures will result in evictions, but the statistic offers a sobering illustration of the magnitude of the problems that still face the… Continue reading »

Developers are finding it easier to get funding for sustainable building projects due to federal incentives and investor interest in green certification.  When Crosland was designing its first full-scale sustainable community, it wasn’t focused on certification. The developer began the design process by leafing through several green building ratings systems—LEED, EarthCraft, Green Globes EnergyStar—and decided to… Continue reading »

Unemployment in the Pittsburgh area inched down in April to 6.9 percent, but was still up from 4.2 percent unemployment in April 2008, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The unemployment rate is still lower than April’s national unemployment rate of 8.6 percent, not seasonally adjusted, which was up from… Continue reading »

First Niagara Financial Group Inc., which recently acquired 57 bank branches in western Pennsylvania, has selected a base for its growing operations in that region. The bank will lease more than 50,000 square feet in the 11 Stanwix Building in downtown Pittsburgh, company officials said Wednesday. About 100 employees will be located there. Read the… Continue reading »